You ever notice how Elgie seems to have shown absolutely no interest in the ladies thus far? Of course, he’s worked for a prostitution firm for fifteen years so there’s gotta be some sort of desensitization going on. But he also seems really hung up about blowing off this guy’s head.
Makes me wonder which side of his bread is buttered, if you know what I mean.
Chimneyspeak Presents: Saloon is now avaliable! Just click on the front cover to the right of the page to go to the download page!
Saloon is probably the most fun I’ve had while drawing Chelsea Grinn, and having Elgie as the (supposed) antagonist was a refreshing change. There’s also a lot more comedy involved in Saloon than the core Chimneyspeak, prodding fun at the stereotypical cowboy image, and English people’s sense of entitlement in foriegn countries, and so on. So I hope you buy it, and I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did making it. I’ve got a solid idea for the third DLC, which’ll actually star Elgie, rather than having him as a guest star.
Also! There’s a fantastic review of Chimneyspeak over at Archive Crawl, a site dedicated to reviewing webcomics and other popular culture! It’s my first ever review, so my grin is currently a lot wider than Chelsea’s. Go check it out!
I love how Elgie is so layered. Alice is quite singleminded and he just has so much more depth. A true credit to your imagination, Jack. Gonna download the Saloon in a minute. I’ll let you know what I think soon.
Okay read it! HILARIOUS AND GORY!! Just the kind of thing you were truly born to write, mate. Loved it!! I think Elgie in America is an intriguing prospect for a pay comic. Maybe have him in Las Vegas (back when it first started, mind, no mobsters or neon) It was just as much a den of sin then as it is now only more STDs and less slot machines. Could be very interesting.
Haha, thanks! Your idea made me think “There were no mobsters in Las Vegas, until…”. I think it’d be fun to imply that Elgie (or more likely, Alice) planted the seeds of his own little crime syndicate.
That would be BRILLIANT!! Please write it up!!
Just discovered the comic last week. Sat down and read it all from beginning to end over the course of a few hours. Then, after reading todays entry and the review you added, I have to admit, I agree with him. Great Job. I look forward to more
Hehe, thanks! Hope you stick around.
Actually deleted another comic that hadn’t posted in awhile to add you to my queue. I try not to get too many comics on my weekly/daily repertoire otherwise I end up spending all day reading them. Lol. This was one I had to add though
Keep up the good work Jack. I enjoy the comics here in Chicago, I’m telling lots of folks about it. Sex, violence, and characters who have taken a few too many bricks to the head, yep just like Chicago.
Hehe, I think Chicago and London have a few things in common!
Too bad that “Honour amoung thieves,” didn’t go too fare with the guys and gals at the pub.
Oh yeah, crap. I’ll try to remedy his temporary clean-shavenness. Hehe, you may be right about Chelsea. The general consensus is that she needs a big cuddle.
I agree wholeheartedly. Just found CS this morning and have been really drawn in, but every time Chelsea pops in I just want to tell her she’s still beautiful.
Even though she’d rip me in half…
The beardthing kinda struck me too. (BTW found this comic only a few days ago and by god it’s glorious!) But I figured it were just some kind of symbolism, y’know entering his appartment feeling left alone, small and fragile like a kid, though reminded of his deeds he returns to his old shaggy self, innocense lost and all that shit! Aaaas for miss Grinn. I actually thought her more cute with the scar across the nose than before, however now…. That eeeh what’s it called again? London Grin? scar kinda creeps me out.
I’ve always called that kind of scar a gypsy smile….but i also agree with the general public that this comic is 46 varieties of awesome!
Exactly! Opium was the miracle cure of the day. Sore joints? Opium! Snotty nose? Opium! Guilt about the life you’ve lead and the people you’ve hurt over the course of 25 years as a criminal scumbag? Opium!
Hehe, cheers! I think the only thing that stopped me from drawing actual porn is that I’d need one of those “you must be 18 to enter” pages at the front of my site, and I have no idea how to make one. Thanks for the kind words!
Ah yeah, that can be an issue. One thing I know some sites do is they have a members area, or something along those lines, where they only show everything in the comics that you have to pay to see. Just a thought for your DLC’s, I’m pretty sure you would have a much easier time of preventing young’uns from seeing stuff they shouldn’t in those as opposed to the main comic.
Glad to be of service!
Hehe, one of those “narrative causality” thingies, like how the son always gets revenge on his dad’s murderer. Ah, the laws of the universe.
Hehe, yeah, I don’t really think he’s gay. Buuut, I find it fun to suggest odd things about the characters.
like how his bead can appear and dissapear at whim(no beard when entering room, but beard when wathcing foto)
and suddenly i realized why elgie dislikes/detests using guns. should have figured it out the second i the comic with jimmy
Marathoned the whole series from start to now in about an hour very interesting story. I’ll be keeping up with this from now on.
Cheers! Hope you stick around.
I’m another fan that discovered the comic last week, read through it in a day and really love it.
By the way, if Chelsea is 28 and Elgie is 40-something. How old is Alice?
Alice is 30-31, she joined the union at 15. Thanks for the kind words!
Found your comic today thanks to an ad on QC, and I have found a new addition to my favorite and religiously read comics. I read your entire archive today in about an hour! It looks like you update on Mondays, do you update at a specific time? Keep up the good work, I know I’ll keep reading until you quit writing.
Thanks! I update at 00:01 on Monday, so for a lot of American/Canadian readers I actually update on a Sunday evening. So it’s a nice way to find down the weekend, or get ready for a homocidal rampage for Monday morning, hehe.
Yay! I live in America, and all the webcomics I read either have irregular update schedules or update during the week. It’ll be nice to have a webcomic I can read on the weekends. Thanks!
discovered this site last week, devoured the archives over the span of an evening and even went so far as to pickup the Alice story.
i absolutely love the characterizations that you’ve done so far; a paper could be written on Chelsea alone.
keep up the good work!
Hehe, cheers for the kind words! I wonder what the title of that dissertation would be?
I couldn’t have put it better myself, save add Edgar Poe sitting in the corner talking to himself… “Pretty bird… Pretty bird…”
I just found this site today and I am rather impressed. Nice story you have going here!
After reading through your archive I have to admit, I can see two amusing ways that Elgie’s and Chelsea’s eventual confrontation could end (although neither is likley to happen!):
#1. After a long drawn out fight where both get wounded, but neither can kill the other, Chelsea decides she likes Elgie (she is crazy after all) despite the fact that she spent the last 14 years looking for him so that she could kill him. Or she simply realizes that if she killed him her life would no longer have meaning, so she lets him live for that reason alone.
#2. It turns out Elgie is not the midget that knocked her over in the first place and that it just happened to be another 2 foot tall gentleman who was running from the cops that day (who may or may not have had a hat on – as Chelsea put it). After all – just because it isn’t likely that there would be another short guy running from the cops that day – doesn’t mean there wasn’t.
Neither of those will happen – but it definitely would be funny. Keep up the good work!!
Some people are terrified it’s gonna end with some sort of romantic encounter between the two of them. The theories that you guys are coming out with are very entertaining, hehe.
So from Saloon to here where did Chelsea get all the extra scars? I thought she looked pretty good with the 2 notable ones in Saloon but in CS shes REALLY scary looking lol
Chelsea’s been on loooads of adventures while searching for Elgie. Hopefully I’ll have them up as DLC by the end of the story!
That would be a good for when you have some wild, over the top idea for Chelsea. I can just picture her, having wild adventures all over the world, gradually getting more and more scars until the army finally brought her down.
Hey. Love this comic. Have you done any other webcomics. I seem to remember one but I can’t remember what it was called.
I found it in a comment on a previous comic.
Modern Philosophies. ^^
You know she would more than likely kill me, but Chelsea really needs a hug.
Would still love to see someone try.
I would try, but then I’ve always been a sucker for trying to help out people who are really messed up.
Kick ass comic. You have another follower Jack.
By the way, I used a screen capture to get a good shot of Chelsea ripping the man apart to use for an avatar.
Hehe, awesome! Thanks for the kind words.
Another new reader here who was only ten minutes late for work this morning after blasting through the archives in less than an hour.
Your work is excellent and I have added this to my favorites list. I must say that I cannot see you ‘topping’ either of your two main characters quite this early in the game, so I see one of only a few possibilities:
1. They are evenly matched, resulting in a long, drawn-out battle not seen since the last time the ‘Dragonball Z’ series was shown on television;
2. One of them is overmatched, but manages to pull off a last-minute escape, possibly with the other believing them dead; OR…
3. LOVE. He. Heheh. HehHEEhehheh. HAHAHEEHAHA!
Dear God. Think of what their children would be like…
Purple haired midgets with a thirst for both blood AND booze?! Now that’d make an interesting story!
That…that mental image just made my entire day…
Recently found Chimneyspeak from an ad and fell in love with it within a few pages. Once I got past the fact that the characters (or at least, Elgie and Chelsea) seem to be somewhat superhuman, I just sit back and enjoy now
Hehe, they are quite abnormal in the amount of damage they can take. Cheers!
Don’t forget how much damage they can deal out, not just take. It’s not easy to slice a man in two to begin with, and it’s damn near impossible when you’re only two feet tall.
Not to mention rip a person in half with your bare hands, and stick a blunt object through someone’s chest
Bloody hell, mate. You have one twisted story here and I’m going to go bonkers waiting for more…
Cheers! It only gets crazier from here, as you’ll soon see.
ok, just finished reading from start to current finish, have to say, quite good, excellent story line, and yay lots of blood and gore
Thanks! Yep, it seems London’s streets really are painted red!
Congrats on your good review, it’s well deserved.
You think that Chelsea would like milkshakes or ice cream? Imagine they would sell well in the west but not shore when it was mainstreamed. Hopefully it would be better than the breast milk type I recently heard was shut down in London. ;p
gotta say im with Elgie on this one, Alice aint getting a lot of sympathy points on my end with the whole “child slavery” thing and killing husbands sure if you wanna make an omelet you gotta break some eggs and all that, but damn
Hehe, you have to admire the clarity and drive of her financial vision, if nothing else.
And this is where people start questioning his sexuality, despite him already showing interests in women. Also people start knowing,” Oh so he’s not really gay.” Yes people he’s never gay, he hasn’t been gay, in every sense of the word, ever since he shot his war pal. I mean he sure did look gay when he got that raise after the thing at the docks, but he gets sad so easily. Though out of pure curiosit, maybe Jimmy would’ve been someone he would love if he did start bending that way. Also this is how I would like it to pan out. In the end the little Eldie dies, and Chelsea lives, but hurt a bunch, and so she reverts back to being normal because her revenge is finally over. Though I’m just saying that since Chelsea is my favorite out of the bunch. Also Alice gets back to her business.-Alkaizer
Oh as for my insite on what I teally think might happen. Well someone has already talked abou the Elgie becoming her other friend, and I can only hope this happens, but don’t forget he was glad she was gone from what he heard. So I highly doubt he would do that. So I think maybe Chelsea actually wins after a stalemate and pause for a few moments because she has a trick up her sleeve. Or after a stalemate, Elgie sort of wins because Chelsea is still bleeding from the shot wound. Later they patch her up after locking her up. Though I think Elgie might not let her live, but then again she could do something crazy to escape.-Alkaizer
Also is there a rule about not postingso many times in a row? If so I am sorry. I am from Taiwan by the way, but I’m Half European. I came across this comic from another comic on the web I always look at. I love reading good comics on the web. The fact that I have read through it from start in one sitting shows I greatly approve of this comic. I cheer for Chelsea, the other me I would most liekly be if I was female and didn’t have morals.-Alkaizer
I just found this comic as well, within the first few strips I was hooked and couldn’t stop reading it until I was caught up, haha. Fantastic story, so far Jack. I love the style. Can’t wait to see where you go with it.
awwww it would seem our little anti hero here is haveing some pangs of guilt over having to off his mate suddenly tho imsure jimmy would have bleed out before they had found any help
Probably. They looked quite far away from any civilization or even the rest of the army.
It would be interesting to find out more about their time in the army. I mean, he said they had served together for almost a year.
I just relized this but this is why Elgie doesnt like using guns!
also i have to say this i having a feeeling that Jimmy knew he was going to die and was going to ask Elgie to finihs him off not sure but it certainly seems like the right adn birtish way to do it help send your mate off instead of slowly bleeding out
After reading Chimneyspeak, I don’t use the running tackle in Assassin’s Creed anymore. Never know if the person I knock down will be the next Chelsea Grinn! XD
Haha, that game has made me very paranoid about purple clown-ladies running around on roof tops.
Granted, that doesn’t happen very often.
Jimmy and Elgie served in battle together for about a year. I can only imagine that is a bond that was stronger then blood brothers. When depending on another watch your back and you to watch theirs, that’d be a lot of trust. Its no wonder Elgie won’t use guns, the very reminder of killing his closest friend. I would not be surprised at all if years of resentment towards Alice for giving him that job have built up and finally about to explode out in a violent little bundle of fury. Pay back time.
Exactly! I can’t help but wonder if that job put a little seed of hatred in Elgie’s head. Also, if any of their other army buddies made it back from Afganistan. Would make for an interesting scene, I think.
I just started reading this comic and just wanted to say I love it! Great stuff, I’m going to keep reading this. Keep up the good work.
Also, Saloon was awesome.
Cheers! And cheers for buying Saloon!
I just started reading and I love the comic. It’s one of the best I’ve seen. When you’re at a good stopping point, you need to put this into a graphic novel. I’m sure you’ll have a ton of people willing to buy it (I’m certainly one of them).
Also, you might want to put up some stuff on cafe press. It’ll be a good way to make some money off of this.
Thanks! Yeah, I have a plan to make each chapter into a graphic novel, as well as collecting the downloadable comics into a collection.
Excellent comic you have here, good job. Quite inspirational for me too. Can’t wait to see the fight between Elgie and Chelsea. Interesting theories about how it will turn out floating around.
Saw someone mention Chimneyspeak on the conquerclub.com forums and just read up. Great atmosphere and characters, really well thought out story. Looks like this is going next to xkcd as webcomics I follow.
just found this comic today….. is it wrong that i find chelsea somewhat attractive? (oh and great comic btw)
It seems i’m not the only one to just have found this comic, i followed a link from Questionablecontent to here. The art work is pretty great and the story is by far unique. Although it took me a sec to understand the ol’ english style of script and sayings, i blame my arizona (lack of) cultural education :p
Just found Chimneyspeak tonight and couldn’t put it down until I read through it (even though I have to be up early). Took me a few pages to get the dialogue down (American) but once that was done the characters, story and art all became highly enjoyable.
Stumbled upon this yesterday through an Ad on QC and Bloody Hell it is fantastic! Went through the archive all of last evening and im totally hooked!
Props Jack, Long may you keep drawing!
Woo! I’m up to date after a (relatively) short three hours of reading from the start!
I’m putting this on the top of my Daily-Check-for-Updates folder!
Could be he’s straight but has feelings for this guy. Sexuality isn’t always a straight line (oh god what a horrible pun sorry xD).
But whatever Elgie really is, I love the bugger so much! More Elgie please.
hmm finally caught up from start to finish, stupid need to sleep and early morning lectures interrupting my reading. No i doubt he’s gay, doesn’t fit with the way he behaves at all.
I just finished reading this, and I’m loving it so far.
My only complaint is that Elgie seems to change in appearance a little here and there. Particularly on this page; he doesn’t have his stubble in the first two panels.
Just found the comic today, absolutely stunned, a tad more sultry than my usual fare but the copious violence, fun characters, and lovely dialogue more than compensates, keep up the good work.
Hey, caught an add from QC, I’m loving the comic so far. Team Elgie all the way. Well except I don’t want either one to die. You need to introduce someone even more despicabale the either of them. That’s my thoughts at least
Also Chelsea doesn’t seem THAT crazy. Who doesn’t have thoughts about just ripping someone in half? Seriously lol she just doesn’t have anything to stop her from doing it. And to be “crazy” I see it being more of no specific purpose or goal. She has a very definite purpose and goal. I don’t see her really having a medical “condition” per say because her other “personalities” really take full control, they’re more like her concious I think.
Ps. Your site is really slow and glitchy :/ other than that keep up the amazing work
cheers hahaha
Just got finished with the archive after coming from an ad on ‘QC’. Really good stuff. You have officially been added to my pull list. And I’m very picky on my webcomics.
Found chimneyspeak from an ad linked to another comic i read…I LOVE THIS COMIC MATE!! That Chelsea chick is pretty psycho hot.
Hey, love the comic thus far, read all of the archives in one sitting.
I don’t know if you care, but generally people who shoot guns well don’t leave their fingers on the trigger when they actively aren’t shooting (it’s a good way to shoot yourself). Also holding a gun up by your head is only something they do in the movies– it started that way so they could put a head and a gun in the same shot.
Haha, like I said, I love the comic… just I shoot so I notice that stuff. :3 Thought I’d point it out, in case you cared.
he looks so old inthe last two panels
Haha, today I over heard two guys in my music appreciation class talking about how one of them wanted a girl like Chelsea Grinn, and one the other one offered to slash a girl’s face for him. Just thought you may have wanted to know that. :]
…
Poor sod… Can’t help but feel sorry for him. So much pent up feelings. In no uncertain terms; he needs help.
Ah well. I suppose, on the bright side, he’s not Chelsea Grinn… Though I would understand if he would want to be xD
You may add another regular reader to your list ^^ Just been through the archives and I think this is a great comic. It’s got something unique to it, both in art and story, which I think is brilliant.
I’m really wondering how this situation is going to turn out… if one of them were to achieve what (s)he’s out to achieve, then the cast would be one character smaller pretty soon…
Started reading this comic 3 days ago after hearing about it from my Britfriend. One thing I’ve noticed is Grinn’s accumulation of scars during and in between her homicidal adventures. A few things I’ve notice is Chelsea has become much more schizophrenic after Saloon (She is seen talking to herself at the beginning, but doesn’t seem to vocalize her other personalities, as well as describing her arrival as (“we arrived”). I assume it was from getting sent to Australia. and the fact that Chelsea and Elgie have tangled in the past. This leads me to wonder if Eglie will recognize her from the incident in Saloon. And is he going to use the gun to shoot her?
elgie typically looks like a lil kid……but really showing the years and the miles here.
QC link, read it all, liked it, more?
Also linked from QC via Project Wonderful. Checking in from California. Almost caught up on the archives and I am loving it. I am rooting for Elgie, mainly because he seems more aware of what he is doing. Keep up the good work!
Came here from QC this morning – and just spent the last hour (at work!) reading from the beginning. Love it – can’t wait for more!
Sorry, but– “You ever notice how Elgie seems to have shown absolutely no interest in the ladies thus far?”
He’s shown no interest in the ladies? What about PAGE 1, where he’s looking at a magazine entitled “Bosoms”? Or http://chimneyspeak.com/archives/180 where he is definitely quite content looking at some naked lady?