It happened at Vodden and Main.
The world vulgar and beady, it sat there and changed.
Dispersing the cloud-up I'd followed I'd gathered disguising the groundwork I'd blue-skied I'd fingered dissolving directions I'd angled, remained
And landed at Vodden and Main.
I died there, at Vodden and Main.

I've got 17,550 new pages of Hypothesis for you. Let's call them, collectively, Episode 0.4. Granted, there are only two panels on each page, but that is still too much comic book for anyone to realistically enjoy in a lifetime. So, I've implemented a special technology to move through this stuff automatically for you, with audio. It's called, 'YouTube'. No, it's still a webcomic; it's a genuine piece of my comic (dis)continuity. No, it's also still just a movie. It's what it is. And that is: the best way to chronicle a subplot in which I work to save a rather odd, dystopian 'Swap Universe' from jackbooted copyright thugs and/or bad Hollywood 'event movies'. Speaking of which, reviewed in this episode: Transformers 2, Valkyrie, and the Daredevil: Director's Cut...


NO COPYRIGHTS WERE INFRINGED IN THE CAPTURE OF THIS VIDEO.But to the extent possible under law, I waive all of my own copyright and related or neighbouring rights to this work and grant them immediately to the Public Domain. Subscribe to this and future Hypothecasts free, in the iTunes Music Store with this link, or point your alternative podcast subscriber of choice at this standard podcast feed URL. And more weirdness on my blog.

Courtesy of the online comic shop IndyPlanet, and via KA-BLAM's top-notch print-on-demand services, you can now own the Unlimited Edition of Hypothesis #1 for $5.75 USD plus shipping and handling. This inaugural story spans 32 full-colour, all-story pages (no ads), compiling the first three web episodes of Hypothesis, which you can preview in their entirety here, here, and here. It's all free to read online, of course, but as we enthusiasts know, websurfing can't really hold a candle to having the actual floppy comic in your hands, free of scrollbars, windows, menus, or other fidgetry, so that you can just bury your gaze in paper and ink. Maybe bag-and-board it afterward to protect its baroque atomic structure. And then let it spring on the unsuspecting houseguests who inevitably end up rifling through your private museum. Doubt they've ever seen anything quite like this.

The Wall Street Journal has raised the spectre of smartphones replacing laptops, not even realising, it seems, that it is a spectre. Apple's "cutting-edge" iPhone is held up throughout the article, without a hint of irony, as the prime example of the sort of device that it sees one day bumping your main mobile computer into a Sarlacc Pit. No mention at all is made of the completely closed and capriciously-controlled nature of application development through the iPhone's App Store (practical unofficial alternatives to which, in a 180-degree turn from its tolerance of MP3s on an iPod, Apple specifically blocks or limits from its playground).

Apparently, the Journal finds perfectly agreeable the prospect of herds of formerly free-range computer users being corralled into an unholy pen where they will not be permitted to download any new form of software without Apple's express, case-by-case approval; in fact, the financial rag breathlessly anticipates that the old regime (which happens to safeguard our increasingly unfashionable ability to choose what we can run on our devices) will be willingly relinquished. Perhaps they'd like to volunteer to close and lock the gates when the deed is done?

Now, here's the part of this Wes Craven nightmare where self-satire turns to horror...

As some of you know (especially those who visited — thanks!) I had a table in Artist's Alley at Fan Expo 2008 in Toronto. I took over 4000 photographs at this event in less than three days, and there are a lot of gems. Some of which I'm saving, of course, for future episodes of Hypothesis. But others, I've managed to assemble into a sort of photo journal of my experiences as an exhibitor, with commentary...

I am beginning to understand how things work in this universe:

Government commissions study in the service of the people. Study doesn't support the arguments of the Copyright Pharaohs. Government concludes 'there was no need for external expertise'. Tries to hide it ever existed. Continues the plot to extract from us the essence of cultural freedom which the Pharaohs have been consuming, and need to consume to extend their decrepitly long legacies for yet another 50 years.

This appears to be the mechanism by which the arterial media of this world have become clogged with the sticky legal deposits created by the circulation of these massive conglomerates.

More Star Wars, anyone? Just be sure that the part of your brain you are storing that in, is not a part from which you are ever planning to create anything in your entire lifetime (or even in your children's lifetimes, should you pass the 'copyrighted' plots and characters, fable-like, on to them).

And most of all — woe betide you online if George Lucas should ever use your name.

The latest iteration of the energetics I coded to slightly speed-launch classic games in Hypothesis 0.3. KEGSlotDroppers are a set of AppleScript droplets which can be used to automate the rather tedious manual editing of slot assignments that is required to change which disk images to load into the KEGS Apple IIgs emulator on Mac OS X.

It has been a long and personally rocky road to see this first print edition of Hypothesis published — a road begun well over a year ago, when I first sat down in front of Comic Life. And it's a road that ends, inevitably, with an apology for those to whom I promised this months earlier. (Like those of you still waiting for your Collector's Editions — the print shop has them. I am now due to receive delivery in a few weeks. Sorry for the delay.)

I cannot help however, despite the difficulties, but feel optimistic. For with this episode — and I am going ahead with releasing it online for you to preview while we wait — I have finally laid down on the page what was needed to achieve the first leg of my journey. May it find a way to entertain you, in the course of saving my life.


 
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A discussion of the featured page from the first episode of The Laroquod Experiment's Hypothesis, a media-crossing, genre-corrupted, comic book intrigue about a filmmaker from another planet, based on a true story.


 
CLICK TO VIEW IT LARGER

The second episode of Hypothesis has been substantially rewritten, with some new graphical effects, in preparation for a slew of new page releases coming in April and May. Revisit the at-turns harrowing and heartwarming tale of my momentous, obstacle-filled journey down some steps. And through some snow. There's comedy. There's tragedy. You'll laugh. I'll cry.
 

 
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Where I come from, there are no Arts. There is just one art. Of sequence. Before I arrived here, it wouldn't have occurred to me to make a 'motion picture' or a 'graphic novel', any more than writing an adverb novel would occur to you.
 

 
CLICK TO READ THE REST OF THE FIRST EPISODE