Gonogo.

Teddy’s Paradox

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The whole point of this months GONOGO (with Teddy Roosevelt professing to love animals in order to shoot the bejesus out of them) is the contradiction (or paradox?) that someone would preserve wildlife in order to shoot it. I hope that it is not lost on my readers that this was the Republican stance over a hundred years ago.  In a way, Teddy’s paradoxical view is light years away from where the current parties stand on these issues. It will be interesting to know how the Republican Party will react to the attempted assassination of Trump, however I doubt the answer for them will ever be “fewer guns”. It will not be lost on my readers that Teddy Roosevelt also survived an assassination attempt (and kept his speech rolling for a 50 minutes after being shot in the chest) which proves that GONOGO is once again “predicting the future”… It is my sincere hope that we, as Americans, can steer our parties away from the extremes and towards the center, even if it’s a paradox like Teddy’s.

A Bridge to History

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Season II Episode 3 Pencil Sketch

I have often said that the Theodore Roosevelt Bridge is a character in GONOGO. But this month’s episode takes it a step farther by unlocking the ghost of the former President himself. I am cautious about introducing new characters too often, because it can feel like there are too many people to keep track of, but I feel that this one is worth it. The comic would suffer if Foggy and Smithson only talked to each other. Having new characters is a way for them to communicate with the outside world and react to the profound weirdness that the DC area provides. In a way Teddy is personifying a feeling that any DMV resident carries with them subconsciously all the time; the weight of history in this place. All of the monuments, the civil war, the revolutionary war, civil rights, the world wars, Vietnam, 9/11 (the rest of America may forget that the Pentagon was hit that day, but folks around here find it hard to forget) even Jan 6 is part of the history around here. So, that is part of why Teddy has popped up in GONOGO, he’s a refection of the ever-present feeling of history that we have around here, and as a bonus I get the opportunity to make another republican look ridiculous (although they don’t seem to need my help doing that lately…)

Cue the Dramatic Music

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Welcome to the blog post about the penultimate episode in season I of GONOGO. It has been a wild ride, and I am really excited about posting “The Hatch Part II” next week, as it will be the capstone on two years of hard work. When I started this comic in the early days of the pandemic I had high hopes that I would be able to dash off episodes in a manner of minutes and spend my days drinking DC Brau beer in a hammock. The reality is that because I decided to “buck convention” in webcomics and “kick it old school” I set myself up for around 20 hours of labor for each episode, start to finish. That, my friends, is a part time job. I am not complaining, but as this season comes to a close, it has given me reason to reflect on how I might make the process go faster for season II.

I do hope that my musical friends appreciated the insertion of the “dramatic chipmunk” music into the last episode. I don’t read music, so I don’t know if it actually says what I wanted it to, but I haven’t had any complaints either, so the internet must get things right occasionally…

A Very DC Problem

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I have tried to make GONOGO a universal comic strip. That is, it does not need special knowledge of a particular place or people in order to be understood. This week’s comic is still universal, but is very specific to DC. I have, (and lots of people I know) been outbid on houses by hundreds of thousands of dollars. The housing market is just nuts in the DMV. It is actually only borderline crazy that someone would try to buy a spot under a bridge. As for “historic designation status”, it is about as bad in DC as this cartoon makes it out to be. I find it interesting that the people who want to reexamine the past to find its horrors, are not as interested in maintaining a historic home because of the costs associated with it.

This is episode 23 of 26. Which means we are closing in on the end of season one. I am interested in soliciting your feedback about his season and looking forward to the future of GONOGO. I presume that most of you loyal fans follow us on Facebook. Drop a line in the comments if you follow us anywhere else (webtoon, Twitter, Instagram, Tick Toc, Parler, Walmart customer reviews, wherever) Thanks for reading!

MK ULTRA EXTRAVAGANZA

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Eagle eyed readers of GONOGO will be able to spot many references to earlier plot points featured this season in this weeks comic. Diving into the psychedelic horror that would exist in the minds of Foggy and Smithson, I wanted to highlight the paranoid and conspiracy theory driven world we are living in at the moment. I also added in a healthy dose of sixties era psychedelia art references because, lets face it, a little goes a long way, and the Federal Government is going to save money by using up the old stockpile. These last three episodes have been the most popular yet, which makes me wonder what that says about you, dear reader…
We are heading into the home stretch for season one. This was episode 22, and we are ending on episode 26. I am interested in collecting data from you folks about the future of this strip, but I will ask you all more about that in the coming weeks. Thanks again for reading, and as every Youtuber says, “Like and Subscribe!”

Mind Expansion Developments

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The tainted DC water storyline has been the medium for some character development. In a one page strip such as this it becomes difficult to get into the backstory of any of the characters. This week we gain a bit more insight into Smithson’s origins. We know from previous episodes that he was washed down rock creek from his home in the National Zoo during the derecho of 2013. We now learn that he was one of the Smithsonian’s “Simian ambassadors”, and was trotted around various schools and government offices (including the CIA…which is literally just upstream from the Roosevelt Bridge). We can suppose that it was on these field trips (and possible clandestine detours) that he developed the ability to reason and eventually talk (In my mind, a very similar, although less violent, development that Caesar goes through in the reboot of Planet of the Apes).  He did indeed build up an immunity to some of the mind control drugs, but the last panel might hint that he is out of his depth in next weeks episode…

Something in the Water

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Last weeks comic highlights an aspect of DC life that is intimately known by the locals, DC water sucks. Don’t get me wrong, its a lot better than it used to be, but there is always something wrong with it. I used to live in Petworth (part of Northwest DC, East of Rock Creek) in a rowhouse built in 1912. We had a lead line that came into the house from the street, and we routinely had 280 parts per billion of lead in our water (the “safe” limit is around 20). Transgendered fish are common in the Potomac due to birth control pills. Snakeheads have taken over. A well meaning group of rowers took disadvantaged youth out on the Anacostia and, on their FIRST outing, bumped into a floating corpse. But what this weeks comic is alluding to is not these mundane aspects of urban water life, but a particularly DC issue, the secret government agencies that are doing lord-knows-what in our name, and are dumping the refuse of their experiments into the waterways willy-nilly. Have you noticed that nobody talks about fluoridation in the water anymore? Exactly…