In response to both the difficulties with Private Eye #7 and a personal interest in abandoning the "private eye" concept (which was, admittedly, basically irrelevant to everything that happened in 98-99), I refashioned Russell in my second fall-99 submission, producing the first installment of The Russell Q Allen Adventures. The new series was characterized by a more continuous plot, better artwork, and something of a hit-and-miss success rate.
Issue One: I got creative with the space restrictions, ignored the four-panel requirement completely, and came up with one of the better Russell comics.
Issue Two: The art's a little cluttered (I was still getting used to the space I was working in) but I like a lot of the jokes in this one. Channel One News is a really inferior "news for kids" sort of thing that we were forced to watch in class due to a sinister higher-level deal that netted us a bunch of really useless TVs. I say "useless" because the only reason teachers want TVs is to show videos, and these TVs did not have built-in VCRs, so we had the same scarcity as we did before....ah well.
Issue Three: I like to refer to this one as the "Courtyard of Monte Cristo" issue....a departure for Russell, as all the text is narration, but from day one I'd always had an eye for Russell having some overblown, Calvin-and-Hobbes-inspired monologues. Similarities to Escape From Health, the Great Courtyard Caper, and other old Godel comics are noted.
Issue Four: Contains my nod to the passing of Charles Schulz, one of my personal heroes. A side note: for the next few issues, there's been some confusion as to how to read them... just read the leftmost panels, from top to bottom, then the second-to-leftmost, top to bottom.. that is, top left, then bottom left, then top middle, then bottom middle...etc. Hope that makes sense.
Issue Five: I think this has some of my best dialogue. Russell's mini-tirade in the middle is a bit out of tone for the series; this is the first issue in which I refer to non-Chamblee political issues.
Issue Six Dedicated to history's most absurd presidential candidates, from Ross Perot to George Bush Jr. Conveniently, around the time of this issue's release, I had an English assignment to "create a political cartoon of one or more panels." So I just turned this in. My teacher had been in Belize and hadn't seen the issue of the Blue and Gold that this comic appeared in, so...
