Stranger Than Friendship

Happy New Year! 2020. Wow. I’ve been playing a lot of Jurassic World: Evolution lately. It’s a sim-type game where you run a Jurassic type park, and have to make dinosaurs and make the enclosures, and make sure they’re fed and visible to the public, and then you also have to make sure all the people attending your park are taken care of. The game is a lot of fun, but what happens to me when I play a game a lot, is that it starts to enter my subconscious. And then, when I’m trying to fall asleep, I’m thinking […]

Oh man. I lied on the last post. I really thought the Star Wars post would be the last comic of the year. And yet, here we are. Game nights typically happen this way. We’ll have big plans at the outset. But they usually devolve into just hanging out. The night is usually hampered by game updates, or installation wait times, or just internet/multiplayer connection woes. The magic number seems to be 4 people. Anymore, and games just aren’t happening. For true this comic wraps up 2019. Happy Holidays from iRogan. See you in the New Year. -iRogan

Welcome back. Last comic for 2019. A fairly prolific year for Stranger than Friendship comics, I must say. Four whole comics. Beats the “one” I did in 2018. As always, my goal is to do more, and 2020 feels like the year! But I say that every year… I recently completed STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order, and one of the gameplay elements is that whenever you save your game progress, the enemies in the zone you are in will respawn. This sounded like a funny concept when you think about it from the perspective of the enemies. Do they retain […]

Back to the video game related comics. This one taking place within the Gears universe. Illestrader and I have been playing through Gears 5 in co-op, and we have been struggling through on the Experienced difficulty settings. The franchise has always had 4 levels, Casual, Normal, Hardcore and Insane. With Gears 5, its now Beginner, Intermediate, Experienced, and Insane. We’ve been playing on Experienced and it has felt like a grind. Especially on some of the bosses. Maybe we’re getting older? Maybe it’s because we only have a few hours each week of dedicated co-op time.  And there’s no reward […]

Wrapping up the Fatherhood trilogy here. The next idea I have is Motherhood related, and then we’ll probably go back to more conventional stuff. I’ve been experimenting with different techniques lately, and learning a lot about lettering and word bubbles. But I will probably go back to my normal, more comfortable style for the next comic, so that I can complete a few more in quick succession. Experimentation is a lot of trial and error, and just makes everything take longer. On the business side of things, I finally decided to make this comic a little bit more legitimate, and […]

So our son, Cillian, was born Aug 12, 2018, at 2 in the morning. As the comic depicts, it was a pretty strenuous labour, but we all made it out happy and healthy, but extremely tired. I had help with the idea and writing for this comic, from my fiancee, as she’s the one that did all the hard work. I just stood by and stress drank Red Bulls. Our kid is 5 months old now. Already! Which is crazy, how time flies. Hopefully I’ll get pt. 3 up quicker than the 6 months it took to get around to […]

So I’m gonna be a dad in August. Baby boy on the way. He’ll be a professional gamer in no time I suspect. When most people ask if I’m ready, I just reply “Yup. I’ve played all the necessary games to train myself.” Fully competent until proven otherwise, right? Also, new comic? Whoa, right? -iRogan

True story. Butt Butt achievement in Runbow. Runbow is actually a pretty fun game. Sort of like a poor-man’s Super Smash Bros with a single-player mode. It was last month’s Xbox One Free Games with Gold so I won’t complain either way. I tried a new style this time around. Going black and white, 4 panels and different character style. Compared to my pin-up drawings, this is closer to my comfort level, as cartoony, simple art style is definitely out of my comfort zone. But as always, I will continue to update and change as necessary until I’m 100% comfortable. […]

The whole concept of “finding” cars in the Forza Horizon series always seemed very illegal to me. The barns are just out there, and inside are these forgotten, neglected classic cars. And we find them, and suddenly they’re ours, for our car crew to fix up. But who did these cars originally belong to? I mean, the property the barns are on have to belong to somebody. Therefore the barn and its contents would too. Just sayin… -iRogan

Illestrader and I have been grinding our way through Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands. As evident in this accurate, albeit, late comic. True story though, the characters in this game say “shitballs” a lot.  Sometimes it is hard to take the game serious when you actually listen to their dialogue. But I guess that’s part of its charm. The game is incredible though. It is a near perfect Co-op experience. The missions structure gets a little repetitive, but it gets mixed up often enough that it never feels stale. And every interaction feels unique in co-op because any number of […]