Winners, Winners, Everywhere...

Congratulations to five great minds that thought very much alike this week: David Goldfarb, Douglass Barre, phil gregory!, Adam Ford and Shawn Saler. Special kudos to Shawn whose spare application of the idea comes closest to the final version. We now have a true multi-directional meeting point that will accommodate even a turned-corner reading. Honorable mention must go, however, to those intrepid souls who endeavored to keep Carl singular. Maybe next time!

As always, suggestions are listed in the order they were received. Thanks for playing and keep those suggestions coming!

--Scott
09/13/1998

David Goldfarb

• We see Carl falling to the ground. (Hopefully not from too great a height, as he's falling onto pavement.) (Although if he *is* clearly falling fast enough to suffer injury, that could be interesting, too.) A recognizable white car is heading towards him with an "ERT" of slamming brakes.
• Another possibility: two Carls in the interior of the car, one driving and one in the passenger seat. Both are saying in chorus, "Who the hell are you?"
• Or we could have just one Carl standing on the street, saying "How did I get outside?" as in the background a driverless white car crashes and burns.

  This multiple-suggestion stuff is kind of fun.

Douglass Barre

• Carl is forced to veer his car out of the way of a strangely familiar figure who falls out of a swirling psychedelic pattern in the road. (Dovetail plotlines, heck... let's get meta here.)

phil gregory!

• Carl, his car having just missed colliding with the giant winged elephant, mutters to himself, "That's something you don't see everyday!"as a hole in the space-time continuum opens in the air above his car and a dude who could pass as his identical twin pops out and plummets to the earth on a direct collision course with Carl's windshield.

Guy Nelson

• well, based on the merging story lines, the next panel should be: Carl, standing beside his car (he just stopped after avoiding the elephant/ he has just entered his picture) surrounded by many colored animals (pink elephant, green ape, etc...) and says with his cunning observational skill, "wow, look at all the kooky animals!"

Sean C. Duncan

• A closeup of Carl's head and shoulders. He's looking very disoriented. He says, "Where the hell am I?" He scratches his head with his right hand. Can be read as either he has no idea what weird spatio-temporal realm he's fallen into, or he has no idea what street he's driving on.
• A panel of Carl falling backwards into a "Time Tunnel"-like swirling vortex of colors. Sure, in the context of the "driving" panel above, it doesn't make much sense, but you're the one who showed that American comics rarely use the non-sequitur style of panel transitions. Open yourself to new possibilities, Scott.
• Carl's driving his car amidst a huge group of pink elephants. He appears to be in a multi-colored veldt of some kind. "What the hell?" is the word balloon erupting above the car.
• A totally black panel. Can be interpreted either as Carl making the transition into some other realm, or he's fallen asleep at the wheel.
• Keeping with the Carl's-fallen-into-a-panel thing, we see Carl driving while a huge hand draws another elephant (or maybe part of the car?) behind him. Carl says, "Oh my."
• We see a closeup of Carl's legs flailing out of the piece of paper. The paper takes up most of the panel and is clear, so it can also appear like a windshield.
• The panel is filled with a huge stylized explosion, like the old POW! and WHAM! sound effect panels. Sound effect: "BOOOOOOOM!" or maybe "WHAMMO!" Can be read as either some cosmic noise Carl's making in entering the world of the drawing he's made, or maybe Carl's run into something in his car.

  Enjoy.

M. Robert Turnage

• Extreme close-up of Carl's face as he screams, "FLYING MONKEYS!"

Sean McKeever

• Carl's in his car, hand to his head, eyes wide with disbelief:

  "Man, I've gotta lay OFF that stuff..."

Wes Winstead

• The pink elephant pushes Carl out of the paper, saying "Hey! Members Only!"

Adam Ford

• Carl: "I gotta get out of this drawing! It's dangerous!" He accelerates towards the right hand margin.
• Carl begins to speed up, saying, "I'm in a comic, what could go wrong?" He has an aggressive expression on his face as he stamps his foot on the gas.
• Carl has been sucked into the drawing from the other "reality", in which he has just missed the flying elephant. "Psychedelic drawing carl" is lying in the road in front of "pink elephant driving carl". Both carls scream as they realise impact is inevitable. (hint: he doesn't have to die in the next panel, he could just be hideously injured...)

  driving carl: Oh, no! I'm going to run myself over!

  or

  psychedelic carl: AAAAAAHHHH! No more Pretty!

Shawn Saler

• Carl should fall out of the sky (from the drawing scene) into the road, while the driving Carl drives toward him, about to hit him.

Douglass Barre

• Well, darned if'n I didn't come up with a second idea. Inside the car, we see Carl's head and hands popping out of the glove compartment. No one is driving the car. Carl looks scared, and cries, "What the--? No driver!"

frank episale

• carl's head emerges from a manhole. the hole is all colorful swirls, apparently a gateway to some alternate dimension (or just an underground psychedelic wonderland...) carl is in imminent danger of being crushed by descending pink elephant (perhaps just the elephant's foot, or trunk?); beyond the elephant is mom's car, driven by shaken and now existentially challenged meta-carl...

Jonathan L. Miller

• Carl materializes in the middle of the street (i.e., he's fallen into this world; his drawing opened a portal, whatever). He sees the pink elephant flying off (perhaps joing a migrating herd?) and says something like, "Wow, Toto, I don't think I'm in Santa Monica anymore." At his feet, a small, striped dog barks assent. (Ok, I'm reaching on that last bit. Hey, it was a *very* long weekend, ok?)

R David Francis

• Carl says, "That's it! I'm on the wagon!" with his hand over his heart.
• Carl says "Now, if I only knew who Bill was." Sorry, never did get that part of the first Carl cartoon.

dan wheeler

• carl dressed as kyle from south park surrounded by scott mccloud interpretations of stan, kenny & cartman. carl says "dude this is pretty fucked up right here."
• in the spirit of "obvious" (as opposed to my personal favorite: "non sequitor") carl with map unfolded in front of him speeds dangerously along saying "where the hell am i?"

Mark Bender

• Carl focuses his eyes and emits a shocking "GAAAA!" as he is made abruptly aware of the lack of road ahead of him. HE IS DRIVING A CAR THROUGH AN EMPTY PANEL!!! [He had previously been distracted by the pink elephant and didn't realize that he had run out of road] or [He was sitting at his desk drawing and did not expect to find himself at the helm of an automobile, much less surrounded by nothingness]

(Name Witheld)

• HEAVEN. Ankle deep clouds. Pearly gates. Playful cherubim and seraphim, lots of alternate-universe-Carls among them. God, in the background, looks really pissed off.

  Carl: [thinks] Wow, it's heaven! Why does everyone look like me?

Michael Avolio

• Extreme close-up of Carl, with a shcked look on his face. "What's going on? (Or he could say, "Hey, it's Scott McCloud!" -- Hey, I try.)

Harry Lagoussis

• We see the back of Carl's head as he drifts into a spiral of colors, saying "Where am I?" or "What is this place?" or even "Oh!...pretty!..." Remember: this is an obvious suggestion; Don't overlook it!

Johnny Larocque

• Carl should appear unconscious in his car, combining the two panels, and he could be driving with his...um...forehead. I know what you were thinking!

Horselover Fat

• Carl looking forward: "Hey, the hallucinations stopped!" Behind him is an enormous glowering frog.
• Carl enters a Starbucks: "When all else fails... *caffeine*!"

bryan young

• Here's a bit of a cop out. Close up of Carl saying, "I can't believe what just happened!"

Nick Pluto

• Frank is in a world that looks like his painting. Among other things, there is a deserted car and pink, flying elephants.

  ["Frank?"]

Greg McElhatton

• Carl's standing next to a car covered in elephant dung, saying, "Well that stinks."

Jon Delorey

• "The time has come" the walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes-and ships-and sealing wax- Of cabbages- and kings- And why the sea is boiling hot- And whether ELEPHANTS!!!!.......

  I guess that is a little long for a small panel maye we could settle for ....

• Alice!!!!!??? She didn't say anything about mushrooms!

Winter (Age 3)

• Carl is in the car and the elephant steps on him.

Sky (Age 5)

• He had drawn a picture of an elephant, so the elephant was there with wings.

Ivy (Age Witheld)

• Shot of the car with multi colored animals surounding him. Carl "I must not be in Kansas anymore!"