Allison pointed out to me that the first introduction of Hipster Barista (Hipstista?) was in Captain Quail 3, and that he is making his big return in Captain Quail 103. I planned for last Friday's soccer comic to be relevant to the World Cup, and missed by two weeks. I pay no attention to the ordering of Captain Quail's story, and end up with delightful coincidences like I described above. I think the universe may be trying to tell me something. 

There's something there about trying to force creativity and imagination to bend to your wishes, and how tricky that is. As opposed to, say, being a vessel for your imagination. It comes down to direction versus dictation. I have rarely been successful forcing my creativity to fire on demand, and have been most pleased with the results when I give imagination the time it needs to surface. Its rather like whale-watching, or baseball. Long periods of inactivity with brief moments of excitement, that you hope you can seize and direct. Of course, I'm barely a quarter-century old, and only been at this regular-creativity gig for about two years. So my opinion may be bunk.

But that opinion shapes another opinion, which is that trying to cram too much into the window that your creativity allows you is a fool's errand, and will probably leave your reader or audience confused and downright regretful for supporting you. All of this is inspired by the fact that we went to see Lucy this weekend, which was a movie that I very much wanted to like and ended up pretty disappointed about. Not because of the rampant pseudo-science - I was expecting lots of that. But because they tried to shove so many SciFi concepts into a movie that could have been an interesting exploration of human potential. I wouldn't go so far as to say I regret seeing it, but that's mainly because I like watching Morgan Freeman and Scarlett Johansson. Its a hard movie to recommend, though, because it could have been so much more by trying so much less. I hope The Adventures of Captain Quail never falls into the same trap. 

Whew. Now that you've had you're weekly dose of philosophical review ramblings, you can hopefully get on with your week in peace. 

Thanks,

Philip