Those of you who’ve voted on TWC today have probably been surprised by the vote incentive: A glorious short story of the adventures of Captain Hookbeard has begun! The first August Jessor story arc ends after page 43 (read page 43 by voting on buzzcomix). Before the next arc begins, we wanted to give you a treat, i.e. a short story featuring Captain Hookbeard, with art by our friend Lauri Konttori.

SPINDRIFT BAY

Norman Rockpool, an amateur nutritionist from Occam, California, has discovered what he calls a “proto-diet,” a diet he claims has kept humans fit throughout the ages.

Now Mr. Rockpool, who recently patented and trademarked Caveman’s Dietâ„¢, is trying to cash in on his discovery by selling a 650-page book with a description of the weight-loss method.

“What a sham,” commented a professional nutritionist from Jessor & Co. Dietary Labs, a leading supplier of proven diet information. The specialist spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Rockpool’s method is so simple, that it can be explained in just a few sentences. Anyone spending any money on this book is crazy,” the specialist said. “Those who are serious about losing weight should use a proven methodology, like the Jessor Diet, and not listen to quacks like Rockpool.”

Mr. Rockpool remains unfazed by the scathing criticism raining upon him from all over the nation. “The only reason all these nutritionists fight me is that they’re afraid of my diet method, because it works better than their methods.”

“Get this,” said the Jessor & Co. specialist, “the only thing Rockpool discovered, while visiting a museum with his daughter, was that 200,000 years is longer than 8,000 years! It’s a big fat joke!”

Rockpool has heard that argument before. “That’s an enormous oversimplification,” says Rockpool, and tries to explain: “Homo Sapiens originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago. Until some 8,000 years ago, all humans were hunter-gatherers, eating food that they could gather with the help of their hands and maybe some very crude tools. This means berries, fruit, and meat. The human body is adapted to eat this type of crude food, and not the modern agricultural products - wheat, rice, potatos, dairy products, and so on - that our ancestors began consuming in the relatively recent past. Moreover,” he continues, “our ancestors were getting a huge amount of excercise on their daily hunting-gathering trips, thus ensuring that their bodies were consuming more energy than their mouths.”

Rockpool’s theory is that if people only eat food that could be hunted down with a club, and excercise a lot, they are bound to stay in perfect shape. Maybe so, but it sure sounds like a lot of work and personal sacrifice.

SPINDRIFT BAY — May 21, 2007

Jessor & Co. Dietary Labs today announced a major breakthrough in their groundbreaking research of a weight-loss method called the Jessor Diet. The diet achieved a truly astonishing success rate of 100% among the members of a test group this Spring.

A Jessor & Co. spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained, “the Jessor Diet is perplexingly simple, but ruthlessly efficient. Anyone who follows our diet is guaranteed to lose weight, no matter how obese they are.”

The diet works by altering the ratio of energy intake vs. energy consumption. “This is complex stuff,” says the spokesperson. “In fact, it’s so complex that non-scientist persons need to read the official guide to grasp it.” To learn all the intricate details of the diet, consumers are advised to buy the 700-page guide called Jessor Diet in a Nutshell, to be published later this year by Jessor & Co.

The diet was discovered by a Jessor & Co. research team, who studied the recorded impact of food deprivation. “One day, as we were watching The Life of Gandhi on the History Channel, we had this epiphany: people who are denied food for long periods of time are really skinny.”

“We instantly knew this was it. We were all going to be so rich,” he says. The team instantly formulated a working hypothesis that they used as a basis for live experiments on volunteers. “Our hypothesis was, If your body uses up more energy than it takes in, you will lose weight. In other words, to lose weight, people should eat a lot less than they normally do. That’s what set out to prove.” And prove it, they did. A mere two months after the clinical trials began, the research team noticed a weight loss averaging 12 kilograms (26,45 lbs.) across the population. “We now had a method that we could start cashing in on, and that’s what we’re doing now,” says the elated spokesperson.

The Jessor diet’s cornerstone is the cutting of meals to one per day. “Your one meal can consist of almost anything, as long as you don’t eat anything else all day,” says the spokesperson, and adds, “you should still drink a lot of non-alcoholic and low-sugar beverages during the day, such as water, coffee, and diet soda, so you don’t dehydrate yourself.”

But the Jessor diet still faces some hurdles before it turns into a pile of gold. First and foremost, it seems that many people are unwilling to stop eating to lose weight. “People want fast and painless silver bullet solutions. They’re willing to spend a lot of money to quacks of all sorts who promise to get them to lose weight without making any sacrifices. Well, let me tell you something: there are no free lunches when you want to lose weight,” says the spokesperson. “Buy our book, and you’ll know why,” he says to conclude our interview.

Check out the first ever Jessor contest, and win some fantastically amazing, not to mention incredible, prizes!

What, are you still reading this? Go participate in the contest now!

Even if you don’t participate yourself, you should at least comment on other readers’ contributions, just to influence the jury on who’ll win

Dear readers,

As you’ve probably figured out by now, the first story arc is coming to a close within a couple of weeks.

After that, you will first get a little Jessor treat in the form of a short story. I will not reveal the contents of that short story yet, but I can modestly tell you that it is a work of sheer brilliance!

After the short story, it is time for the second album, tentatively named The Mystery of Seal Paradise. The second story is faster-paced and more sinister in its tone than the first album. We will meet most of the characters from the first album, plus a bunch of new ones. Oh, and Jessor is starting to go a bit native; check out his new look here:

Also, just so you know, every page in Jessor is made in huuge resolution, and scaled down a lot for the web. The originals are made for print, not web, and the files are truly enormous. Check out the above  image of Jessor in print size (.jpg, 0.7 mb). Oh, and mind you, this is only one small frame of one page.