Port Sherry

UPDATE 4: The site has been moved to a VPS! Thanks for your suggestions.

UPDATE 3: Let’s hope the tweaks I made work.

UPDATE 2: Aaaaaand the site was down again. I’m being suspended for using triple my allowed CPU usage, but at 50webs they are being nice enough to let me try a few things to optimize WordPress and such. If you know of an affordable VPS solution for a small yet growing webcomic, please drop me a line at the address in the left sidebar.

UPDATE: Welcome Stumbleupon users! You broke my site for a few hours! Thank you for all the love. A new comic is coming soon-ish.

——

Hey, a new comic… and it only took me 4 week to make! (edit:er, because I can only work on comics on the weekends now. See here.)

While I don’t think using an antropomorphic version of the food you are serving as the mascot or logo of your restaurnt is wrong, it’s a concept that can easily slide down a slippery slope of nastiness: there’s no room for confusion as to what they serve at a restaurant when you see a huge cartoon chicken winking at you from above, but it’s also easy to forget that it’s actually inviting you in to sink your teeth into its cooked flesh.

Just to show how far cuteness and whimsy go to cover this odd fact, this old SNL ad (written by Robert Smigel) looks almost like the real thing while being upfront about  this “conceptual nightmare”. As long as the chicken’s smiling, though, it’s all good!

Now: Goya.

I am a huge fan of Francisco de Goya’s later works, especially of the Black Paintings. I find in them a use of the grotesque  and spooky caricature that was there in Los Caprichos but was absent in The Horrors of War, that is almost childlike in their absolute darkness, if that makes sense.

“Saturn devouring his son” has always been a favorite of mine, but it was only recently that I noticed some subtleties that changed the whole painting for me. I used to see this savage madness in the scene, this despicable monster doing a horrible deed in the most cruel manner… but then I saw its eyes.

It’s a crazed look, yes, but there’s also horror and perhaps remorse for what he’s doing. As if there’s a small piece of sanity still inside torturing him for his actions. This discovery overtook my humble reference, I’m afraid, as the eyes are not as savage as they are in the original painting. It’s an amazing work of art.

Thank you for visiting Port Sherry. Hope to see you again very soon.

–Pedro Arizpe