Classic FCS comes to an end

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Classic FCS comes to an end

Love is in the air and classic Fried Chicken and Sushi comic strips are at an end.  Many heartfelt thanks go out to my fans that have been reading this comic adventure loosely based on my experiences living in Japan.  It has been a fun five years filled with humor about travel, love, racism and perception. 

Please continue to join me as we follow Little Karl and his family with Little Fried Chicken and Sushi morphing into regular Fried Chicken and Sushi.  There will be more of what you love about my work but seen from the eyes of children and adults.  The new vertical format will give me more freedom to create interesting layouts and add more adventure.  Thanks for your support!

Best,

Khalid

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NEW vertical style Little FC&S comics

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NEW vertical style Little FC&S comics

You can see that the Little Fried Chicken and Sushi comics have changed to a vertical format with two panels on top and one or two at the bottom.  This makes them larger and easier to read on cell phones and any other art sites they're put on.  Plus, and this is the one I really like, it makes them easier to transfer to book form when I compile them together.  They will be one comic per page so 200 comics could equal a 200 page graphic novel for kids and adults.  Similar to what Big Nate and Phoebe and Her Unicorn are doing.  There will be more adding in of Japan related themes to the Little strips as they become the main FC&S comic in the next month.  Give me some comments when you can! 

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Sato's Secret Crush?

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Did you think Sato sensei had a crush on Karl?

It makes sense doesn’t it?  She works next to him everyday and gets upset with her husband and in-laws all the time!  For her, it must be nice to come to school and work with a nice foreign man…

A foreign BLACK man.  Ooooh!  Exotic!

As you can tell, more open stories are being closed and questions are getting answered in each strip.  We have about one more month of new Fried Chicken and Sushi strips left.  

How will it end?  Please keep reading to find out!

You can show your love for the hard work I put into each comic by CLICKING HERE NOW and donating $1 a month on my PATREON PAGE!

Many thanks,

Khalid 

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How to let it be...

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Karl cannot control his laughter in FCS496 because of the music Sato Sensei plays while he's speaking to the class.  You might think this one is from my silly imagination.  I am embarrassed to say, this comic strip is based on truth!

That's right, this one really happened.  The Japanese teacher of English I was working with at the time thought it would be so nice to play the song, Let It Be by the BEATLES, while I talk to the class about vocabulary words for success.  In my head, this sounded a bit cheezy and I was afraid the class would laugh at me.  If we were in the U.S., they definitely would have! But, since we were in a Japanese Middle School, I figured the students would be busy listening for the vocab words they recognized and not even notice the comedy.  Fortunately, I was right!  Unfortunately, I didn't expect to start laughing...

Not only did I laugh, I was the ONLY ONE LAUGHING!  Everyone, even my co-English teacher, could not understand why.  The sad sound of the music together with my attempt at motivational speaking was a hilarious contrast.  To me, at least. Several times I tried to get it together and finish but I just had to end it and apologize.  I was laughing so much, a few tears came out of my eyes. 

I felt bad for ruining the presentation for the students and my co-teacher but I had to think about it as just one humorous screw up.  My co-teacher was upset a little I think, it's hard to tell with Japanese people sometimes, but my cartoonist way of looking at the ...

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We both received the exact same fortune? True story!

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In the latest comic, FCS493, Mai and Karl pick the same O-mikuji fortune while at the shrine and are amazed.  This comic is completely based on truth!  My wife and I went to a shrine on New Year's Eve back during our first year of dating, just like in the comic.  We enjoyed it and I was excited to be out doing something so different than my usual way to spend New Year's Eve...watching TV at home. 

I had never heard of O-mikuji before and so I thought it would be fun to see what my fortune would be.  We payed and then they held out a wooden box, with a hole in it and after shaking it, a stick comes out with a number of our fortune to take from the large collection.  It's difficult to remember if it was considered a very good fortune or somewhat good but I do remember how my wife was shocked that our's were the same.  She kept looking at them and comparing to make sure. 

I didn't think this was such a big deal until she showed me that there are many different parts and a lot of information on one little fortune.  It's impossible to get exactly the same one as someone with you.  They have the general fortune that can be a great blessing, small blessing, and go all the way down to a future curse.  Ours must have been good because if it's bad, you usually fold it up and tie it to a tree in the shrine.  We kept ours!  There are predictions about finding love, job, health and success in great detail.  Even a poem!  EVERYTHING ON OURS WAS THE SAME!  She had never seen this happen before in her life.  When I finally understood how amazing this was, I was in shock too!

My wife and I have been together for over twelve years now and still as happy as can be.  That fortune was truly a sign.  I guess our future is really tied together!   

The future of Fried Chicken and Sushi

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If you weren't able to be a part of my live TWITTER talk sponsored by GoComics, I wanted to let you know about some changes coming up for FC&S.  My plan is to end the regular Fried Chicken and Sushi comic by this coming April of 2015.  I started the comic in April 2010 so that will mark five years.  You will start to see some of the storylines wrapping up and coming to an end in these next few months.  I hope you enjoy them!  It's been great fun to tell stories inspired by the adventures of me and my friends in Japan but it's time to stop and focus on Little Fried Chicken and Sushi. 

As you know, Little FC&S is syndicated by Universal Uclick and updates Mon., Wed. and Friday on this site and also on GoComics.com.  After April, I will begin creating Little FC&S five times a week, Monday through Friday, in glorious color and still post updates on this site and of course on GoComics.  The comic is new but it's been doing well online and I want to have more time to explore the world and humor.  Little FC&S is more of a family comic strip and that gives me many places to go with the stories and I can have humor about living in Japan coming from a child and adult's perspective.  Drawing it five days a week will give me more opportunities to have storylines that flow smoothly. 

Thank you to those of you who are supporting me with a little tip every month on my PATREON!  I truly appreciate it.  It is surprising to see that I don't have a lot more fans supporting me there but it's helped me to see that most of my fans are casual readers.  Even with that in mind, I plan to put up FC&S themed merchandise for sale in the coming months.  I hope that some of you will be interested in wearing a shirt or having a product inspired by my comics.  Once the regular FC&S comics are done, I will collect them all (probably over 500 strips) into one big FC&S book collection and put in on sale.  If you are a fan, thank you for reading and enjoying my comics!  I hope that you will be willing and able to support my work in the future by buying merchandise or pledging to my Patreon page.  Let me know what you think in the comments and on Facebook and Twitter.  

Fried Chicken and Sushi 426 The silent answer and last comic blog post

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Karl should be able to feel her anger through the phone!  The silence says it all!  Speaking of silence, this will be the last blog post for an individual comic strip on this site.  Next week I'll be posting Little Fried Chicken and Sushi strips Monday, Wednesday, Friday in color and regular Fried Chicken and Sushi strips Tuesday and Thursday.  Little Fried Chicken and Sushi will also post on GoComics.com!  That's five days a week of FC&S comics for your reading pleasure!  A lot more work for me too.  So, I'll mainly post in the blog section when I have announcements or special commentary for certain strips.  I hope you're looking forward to more comics!

Fried Chicken and Sushi 420- Competitive phone time!

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I guess when Ryan wants something he does everything he can to get it.  Even annoy the heck out of people!  I hope that it doesn't annoy you that I have a new HOMEPAGE for this site.  Little Fried Chicken and Sushi strips will start running at the end of the month so I need a way to help readers choose which comic to go to when they get to the site.  Let me know what you think!

Fried Chicken and Sushi 419 Our duet connection and More FC&S comics!

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Thank goodness for private Karaoke rooms!  Not only for kissing but for singing terribly with your girlfriend!  

Good news!  Remember when I did the short series of Little Fried Chicken and Sushi comic strips?  Well, they've been picked up by GoComics.com!  Wooohooo!!  I'll be posting new comics of little Karl and his friends there and on this site every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in color starting May 26th.  A few things will change about this website so that you can read two comics with different archives.  You can already go to the homepage and see that it shows promo images of both comics.  I'll post more about all of this during the next month but I hope you're all excited for getting more Fried Chicken and Sushi comics at the end of next month!

Fried Chicken and Sushi 418 Mai favorite Karaoke

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I remember how surprised I was with Japanese Karaoke rooms when I first went to one.  It seemed so cool to get a private room where you could sing as awful as you like and no one would hear.  Finding a private place to spend time together during a date can be difficult in Japan.  Do you have any ideas?  PLEASE LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE BY CLICKING HERE!

Fried Chicken and Sushi 416 Why does the Staring Lady stare?

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Mai really wants to know what's up with Staring Lady's stare but I don't think we want to know the answer yet.  It has to be more than just because Karl is a tall foreigner.  Maybe one day we will all find out what's behind her crazy eyes.  Until then, enjoy the fun!  CLICK HERE AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT BY LIKING MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE.

Fried Chicken and Sushi 413 The elderly lady that cut in!

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I'm always surprised with how normal it is for elderly women in Japan to cut in front of you in line.  It took some getting used to at first but it seems like people just respect the fact that they've earned the right to do what they want.  Have you experienced this before?

Fried Chicken and Sushi 412 The egg shocker!

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When you're adjusting to living in another country, sometimes you just have to accept that there are some things they do better than your home country.  I'm sure there are many more important things than making tasty eggs but...this is a comic strip after all.  CLICK HERE TO LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE!

Fried Chicken and Sushi 408 Kabuki Shakin'!

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This one really happened!  There was an earthquake during the Kabuki performance I went to!  I couldn't believe it!  It was actually the first of many earthquakes I would be in while living in Japan.  The actors were so cool to just pause in the middle of their poses and wait for the quake to finish and then continue on.  I couldn't stop thinking about how crazy the earthquake felt and how unsure I was of how much stronger it would get while it was shaking.  After the performance we checked the news and they said it was 4.5 on the Richter scale so not a huge earthquake but for me it was pretty big!  IT WOULD BE BIG IF YOU CLICK HERE AND LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE!

Fried Chicken and Sushi 407 The Beauty of Kabuki

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I remember when my co-teacher took me to see Kabuki and, as an artist, I was so amazed by the entire experience!  Just like Karl said in the comic, the costumes, sets and makeup were beautiful and the acting and posing was very powerful.  It felt nice to experience Japanese history and really feel the culture during the performance.  Japanese people can have trouble understanding what the actors are saying because they use old forms of the language.  They speak in a special "Kabuki" sing song like way that can make it difficult to hear the words easily.  If you visit Japan I encourage you to see a Kabuki play!