The Redskins Blog

Hail! Goes Throwback

I got a few emails asking what happened to Ben Ceccarelli‘s Hail! comic strip last week, and my responses were vague and unspecific. Now the truth can be revealed: he was busily wiring the flux capacitor to the wayback machine to enable us to experience Hail! Throwback, and that kind of detailed electrical work takes time.

Sure, the blogger character has been replaced by a notebook-wielding newshawk and everything is colored in authentic 1930′s sepia, but one thing remains the same: click on the first panel or the Read More link to see the rest of the strip. And try not to breathe on anything while we’re in the past — the last thing we need is an alternate universe where Sammy Baugh missed ballgames because you gave him some kind of 21st century flu.

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Hail! Examines A Redskins Generation Gap

Here’s what you need to know for this week’s Hail! comic strip:

• Phillip Daniels is on Twitter (here).
• Anthony Armstrong is on Twitter (here).
• Phillip Daniels is older than Anthony Armstrong, and has been in the NFL for much longer.
• They discuss this. Frequently. Often in Twitter comments like this one.

With that out of the way, I’ll let writer/artist Ben Ceccarelli do his thing. As always, click on this first panel or the Read More link to see the rest of the strip.

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Hail! Confronts Some Offseason Anxiety

Every attempt I’ve made at writing an intro paragraph has spoiled the final-panel reveal of this week’s Hail! comic strip, so I’ll just hush up and let the work of writer/artist Ben Ceccarelli speak for itself. As always, click this first panel or the Read More link to see the rest.
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Hail! Goes To The Combine

As mentioned yesterday, I’m not at the NFL Combine this year. But in this week’s Hail! comic strip, writer/artist Ben Ceccarelli imagines what it might be like if I were. The results are not entirely encouraging. I’ll have you know I was a half-decent runner at one point in my life, Mr. Ceccarelli. Sure, it was a long time ago, but still.

As always, click this first panel or the Read More link to see the entire strip.
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It’s A Toss-Up In Hail!

Ben Ceccarelli, the writer writer/artist behind the Hail! comic strip, has always struck me as a fairly decisive guy. He knows what he wants, he knows how to go after it, he rarely seems to hesitate. I suspect that this week’s strip reveals one of his top-secret decision-making aids. Also, I still love Cartoon Shanahan’s exit line, even all these weeks later.

As always, click this first panel or the Read More link to see the rest of the strip.

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Some Offseason Training With Hail!

I have no idea whether or not Lorenzo Alexander is doing mixed martial arts training this offseason, as as writer/artist Ben Ceccarelli suggests in this week’s Hail! comic. But I know Santana Moss (among other guys) has done it, and Alexander is good at everything else in the universe, so it sounds feasible to me.

As always, click this first panel or the Read More link to see the rest of the strip.

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Hail! Gets Hirsute For The Super Bowl

This week Hail! writer/artist Ben Ceccarelli debuts Cartoon Casey Rabach, albeit in bearded form. What’s remarkable about this bit of caricature is how much it still looks like Rabach while ALSO looking not unlike Captain Caveman from the old Hanna Barbera cartoons. That’s some impressive work by Ceccarelli.

As always, click the first panel or the Read More link to see the rest of the strip.

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A Pro Bowl Hail!

I was hoping to see Hail! writer/artist Ben Ceccarelli‘s cartoon rendition of the Pro Bowl jerseys — which I find hideous, as I may have mentioned twenty or thirty times before — but this’ll do. As always, click this first panel or the Read More link to see the rest of the strip (and, this one time only, a special epilogue from me).

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Hail! Offers Me Some Supplemental Employment

As far as I can tell, Hail! writer/artist Ben Ceccarelli hasn’t made too many references that need explaining in this week’s installment of the comic strip. But I’ll explain two of them anyway, because that’s what these introductory paragraphs are for.

1. 1) Anthony Armstrong once played in something called the Intense Football League. This is a much-told story, but if you’ve somehow missed it check out … hmmm … let’s link to Rick Maese’s version this time.
2. 2) When I laugh at one of my jokes, I actually do it by saying “Chuckle,” just like Ceccarelli has depicted here. Chuckle.

As always, click on this first panel or the Read More link to see the rest of the strip.

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Hail! Takes A Look At The Creative Process

I have no idea what the creative process is like for Ben Ceccarelli, the writer/artist behind the Hail! weekly comic strip. As far as I can tell, the strips magically show up in my inbox sometime late Thursday night or early Friday morning and I post them. I haven’t really given much thought to his process — maybe he uses a wacom tablet, maybe a clay tablet … I really have no idea. Somehow, though, he’s pretty much figured me out, right down to the “Blogger” nameplate.

As always, click this first panel or the Read More link to see the entire strip.

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