On Hold Again

Kid Largo is going on hold again; probably only for one week, maybe two.  I need to get the color range back to what I was happy with.  I know, I just came back from the break, but the new reddish strips are really bothering me.  I promise you that I will finish season 1.  While the individual strips haven’t all been scripted yet, I have already plotted out the full story.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E17

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

Today’s strip introduces the Lincoln’s gang leader.  Besides being a very important person to the story, he may also look familiar.  The Lincoln’s leader is played by our very own cake fucker Brandon.  His glee over people badly painted to look like Lincoln is one of the reasons this strip has kept going.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E16

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

During the break in Kid Largo strips I had a few computer changes.  That included changing operating systems and having to move to a new version of my image software.  I need to mess with a few more strips, but I think the color is slightly different than the older strips.  Anyway, the story will start picking up again with today’s strip.  Next week will introduce a new character into the mix.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E15

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

Finally we’re back!  I was so busy at work I didn’t actually use any of the time I was running background articles to rebuild my strip buffer.  I still intend to update the Largo strips every Wednesday, but that update will probably happen later in the day than the site normally updates.   

The Ballad of Kid Largo: The Lincolns

Welcome to another look at the Outland, the world of Kid Largo. In January we’ve been taking a break from actually strips and instead are taking a closer look at some of the background information. Today we are taking a closer look at the street gang known as the Lincolns.

Gibson City is a very unforgiving place to live. The majority of wealth and power are held by the three power companies unofficially known as the Trinity. Those who work in the upper levels of those companies never leave the safety of their company’s secure areas. Those who do the physical labor do not have that luxury. Outside the walled areas Gibson becomes a sprawling slum filled with street vendors, abandoned buildings, and gangs.

The exact date of the Lincoln’s founding was not recorded, but they’ve been around for at least the past 50 years. The way the gang tells their history, is that they’ve been around as long as Gibson has been a city. Their initial Lincoln territory was along Harden Avenue. All members of the Lincolns take Lincoln as their last name. Only their leader uses Abe as a first name.

Because there is little pre-disaster information remaining it is unknown where the Lincoln founder even found out about Abraham Lincoln. Current gang members know very little about the actual man that they impersonate; they believe he was powerful warrior king who carried an axe. Like most gangs in Gibson City the Lincolns are extremely violent and are responsible from all sorts of crimes. While they don’t deal in drugs like many of the other gangs, they are heavily involved in protection rackets.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: The Bots and the Bees

Welcome to another look at the Outland, the world of Kid Largo. In January we’ve taken a break from updating the stories and instead are sharing details about the setting. I have pages and pages of scribbled notes, while a lot of it fleshes out the plot of Kid Largo stories there is also a sizable chunk of information about the world itself. Today we’re focusing on the mechanical denizens of the Outland.

The first thing to understand is there are both robots and androids in the Outland and they are very different things. Robots don’t contain any real sentience or free will. They follow the commands or jobs they are given and will not deviate from the order. Robots can be unique one off builds or mass produced models like the Securitron MK. IV and Toast-T.

Androids can look identical to robots but are fully sentient. Not only can they think for themselves they also are capable of feeling an entire range of emotions. Androids have an innate since of what they call their Essence, this is what is believed to make androids different from robots. An android can be so damaged that their Essence fades away. Two androids can also merge their Essence if they have a mechanical vessel this combined Essence to move to. In this way two androids can actually create a family.

Many scholars theorize that an android’s glow is an actual soul, although data like that is impossible to verify. It is unclear whether or not androids existed before the great disaster or not. Androids and robots face prejudices from a large number of the non-mechanical population of the Outland. The slang term “bot” is considered derogatory by androids, robots don’t have the ability to be offended by the tern.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: The Outland

We’ve run 15 Ballad of Kid Largo strips and I’ve asked the readers to blindly accept a lot of things. What’s with the robots, what’s with the Lincolns, why are there talking animal people? This month I’ll be sharing some of the world building details that I’ve come up with since I started writing the strips.

The map above is the Outland. Outside of the cities, the landscape gets pretty bleak. So while I’m calling the whole setting the Outland, its inhabitants call the areas outside the cities the Outlands. The current Kid Largo strips are taking place in Gibson City. While I haven’t added it to the map, Gibson is located roughly where Atlanta is. There are many other government borders, cities, and kingdoms to be added to this map, but since those are still being formed I’m still keeping that version secret.

The map itself has some research behind it. I mixed a number of different maps until I got the results I wanted. Volcanoes, flooding, earthquakes, nuclear strikes, and a few other things were all taken into consideration. I’m not saying any of those things are why map looks like this. I honestly do have a reason for the “great disaster” but I like it better as a mystery. Anyway, I hope you liked the first small look at the Outland. There will be more to come.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E14

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

First I wanted to apologize to everyone; we’ve been pretty bad about getting updates put up during the holidays. Things should have settled down now and we’ll be back to our full updates again. Today’s Kid Largo strip is the only one that is going to run in January. I’ve got some other Kid Largo related articles that are going to run in place of the normal strips. I think they’ll be pretty interesting to that’s been reading.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E13

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

It isn’t clear in the strips, Tess is still with Largo but she didn’t climb up on the building. All joking aside, if there was a collected version of the strips I’d probably add something to bridge 12 and 13. Anyway I hope everyone had a great Christmas.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E12

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, the Ballad of Kid Largo.

I hope you forgive me that we skipped a couple of strips full of Kid Largo and Tess walking through the city. That Tess is a handy girl to have around. Internal tracking radar isn’t the only trick she has up those sleeves. Well gloves really, she doesn’t have sleeves.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E11

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

There are some strips, like the one with Toast-T that I wrote just because I found funny. Actually the whole series is pretty much because I liked the oddness of a Hammerhead cowboy. Today’s strip isn’t for me. Today’s strip was made just to make Brandon laugh. Anyway, enjoy the Lincolns.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E10

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

I think you’ll see that Brad looks more like his father than Tess does. He’s actually the older of the two. In this setting there is a very big difference robots and androids. Those differences, including things like how androids can even have families, will be part of next month’s updates. There is some neat stuff planned for Kid Largo, thanks for reading.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E9

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

And we’re back with a face full of plot! When we first started with the Ballad of Kid Largo I said it would be an experiment and would run for two months. According to that, today’s strip would be the last one that I had posted. Kid Largo is not ending here, there are a number of finished strips sitting in a folder and I still want to show them off. At this point in time, the Ballad Kid Largo will run at least until the 14th strip.  I have the entire first story plotted out, so if the interest is there we'll go far beyond number 14.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E8

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

I have to confess today’s strip might be my favorite one. I even kept a version of it with all of the dialogue except for the sound effects removed.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We should have a Hangover Thursday update, but just in case I don’t get to it, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E7

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

Tess’ father is a Professor Eric Richards. His full name is never used in the actual strips; usually he is just referred to as Father or Professor. Obviously, he is very smart. I mean they don’t let just anyone go around with “PROF” on their chest

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E6

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

And with strip number six we finally leave the alley! We’ll see inside Tess’ home next week and be introduced to a couple new faces.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E5

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, The Ballad of Kid Largo.

Happy Halloween everyone! We’re rolling around with our Kid Largo train. I thought about having a more Halloween themed update today, but in all honesty we’ve been doing lots of monster stuff before today so I figured we’d just roll with the comic. Brace yourself, we’re about to get knee deep in plot.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E4

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, the Ballad of Kid Largo.

Finally some action! We’re now four strips into the Ballad of Kid Largo, so at this point you should have some idea of what the strip is like. There are still plenty of twists in the story, but the look and feel of the strip is pretty much set in the strips you’ve already seen. I’ve already finished all the strips for November, so we’re set for the comic’s trial period. Hopefully someone besides Brandon is enjoying these things.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E3

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, the Ballad of Kid Largo.

This is the last tease before the action, I promise. Mickey the Finn is very important to this world, but won’t really be important to this story. I’m still doing lots of world building in my spare time. At one point the strip wasn’t even going to take place on Earth and then I remembered I modeled a street gang on Abraham Lincoln. I’m still working on finding a good name for the setting.

The Ballad of Kid Largo: S1, E2

And now That F’ing Monkey proudly presents, the Ballad of Kid Largo.

I’ve been working a lot on the strips, so much so that I have already completed two months worth of comics. It's really difficult to not just post everything at once for you to read. It’s been a couple weeks since I completed Strip 2, looking at it now I can already see how the look has changed in the later strips.