TENPAM celebration 11

 At last we reach 2012-2013! This school year in my trig/pre-cal notebook, we get some honest-to-goodness primordial NPAM comics! I had nailed down the idea of a regular girl and her feral friend. I just kept on using Lily from my previous comics. You can see Savvy's hair changes a lot as I tried to figure out what looked right.

A lot of my early jokes were just Savvy not knowing any social conventions. Transcript: Lily: sneezes. Savvy: May thou be blessed. Lily: Thanks, but the correct term is "bless you or "God bless you." Savvy: Oh...

Transcript: Lily...And so the next day he said to me... hey, watch out for that centipede. Savvy: He said that to you? Lily: No, I said that to YOU. So anyway, he said... Oh gross! You're eating a tree! Savvy: He said that to you? Lily: Forget it.

This one I reused in the first weeks of NPAM proper. Transcript: Lily: Boy, it sure is creepy being lost in a jungle. EEP! A native! AIEEE! Run for you life! It's a primitive bloodsucking cannibalistic savage! Savvy: Sheesh! Can't a primitive bloodsucking savage read her newspaper in peace? Lily: eek! aaa! Help!

Weird to think Lily's Dad of all people existed before, say, Champ. Transcript: Lily: Hi Daddy! Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything to drink? How was your day? Dad: Hi, Honey! I'm fine, thanks. How much money are you asking me for? Lily: Daddy! Can't I be nice for a reason other than money?! I wasn't going to ask for a DIME! Dad: I'm sorry. So what can I do for you? Lily: Can I have nine cents?

I always hinted that Savvy, despite her jungle upbringing, is a genius. All of my trig homework is happening inside of her head here.

Transcript: Lily: I'm going to the store. Savvy: Don't Last time you went shopping, you knocked over an entire display of Pringles! Lily: I'm GOING to the store.... let the chips fall where they may.

Transcript: Savvy: you know the guy who lives in the couch warehouse? Lily: The old guy? Yeah. Savvy: He's not doing too well. Lily: He's really sick? Savvy: Yeah. He's on his deathcouch.

 

Having learned from Silly and Frilly, I knew if I wanted to start a comic for real, I'd have to share it on the internet. So in the summer of 2013, I scribbled out the first week of NPAM in my trusty purple notebook. On July 1, the first one went up... and the rest is history!!

Here's what my drafting looked like for the first week. Pardon the scan quality. I wrote out all the words and then figured out panel composition. 

If you were around back then, you may remember that my first comic got weirdly cropped and you couldn't even read the whole joke. We've come a long way!