Oooh, you people are clever. But wait for it!

Here we can see that the ideal background for these things is green. I couldn't figure out how to get the laser shield to be over a transparent background, alpha-channel style, because it's not a sprite effect. If I did it again today I would just imitate the effect rather than using actual screenshots for that part.

This, as would later be clear, is the lizard who bombed his way into Carrotus Castle in the JJ2 comic. He's Devan's wacky, stupid sidekick. I call him "Reggie" because it looks like "Reggae" and people are named after music sometimes.

Bop bop doo dop

I made a new dance

lulz

Lori's Firin' her lazor XD

Feisty ;o

Originally Posted by plunK

Lori's Firin' her lazor XD

Heh, got more than a bit off schedule there. Posting some hours early...

According to my timezones, there's no comic from July 9th!

That edit of Thermal looks boss.

Aaaand a filler which will probably only make sense if you're familiar with the source material.

Anyway, that's the run of Life After Jazz as it was actually produced. Future plans... Jazz was going to crash into the lizard we just saw, who was killed in Lori's laser blast, and get knocked backwards into the continue grave, ensuring permanence. He would get into Heaven (the tileset), which was ruled by Queen Agama, although he'd have to content with all the Doggy Doggs ever roasted because all doggs go to heaven. Spaz and Lori would find their way back to Carrotus Castle, where they would break the sad news. A funeral would be held, which would be an easy way to meet some more characters, including Queen Earlong, Razz, and DrJones if I could get him, although I would have settled for some random other rabbit figure. Eva would be distraught (and eventually, if I recall correctly, banish Spaz and Lori from the castle, viewing them as partially responsible for her husband's death and in no way actual royalty) and -- again, if I could secure character rights -- would visit her friend the Wolf Rabbit, who would help her recover.

I seem to recall that King Earlong was planned as a shadowy figure who was never seen in public but secretly ruled the kingdom, but I don't remember anything about the storyline in which he'd be revealed. Lori would eventually develop a romance with DrJones (or, again, whomever) and would feature in some takeoff of the play The Glass Menagerie, except with an Ice menagerie instead because there are sprites for that. Spaz would wander a lot and at some point (fairly early on, I think) meet a red-headed white rabbit named Claire Snowbunny, who lived at a farm (despite also singing and using computers), and he would welcome this way of distancing himself from the castle life and spend a lot of time there.

I forget exactly how it got started, but there was to be a lengthy storyline set in the future, with DrJones or Moonblaze or some other side character sent into the future for some reason, where he'd be surprised to meet Jazz, in JJA-style. A flashback would reveal that back in JJ1, when Jazz went off to break Devan's Gene Machine, he actually brought Spaz along for the ride, who wanted to get into the turtle-stopping business even earlier than JJ2 suggested. The Gene Machine, located on the planet Nippius, was turned on the two rabbits before being destroyed, and the clones ended up being frozen in the ice of Nippius. Spaz would then go home again until JJ2 and Jazz would continue his JJ1 adventures. In the future, Nippius' orbit would change and it would thaw greatly, resulting in the Jazz and Spaz clones being unfrozen, and they would find a way off-planet and became the characters seen in JJA. (Which would also, I guess, explain Spaz' character there, if he doesn't have the combat background.)

The other main storyline I remember was sort of a continuation of the very opening, and started with Devan sitting around somewhere with a demon standing beside him, grinning evilly. Devan asks for a glass of water or something, and then freezes as the devil's grin grows much wider. It turns out that Devan's control over the demon population extended to a series of three commands: the first being JJ2 (specifically the power to transform himself into Devil Devan), the second the Demon Invasion (which is why he waited so long to command them to attack), and then the third this innocuous glass of water. With Devan no longer in control, the demons would begin a deadlier assault on life in general, I suppose working their way out from Jungle, and Spaz and Lori and some other characters would go in to try to stop them. At this point Claire Snowbunny would be revealed actually to be an angel (the audience would have seen her angel sprites in the Jazz-in-Heaven sequence but presumably wouldn't have made the connection between the two white rabbits) and would be a key player in fighting off the hellspawn, and the battle would eventually be won by someone else (forget who) gaining control of whatever artifact (probably a golden crown) allowed Devan to give the devils orders in the first place. And presumably I'd have come up with more as I went on, but that never happened.


I have no intention to continue LAJ... I thought I might when I started posting, so I posted them one at a time in case I wanted to start building a buffer, but sprite comics don't seem to be something I'm too good at making at any speed (my main one has been stalled at #39 for years), even though it'd be easier now with all the various ripping tools. But I hope I've maybe encouraged some others of you to do something more mainstream than levels and tilesets with the Jazz universe and get it out into the public eye a little more. I'd have posted LAJ on other forums had it gone on longer, and you can do the same with your projects. Keep the community going.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

Maybe the deep hole secretly skipped all levels right the the end with devan.........but everyone always picked the countryside......

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

turtle-stopping

More like turtle stumping. Ha, ha.

Oh, also. I guess this partly applies to some sprite comics, but LAJ's plot really reminds me of Bob and George with the whole clone, time travel, to multiple games motifs.

Hurry up and release the next comic I'm psyched to see how this plays out.

If you could, umm, read my previous post.

Originally Posted by Unknown Rabbit

If you could, umm, read my previous post.

I saw that. I'm saying somebody hurry up and create the next one and keep this going sorry I should've stated that a little more clearly.

How about a jazz comic, period?

Originally Posted by Puffie40

How about a jazz comic, PERIOD

How about a jazz comic, QUESTION MARK

The thing that controls demons should have been a ring, of course, if you had gotten around to it.

The whole thing was an homage to the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, so it was going to be a golden crown. I didn't have an intricate mythology of gems and rings worked out at the time.

anyway I do like the idea of other people making comics publicity for JJ2 is good yes