First, apologies for not getting this week’s comic to you in a timely manner. I have a bad habit of working on the comic the day before it’s “due.” A holdover from the period where I was updating 3 times a week and wanted the comics to be as timely as possible. I forget that I have a 6 day lead-time on these things now.

I tried working on the comic Sunday night, but Pearl has been teething terribly and not sleeping. Kind of hard to work on a comic when you have to climb out of the basement, up two flights of stairs to console an infant while your wife tries to sleep. So I scrapped it and said “Let’s try again Monday.”

Incidentally, Pearl is doing much better. She just had to get over the hump, I think.

At any rate, I thought I would experiment with the comic today and try something sans-dialogue. I almost wanted to leave out the “Smek! Smek!” in the last panel because 1.) I thought I had done an okay job of communicating that Tom was yawning in the first three panels and 2.) I’m not sure if anyone else has seen “Smek! Smek!” used as a sound effect for smacking one’s lips other than myself.

Whatever. It’s in there now. IT’S CANNON, BABY!

Not to boast, but I like today’s comic a lot because I think it works on two levels. It works as a visceral reaction to the gaping maw of the Ghost Face mask (which has always inspired me to yawn) and I think it also works as a critical indictment of the Scream franchise. That is to say, it’s boring.

I’m not a fan of horror movies in general, but I’ve seen all of the Scream movies and give them credit for bending the rules of the genre and doing something fresh with the teenager slasher flick. The amount of talent cultivated for the first movie is extremely impressive, considering how many of the actors from that movie went on to bigger and better things.

Scream 3 is kind of a throwaway, though. A billion cameos from C-listers lke Jenny McCarthy trying to hop on the gravy train. I mean, Jay and Silent Bob show up, for crying out loud. If you squint, it’s not entirely dissimilar from the Wayans’s Scary Movie franchise. It was a parody of its former self.

To that end, why are we revisiting the franchise over a decade later? Did Wes Craven learn nothing from New Nightmare?

What about you guys? Any interest in seeing Scream 4 this weekend? Pardon the pun, but perhaps some morbid curiosity as to where they can possibly take the franchise?

I’d go, but I think I’d be too depressed watching the last gasps of Neve Campbell’s and David Arquette’s careers swirl around in the drain of nostalgia.

If you have something to say about Scream 4 or the Scream franchise in general… I implore you!… Leave a comment below! Before I kill again!