Suspense!

Canon. Freaking canon. From Count Your Sheep

I fear that all the useful and interesting things I've said will be buried thanks to the large number of posts I've made today. I'm a firm believer that it's better to make one post a day than seven posts once a week, but, dang it, there's just way too much to talk about today!

So this post is really just a shout-out, but first of all I'd like to point out that today's Count Your Sheep strip, shown above, is possibly the most canonical strip to describe what is Count Your Sheep that I've ever seen. This strip captures the tone of Count Your Sheep PERFECTLY. The punchline is the perfect combination of both humor and melancholy that runs as a theme throughout the whole series. We understand that Laurie is struggling immensely with being a single mom and raising her daughter basically at the poverty level. And we know that Katie knows this, to a certain extent. But Katie has this perfect innocence which surrounds her and makes everything bearable, and Ship is always there to provide comfort and the occasional uplifting quip to keep spirits high. And today's strip just captures that perfectly in the last "panel". Katie comments that when she asks Laurie for things, Laurie will generally cry, because she truly wants to shower her daughter with gifts, but she can't. And that's pretty sad. But Katie actually says she wishes Santa would respond that way, because that's the way Mom responds, and what Mom does has to be the best, you know? And then Ship tops it off with a little quip. Just perfect.

And now the shout-out part of the post. I must say, I was rather surprised today not so much by the fact that Adrian Ramos linked me (which is always kind of a surprise and a pick-me-up. For some reason you just feel special when someone links you), but by the text he included along with his link: "I'd like to dedicate today's strip to both Robert Howard and Gilead Pellaeon who, in their many discussions about CYS have inspired an idea I just had to increase our readership. Thanks, guys!" I noticed that Ramos made a LiveJournal post a few days ago expressing his desire to reach out to single parents, who he feels would connect with his strip, but he didn't know how to do it. Then today he mentions that he has an idea, and that somehow I was involved in the inspiration process.

And I'm on the edge of my seat waiting to see what this idea is. I honestly have no idea what it is I may have said, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Ramos has planned. That being said, I've got my fingers crossed for a print collection. I love print collections. And I mean love print collections. But I know they're not popular with a lot of people, who just prefer to read things online and not pay money for stuff they've already read, so I can understand why a lot of people don't go through the trouble when they're probably not going to sell a whole lot of copies.

But still. Print collection. Dude.