An Apple a Day... #45 and 46

Robot
Parts IX and X

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ As stated before in the story/concept writeup, Robot is a tale of woe, told in three acts: The Problem, The Solution, and The Consequences.  The three acts, while being a chapter structure to the story, also represent the blocks of time I spent working on Robot. For example, from May 21, 2011 (the supposed "Rapture Day") until August 24, 2011, I worked on Robot for (what seemed like) a good stretch of time. I was taking a contemporary art class at the time and my notes got mixed in with the actual planning and rough drafts of the pages for Robot (all the rough and pre-visual work for Robot was done in a sketchbook, versus the digital methods I used for Moustache). This was kind of cool because it was almost like Robot took on an alternate form: A story between the actual story where Apple, Edward, and other characters would comment on my notes and continually complain about the lack of actual progress I was making on Robot at the time. (I called these little interludes "commercial breaks" but, by the time I got to Part X, I was over their charm and, promptly, put an end to them.) The actual lapse between the completion of Act One and start of Act Two was only about  two days. Some notes about Act One, overall:

• The design of Robot changed between part one and part eight. This is because when I began roughing out Robot, I hadn't settled on a final design for the robot character. Therefore, when it came time to show his silhouette in the final panel of part one, I made it of a generic tin can robot. I continued to use this generic sort of robot design all the way through (Rough) Part XV. When it came time to actually reveal the robot in the cleaned up version of part 8, I used the initial tin can robot shape, but made it lankier. (Embarrassingly, Robot's design continues to fluctuate throughout the remainder of the comic. However, this can attributed to a slight stylistic change in Act Three.)
• The District runs Robot's installments as "Pages", while I run them as "Parts." Essentially, it's two different names for the same thing. However, I would argue that calling them pages implies that the story is meant to flow seamlessly throughout its run. This is not the case with Robot. In fact, if you were to read Robot straight through, page to page like you would a normal comic book, you would find it to be a hastily written story with enormous plot holes and missing character development. This is because Robot was conceived as a weekly comic, wherein I took into account the amount of time that progresses in the real world when writing each part. This little fact is especially important to keep in mind of Act One when it's read through, again, all at once. The inclusion of the weekly delay in Robot's posting is essential to the pacing of Act One overall, as well as its jokes. 
• One example is between Part IV and V. At the end of Part IV, Edward is about to be accosted again and, at the start of Part V, he bursts in on Apple using the toilet. This scenario is humorous, sure, but becomes funnier if you imagine Edward being held captive by the Robot for an entire week versus, what, like an hour? At the start of Act Two we begin observing the events in, basically, real time. 
• The comic is called Robot, yet the titular character doesn't show up until Part VIII. This was done intentionally, as I wanted the story to develop slower than in the previous two stories.
• I use the term "accosted" to pretty much serve as a euphemism for molestation. It becomes fairly obvious in Part VII when the farmer claims the robot "touched" him. (C'mon, what did you think that meant, really?) I did this to skirt around District's fairly strict language and content guidelines. 
• While molestation, itself, isn't very funny, the townies' use of the term really only denotes an unsolicited hug. This is important when setting up the robot as a character that is perceived as worse than he actually is.