In paintball everyone has their own way of naming and identifying important places and information on the field. It is much easier to yell “There is one in the Snake!” than it is to describe a particular location. Few names have become universal, but Snake, Dorritto and Doghouse have become quite common.

This issue of Psychedelic Squirrels is 10+ years after the last one I posted… Consequently there is a major change in the style of the strip, and characters.

Most of these changes are due to the need to display a mask on the characters but still make each one unique and easily identifiable no matter how small they appear. So I had to simply each one drastically and remove any and all clutter from the panels. I also decided to go much more saturated in the colors, primarily because they are playing in air ball fields, where earth tomes are almost nonexistent.

Jamma gets some wisdom and insight into the game, by our zen master paintball guru Griz.

I personally always wanted a paintball mentor, as it worked out I always ended up as captain, because I was the most skilled and experienced player in the area I lived… Well until I moved to the big city, but by then it was far too late. Because I never found that mentor for the game, I thought Jamma should get one early. I created Griz for just that purpose, well and to give me a character to share some of MY insights into the game.

In this paintball comic strip, our intrepid hero, Jamma, finally gets the new paintball gun of his dreams. He scrimped and saved his pennies, to buy the ultimate paint hosing machine, knowing that it would make him unstoppable.

Unlike Jamma I bought my first paintball marker weeks before I ever played the game. I had not even heard of paintball until I stumbled across that Nel Spot 007 (Which I still have) in the Army Surplus store. I bought it, a few 12 grams and a bag of 100 balls (Which was A Lot of paint back then).

When I finally got to play the game, I felt like Jamma with his fluffy Bunny Pump master. Everyone at the field had Phantoms and Worr Game Snipers, a few even had Tippman 68 specials (SEMI AUTO WOW). I only played a few times with the Nel Spot before I bought a phantom with a 6 pack rapid 12 gram changer. I then bought a high capacity 45 round hopper… Man I could shoot all DAY!

It is funny to look back now at the progression of the technology through the game. In 1994 I bought a Bob Long Autococker, it was my super gun. I loved that gun, named it Penelope. I thought it would make me a great player. But as we all know I already was… Actually what we all know is that the player not the gun determines how good you are, the Man not the Marker.

This Paintball comic strip is also posted at my paintball gun site (http://www.paintballgunman.com).

It does not feel like it, but my very first game of paintball was 21 years ago, today. I was a 14 year old kid, will nothing but a Nel Spot 007 and a dream of glory.

I am loving going back through all my old paintball comic strips and seeing what I did with the characters then, as I write the new strips now. The characters have changed in look, and name but not in their personalities. Jamma, back in these strips was me of sorts. He was the bold and brash me. So in the character I drew back then, I see my own past, and relive moments that were otherwise forgotten.  I wish I could go back and tell the then me a few things, but as always hindsight is 20/20 and there is no changing the past.

I have been posting this Paintball Comic, every strip, over at Paintball Gun Man as well as posting them here.

Our intrepid hero, Jamma, finally gets to play his first game of paintball. How does he fare? Well, like most of us it was not quite what he expected.

I would love to hear about your first game playing, or a funny experience you had with paintball. If it is a good story I might even turn it into a strip. So if you are interesting in me creating a strip about your story in paintball, leave a comment telling me about it. I might just make you famous

Psychedelic Squirrels, my paintball comic strip, went through a series of changes of a period of several months. Oh, I just noticed that there are at least two strips missing between the last one and this one. Great, now I need to try and track those down.

Regardless, this strip introduces Jamma, our intrepid hero and paintball Newbie. Up until this point we have been following Race, who comes back in from time to time, but lost his role as lead character because, well I had developed him into a flat out buffoon and I wanted a character more sympathetic to the reader. So Jamma was born.

In my mind Jamma is an older Calvin.

The Psychedelic Squirrels Getting ready for a day of playing paintball. This was about the fifth strip I did, but was always meant to be shown second.

This is going back to the ancient times of the early 1990′s. I recently came across a zip drive containing some of the earliest paintball comic strips i ever created. They were associated with my old comic strip Cold Coffee. Now that I have rediscovered them I thought it appropriate to share them with the world again. You can also see this strip at Paintball Gun Man.

Feels like winter here already… Which is very early. Been using the fireplace for a week now… Just lunacy. Though finding out that our house is as 800ft in elevation starts to make sense. Having lived most of my life at sea level it is amazing how much difference several hundred feet in elevation make. My good friend who lives at the bottom of our hill had no snow when we had 3 feet… it was almost sureal…

Sorry it has been so long in me getting another Multicampers Airsoft Comic up on this site.  For once the blame is all on me.  I have a stack of about 6 more ideas from Soup to work through, should be one every other day from here on out.

It is time to start putting all the pieces together. The first of the new style characters in color and the first time looking at a hot topic in the media. Fun all around