The Abbott (Director's Cut)

Some lessons are learned the hard way.

But, I'll get back to that topic in a bit. First of all, there's the subject matter of this cartoon. Tony's been nothing but his disagreeable self lately. And as a result, there has been no progress on the Asylum Seeker problem.

A few days ago, I was thinking about Tony's tendency for repetitive negativity and how he's just like Poe's infamous raven. I really liked the idea - so much that I started feverishly scribbling down rhymes and tearing apart our bookshelf for any books with Poe's The Raven. (I didn't find any and had to buy it on iBooks.)

A day and a half later, I had come up with TWO stanzas that fit almost perfectly with the rhythm of the original poem. I sent off a rough version to the editor for approval and waited. After a while, I called the Mercury and found out that he was not at his desk. So, I thought that maybe I should start on the inking. Just while I was waiting.

Once the inking was done, I started on the colouring. Halfway through this, I got a call from the editor asking if I was going to send the rough through. I told him that I had earlier. He found it and told me that it was WAY too wordy and that I needed to edit it down to at most two lines.

My heart dropped. All that work. And with the deadline very close. I had thirty minutes to revise it.

I did get it done (three minutes late) and I hate to have to admit it, but the shorter one does work better. Kill your darlings, right? Well, I'm still proud of the poem. After sending off the shorter version, I went ahead and finished off the longer version, just for the blog.

So here it is, the director's cut version: