NEW VOTING INCENTIVE: SEXY NUDES!!!
There’s a new voting incentive up on TWC! Yes, SEXY NUDES! Yes, starring PUCK and PHOEBE! What the people ask for!
ALSO…
Just a friendly reminder that if you want the PUCK+ experience, including access to all the past voting incentives, some sneak peaks, and other extra junk, you can become a patron of Puck for only a dollar a month!
As for this comic…
Yes, Phoebe’s hair is changing. Slightly.
I’ve heard from readers for a while now that they find Phoebe’s hair choice … puzzling. More specifically, I’ve heard readers questioning the bangs, and the placement of the clip and the bangs, and whether she actually has any hair up front, or whether she has a receding hairline, and ENOUGH!
True story: I invented Phoebe’s hair style almost twenty years ago now, and designed it mainly as a somewhat abstracted visual shorthand. It really doesn’t make sense. When I restarted the comic in 2011, I decided to keep the bangs and the hair clip out of fear that changing would make Phoebe less like Phoebe. Fast forward to 2016: I’m more confident with the character models, and, as my wife so aptly put it, “Bangs everywhere have had their day.”
So a change.
Those of you who are curious about the contents of the makeover article in Phoebe’s fashion mag can check out a readable version over on my Patreon feed! Just a buck a month to get access to the Puck+ experience!
I feel Phoebe’s pain.
For while I would let my hair grow out into a pony tail, which I pretty much liked, and then cut it off to mail to one of those places that made wigs for cancer kids or something. Hopefully it was not a scam.
When my hair was short it looked ok and when it was long enough to tie up, it looked ok, there there’s this intermediate step where it’s just awful. Awful.
Of course, it’s worse for Phoebe because she must be accustomed to looking stunning all the time – precisely the opposite of my experience – so the contrast in appearance must sting more. It brings her down from a 10.0 to a 9.5 or maybe a 9.3 – a much bigger fall than going from a 3.0 to a 2.3, as in my case.
Most girls at this stage of the ‘bangs grow-out’ operation opt for a hair band or something to sweep the hair back. For Phoebe, though, the horns sort of make that impossible.
Has she ever thought of, maybe, getting a horn reduction surgery? They probably put a lot of weight on her neck and are a pain to deal with all the time.
I don’t think they’re really very heavy. Horns are usually pretty light too, if we go by goat standards.
she could go for that kind of hairstyle for her bangs in the meanwhile:
http://www.hairfinder.com/hairstyles10/best-ager-hairstyle6.htm
Or use gel and make them spikey… Not her usual look but “necessity is mother of invention” and all that…
Not that I mind her bangs. I’ll miss them.
That link was horrifying. That hairdo … GAH. And the bangs may come back. We’ll see. But after almost twenty years of bangs, maybe a little change is in order. For a little while, anyway.
Because Phoebe is always…… HORNY!
Man, Phobe is really scared of being out of style.
… I guess you could even say she has a Phoebia.
If she has a phobia of being unPhoebe-ish, perhaps she has aphoebephobia. Although “aphoebephobia” could also mean having a fear of darkness or a fear of being un-Apollo-like.
Or a fear of Vietnamese noodles: phophobia. Phoebe fears pho, but she fears it specifically when served to her, making it a phoforphoebephobia.
And if you were afraid of Phoebe, you’d have a phoebephobia. And if Phoebe were afraid of Phoebe, she’d have a phoebephoebia. And if the puddle paddle battle is a battle in a bottle and bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles…
“Man, Phobe is really scared of being out of style.
… I guess you could even say she has a Phoebia.”
Sorry, yawl.
Sandia’s comment was the BEST – short, witty, and requires no explanation.
You just don’t appreciate excess.
I only appreciate excess when Tracee is in the offing.
Unless it’s an excess of her absence. Then it it NOT appreciated.
Agoraphoebia – the fear of leaving Phoebe.
I hope that Phoebe does grow a full Cousin It set of tresses.
(Was “Cousin It” an affection nickname for that Adams? Or was his first name actually “It?” Maybe the Doctor said, “It’s an Adams,” and that’s how It got It’s name. And yes, I know that “It’s” looks wrong, but what am I going to do? It is an awkward pronoun.)
Maybe the joke was along the lines of, “what is it?”
I only ever heard him referred to Cousin It, maybe to reduce the confusion with the pronoun. Hard when your proper name’s a pronoun. Never name your daughter ‘They’, people. Though now that I put that out there, Kanye will probably run with it.
His name is actually Cousin Itt. With two Ts. That makes it much simpler and totally clears up the confusion.
That … just looks weird. So should I change the spelling in the comic? Or would people get even more confused. Decisions, decisions…
Dang it, beat me to it. I loved “The Addams Family”: It’s “Cousin Itt”
Well, in honor of you and Dan, I’ll change it.
The in between hair is a candidate for a ball cap, touque, stocking cap, or -shudder- one of those hipster style stolen rastafari hats.
Phoebe can manage none of those: the curse of horns keeps her head relatively hat-free.
Oh, Gecko. You are insane man. I can not handle the nudes.
Well, I warned you. Didn’t I warn you about NUDE OVERLOAD?
Yes you did. Now excuse me while I go burn my eyes, play Pokémon while eating Americanized poutine by the railroad tracks next to the river.
As someone who is slowly but surely losing his hair, I’d give anything to look like my before picture.
You somehow never see that in the fashion mags: the slow, inexorable march of time turned into a before-and-after reverse makeover experience. Fashion mags don’t get that existential, I guess. Except during that brief period where Samuel Beckett wrote for Vogue.
As I recall, he was just the photographer. I’m pretty sure the editor thought the pictures were backwards and put them back in the “right” order.
Which is why I should be elected mayor. Every male teenager should be forced to forgo haircuts from the time they become a tween to the time they can legally drink. That hair is then put into a number of wiggeries in order to cure male pattern halitosis.
I didn’t know bad breath formed a pattern.
Only on cold windows.
I shaved my head to escape that. Or rather, escape the appearance that I’m going bald; with a shaved head, it appears to be my choice, not of hair loss.
Not to say that there aren’t downsides; I can’t go run around on a sunny day without sunscreen or a hat, and a “toque”, as your canadian friend would call it, is pretty much mandatory in winter due to heat loss from a bald head. But since I was doing that anyway BEFORE the hairloss, it doesn’t bother me too much.
Still, small price to pay to fool my brain into thinking it’s a choice for me to be bald. 🙂
Well, the Romans believed it was far more noble to fall to your own sword than your enemy’s, so I see where you’re coming from.
You know what bangs do to your skin!!! Yuck acne for life.
Well, I personally suspect Phoebe had little choice beyond covering her forehead, because I suspect the girl has a wicked widow’s peak, what with the placement of those horns.
Not to mention that if Satan had hair, I’m sure he’d have a widow’s peak.
Agreed. Him and Dracula.
Heh – it’d be cool if Phoebe had an “Uncle Vlad” somewhere in the mix.
Sure. Let’s make that canon.
😀 YAY!!!
Buggle, you done good.
SALEM CAT SAYS I DONE GOOD! 😀 YAY!
YAY!
Two of my best buds giving me sugar ?
I’m catatonic – in a good way.
BTW, has anyone noticed PUCK ratings on Top 100 this week ?
Wow- Wee !!
That’s what happens when I dangle the word ‘nude’ as an incentive. Mind you, it didn’t take long for me to settle back in the high teens. Sadly, gone are the days when I could finish the month in the top ten. (I used to do that all the time.) It’s not that I’m getting fewer votes; it’s that many other people are getting more votes. (They might not be votes from actual people, because bot usage has run rampant on that site, but whatever. I refuse to stoop to their level.)
Gecko has morals! I wouldn’t have thought…
“Gecko has morals! I wouldn’t have thought…”
Oh no !
I had them once. Made me itch like crazy !
My human Dad “Baldie” had to dust me daily for a week.
AHHH-CHOO !
I think you’re talking about fleas.
“I think you’re talking about fleas.”
No, no. I’m pretty sure they were morals.
I had moray eels, once.
They give you a little comb with some shampoo…
“I had moray eels, once.”
That’s IT !
That’s what I had !
How did we get from widow’s peaks to moray eels?
“How did we get from widow’s peaks to moray eels?”
It was you that revealed the Geckos deep secret – that he has morays. It’s got to be embarrassing. And itchy. But you just mis-spelled them as “morals”.
“Morals” – there’s no such word.
Har·rumph !
(see, there is a rational and random explanation for everything)
I’m curious to know what planet you’re from, and yet…. I shudder to think.
“I’m curious to know what planet you’re from, and yet…. I shudder to think.”
Quebec ? (in my dreams)
I dunno… she looks awful sexy with the long bangs.
Almost like she spent a lot of time making herself look like she doesn’t give a damn about how she looks!
Long bangs say “I’m so cool, I don’t even have to look at you. Or anyone else, for that matter. That’s how cool I am.” That’s … kind of sexy, I guess?
Observation on bangs: I see no actual women walking around sporting bangs anymore. It seems to be a mostly dead hair style. And YET… I periodically see big celebrities like Taylor Swift sporting bangs. Maybe they’re just on the cusp of coming back?
Didn’t she win bangs in the hostile name takeover?
I don’t think it’s a prize anyone really wants much anymore.
Which is why she seems to be the only one, right?
Zoe Deschanel is unrecognizable without her bangs.
She was even denied entry into a celebrity function when she wore her hair back. 😀
How could I ever forget about her ?
ELF
Good catch !
My most recent ex has bangs. She says it’s because she has a round face; I think it’s because she’s stuck on 30 years ago.
For a while she experimented with making it sort of a Romulan Commander look which was pretty hot, but she’s gone back to Moe of the 3 Stooges (which may say something about her current bf. #notbitter)
The angle, height and distinct nature of the bangs can really change the effect, I find. The Moe Howard effect is the worst possible outcome, I find.
Re: the vote incentive: I’m starting to feel like Charlie Brown and the football.
But the nobility is in the attempt to kick, not the actual kicking.
Phoebe’s horns don’t leave much leeway to experiment with new hairstyles but the journey to a new look should be fun in the trial and error kind of way.
I grown accustomed to the 80s-90s bang look on her… kinda kitschy I suppose.
It was time for a change. And I have a clear concept of how to change it, while working around the horns and all that. Should be interesting.
I was admittingly one of those who were curious about her hair (though I never voiced it, because I figured ‘why should I’?)
Now I’m curious what she’ll look like with her new hairstyle.
Also, the voting incentive’s not a *lie*. So that’s a bonus.
Well, I always say that I never listen to criticism unless it resonates with me. So people have told me lots of things are wrong with the comic, but if I feel their criticisms just don’t reflect how I feel internally, I ignore them. But with the Phoebe hair thing, it got me thinking “You know, that DOES look really kind of weird.” So change is coming.
idea one: hairclips. pink and glittery, cause its phoebe 😉
idea two: braid it back/around the horns
idea three: use super-strong hairgel to wrap/glue it around the horns
All of those sound horrifying. WAY better to just not be able to see.
Can you see Phoebe with Fran Drescher’s big hair?
People pick their style in high school and pretty much stick with it. At least that works with guys and clothes. Girls and hair…well, don’t shock us too much when you redo Puck and Phoebe and their ‘dos..
Puck’s hair was actually redone when I resumed the comic in 2011. She went from a center part to a side part, with a clip or bow on the other side. I’ve also tweaked how I draw the front of her hair a few times, and despite the fact that Phoebe is supposed to be the fashion maven, Puck’s the one who changes her hair style way more often, ranging from buns to ponytails to that infamous pigtails episode.
Maybe Phoebe will experiment a bit more from this point forward. I’m going to do something sort of fun with her hair in an upcoming story arc, so we’ll see where it goes.
Re: alt-text. When I saw “Phoebe” and “long bangs” in the same sentence, it got me feeling a little… tingly… in the nether regions… lol
Went nude, was not disappointed
It’s the only way to go, really.
YMMV. I’d say it was naked misdirection, myself. 🙂
Thank you for baring your perspective.
I tried bangs/longer hair last year. I found myself more and more standing in front of the mirror muttering curses and whacking at my hair . Finally, my bf gave me a coupon for Tony & Guy and I went. She pretty much cut my hair back like it was before I started growing. I *hate* it when my hair got in my eyes.
Bangs need to be cut well above the eyes, IMHO, but cutting them that high is now viewed as super uncool. So yeah, it’s a pitfall-laden hair style.
Come on, Susan.
Do not fret.
We’ve seen no pics – no need.
Your soul is hot as hell. That’s plenty.
Your BF is one lucky guy.
If he is not reading and voting for PUCK – treat him like Colin !!!
Oh, yeah, me and my hundred pound body bullying his six foot self.
Him lucky? He’d better know it!
Just fight dirty. I always do.
Just to brag: I caught a few mice this week. They squeak so cute !
A really pretty Blue Wren as well. Almost felt guilty. (snicker)
I’ve always thought that women with bangs like Phoebe’s looked kind of immature, like little girls or teenagers. I’m curious to see what new impression she gives off without bangs – my sister looked less approachable before she got bangs, and when she did people started calling her cute.
The cuteness factor was always a consideration. But I do feel that Phoebe has somewhat moved away from the cuteness model and moved toward a weirdly offbeat sort of elegance. She’s less goofy, is more often the straight man in the joke, and yeah. Different hair needed.
Huh. I never noticed the change, but now that you mention it, it makes sense.
ooooooh! What if you have her curl her hair to make her look more like her mother? That might turn out interesting.
Phoebe really needs to get rid of the long bangs.She also needs to ditch those glasses and wear the Clark Kent style.
phoebe out of fashion, what will her dad and step-mom(?) think?
I think they’re too busy canoodling to think.
“Canoodling” ?
I do like pasta….
Fun Fact: If you like noodles with another person (or cat in your case) it’s called “Co-noodling.”
Groan.
I wonder if Phoebe uses hair gel.
I don’t know. I think gel is guy thing, whereas hairspray is more a girl thing. I think?
Gel is for FREAKS !
Spray is for GEEKS !
(what’s happening to me ?)
Having lived in Hamilton for over 40 years, I have found that the denizens of that city rare4ly, if ever, keep their hair up-to-date. I still see Farrah Fawcett feathered locks on young women in their TWENTIES, simply because that’s how their mom styled it for them all their lives…
Are you saying we’re backward and insufferably provincial? ARE YOU? I swear by my ‘Counting Crows’ t-shirt that I am TOTALLY WITH THE TIMES!
You listen to that newfangled band The Counting Crows?
Actually I don’t. They’re too new for me.
Oh My Whiskers …. Phoebe has “Katy Perry” Bangs. And Katy is Sexxy !
I vote for NO CHANGE.
Katy Perry, I feel, is probably the closest living equivalent of Phoebe. She’s not an exact copy, but there’s a resonance.
Taylor Swift is doing Bangs, too.
She’s just a Phoebe Wanna-Be.
DON’T CHANGE WHAT AIN’T BROKEN !!
(meow)
I have a real fondness for Clark Kent style glasses because I’m a big fan of his superhero persona Superman.
For what it’s worth, I liked Phoebe’s bangs. Of course, I may be biased, my wife has similar hair. She had the bangs when we were first married, then for a few years she grew them out and tried a number of different things. In the end, she decided nothing else looked right on her, and she has gone back to the bangs.
And no disrespect to Gecko’s wife or anyone else claiming “fashion of the day,” but there will always be people for whom bangs are the best option, usually owing to a high forehead. As evidence, I’ll cite Bettie Page. Bangs were definitely not in fashion when she began wearing them, but a photographer recommended them to better frame her face. I don’t know anyone who has looked at a picture of her and said, “those bangs look terrible!” Sometimes, you just have to go with what works for you, regardless of the dictates of fashion and its ever-changing whims.
That’s why I continue to sport my “Flock of Seagulls” with pride! (I kid, I kid!)
Well, good point. And full disclosure: my wife once had bangs, had bangs when I met her. (Actually, she had a hair style very similar to Phoebe’s hair style from the original comic.) She lost the bangs somewhere along the way, never went back. So she’s biased.
I do like bangs, really. I think, though, that the way I drew the bangs, with the weird clip behind (which makes no sense) and the implied baldness and stuff what with the exposed skin behind the bangs, it didn’t work. She might go back to bangs after a while, but the way I draw them will be different.
I tried to grow bangs to look younger. The hairdresser told me that people might start asking my bf if I were his daughter.
And that’s one of the reasons my wife grew out her bangs. She grew tired of people saying she looked like a teen. It’s always been a bit of a problem for her. She recently got carded at the liquor store by a stern guy who refused to let her purchase any wine until he’d seen her driver’s license. The drinking age here is 19.
“I’m in my forties!” my wife protested.
“Uh huh,” the guy replied. “License please.”
When she finally produced it, the guy looked a little stunned. It’s probably best she doesn’t go back to bangs.
I’ve always gotten carded for things like booze, R rated movies and M rated games (both 17+ for our international readers) all my life, so I just have mine ready.
Interestingly, a lot of businesses in my area are not making people swipe the ID when someone tries to buy “age gated” stuff. My 60 year old dad told me about that when he went into the liquor store one time; clearly greying and with a receding hairline, and he got carded due to the new system. He said they had signs out front warning about the new system, and the employee had to APOLOGIZE to him about having to check, and swipe, his ID because a lot of older customers got upset!
Personally though, I like that system, because it prevents both underage purchases and fake IDs since it has to check to ensure the ID is real. 🙂
Swipe? You swipe ID? Seriously? You Americans. You take this stuff seriously. There’s no swiping up here. And there’s no requirement that you have to see ID no matter what. The guideline is that clerks are supposed to card you if you look under the age of 25. Sadly, I have honestly only been carded ONCE in my life, and that was after I pulled up to a bar on my mountain bike. I was also 19 at the time (legal drinking age here), so yeah. Carded once. Never ever again. I guess I don’t look young for my age.
“Now making people swipe the ID”, not “not making”. Typo hell! 🙁
“Personally though, I like that system, because it prevents both underage purchases and fake IDs since it has to check to ensure the ID is real.”
I really like that system.
People that are not in a country legally have no ID.
“The hairdresser told me that people might start asking my bf if I were his daughter.”
Oh, come on.
We all know you hear that all the time.
And your BF does not mind it.
Well played… Well played…
For three!
Well, I’m curious what the ‘After’-picture will look like. ^_^
The hope will be that the after pic won’t look very different from the before pic – just a slight tweak, really.
Ricky Fang has the right idea – lose the Hair Clip, and fill out Phoebe’s Hair around her Horns.
Keep the Bangs.
Phoebe’s birth mom, Elizabeth Taylor, DID go thru a Bangs-Phase once… https://magingalagadngsining.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/elizabeth_taylor_as_cleopatra-1582350.jpg
I,ll bet that Phoebe’s mother was there when her father hit the ground after losing the war in Heaven and being cast out.
Uhm, I thought Phoebe’s mother was Elizabeth Taylor… ?
For those that wonder if the Canadian Satan has any powers, granting Immortality is a pretty big one….
//www.puckcomics.com/?comic=puck-243
That might be retconned at some point in time. I was never really happy with that explanation. I think maybe Liz might have been an immortal being to start with. She might have told her daughter that convenient story, but no.
Looks like Greg White could be on to something….
You make the most random comments…
Um, thanks.
But go up 5 or so comments to see what Greg White said about Phoebe’s mom.
I thought he was cray-cray, but the Gecko did not.
“You make the most random comments…”
I just tie one end of my pretty red ball of yarn to any ongoing thread, give it a good hard bat of the paw, and my thoughts (if you want to call them that) begin wherever it rolls to (which is usually right underneath Baldie snoring on his La-Z-Boy).
Cats are easily distracted.
I was talking to Greg….
You don’t even get to read all the ones of his I don’t approve! You don’t know the half of it!
It’s a good thing (for me) that my short term memory matches my attention span, or I may be offended that…. um, that…., um, that…. ???
I wasn’t talking about you. Nor was Buggle. When a conversation tree in WordPress gets really long, you have to look very carefully at the indenting of the post. If the post is tabbed to the left of yours, then it means the reply is actually to a post above yours. In this case Greg’s. And I was talking about him.
“I wasn’t talking about you. Nor was Buggle.”
Aw shucks.
Yeah, I’ve noticed Greg White makes random, and somewhat inane comments that often have little to do with the subject matter of the comic – or what anyone else has brought up.