First off, I want to thank the people who sent concerned emails over the past few weeks.

You may or may not have noticed that there hasn’t been a comic in some time.  Fact is, long before the death in our family, I was dealing with other concerns, and they became compounded fantastically.  The short version is that the comic wasn’t sustaining me very well financially (my fault, of course, because of a combination of inconsistency and just not being that good), and I’d been struggling all of April to find a workaround.  Jobs are not to be had in this town though, and the hunt took another blow with the unexpected death.

I’ve been in a daze the past few weeks, but reality come back hard.  I’ve no idea what is going to happen next, but I could very well be homeless soon.  Within days.  It puts a dent in a comic schedule, to be sure.

This isn’t a planned hiatus.  At any other time, after the time to recover, I think I would have been back doing the strip, but the stress of the reality has put it on the back shelf.  If things turn out well, the comic could be back up and running in a few days. This is what I’m hoping for.  If not, it could be a few weeks.  Hiatus isn’t even a good word to use, I didn’t plan or want this.  I was really into this storyline, but the mess of my personal situation, and the shock of death miroring the story just threw me.

So this is the situation.  Hopefully, hopefully, I have a place to sleep that isn’t outside, and an internet connection, and comics will be back in a few days.

Cross your fingers and hold your breath.

I’ve recently learned that I lost a cousin in a pretty terrible vehicle related accident.

I don’t want to go into too many personal details here, they won’t change anything.  I’ve never lost anyone at all close to me before, and I am still wrapping my head around this. There is no comic today.  Considering the ironic nature of the storyline that now mirrors real life, I really can’t bring myself back to it, I can’t really focus on anything.  Not right away.

I’m disabling comments for this post.  I am certain the bulk of you are sensitive and sympathetic to what has happened, but all it will take is that one special human to say something insensitive, and really poorly represent readership.

I never cried about this until now, writing this post.  I don’t even know why it did it.  That was a personal detail.

Life can be a dream, and life can also be abrupt, terrible.  Take nothing for granted.

This is a strip I was looking forward too and dreading at the same time. (Because I dread every strip, by default)  I hope the “time jump” translated well.  It is another moment where I wish I worked in animation or live action, but if it works, it is a cool moment because it delivers a leap in Aikida and her history, and explain her personality a bit.  (We see the origins of the “tomboy”)

The next strip will probably be on Friday again, as it another big one.  The next few after are more manageable, so this could be the last week of Monday/Friday updates, depending on how my schedule crush goes.

New April incentives are up, you can check them out here.

Watch The Man from Earth.  I just caught it on a whim, and it was really smart and entertaining.

Woo, this one went up pretty late, but it is still Friday!  Eight panels.  Never again.

EDIT: New donation incentives are up, if you’re into that sort of thing.

This one was as tedious to colour as I thought it would be, and took twice as long to make as the usual strip.  The next strip is even bigger (Eight panels!), and thus won’t be up until Friday.  We may have to settle in for a two-a-week schedule for a few weeks as I balance these big panel strips, and other projects.

And, we’re back.

Still updating more than VG Cats (Zing!).  Sorry about the delays.

I didn’t want to resort to “Baka” (“Fool!”) for the blank that had been “[Japansese Curse]” in the script for months, but it was the only word I could find that sounded like she (Mom) was cussing Aikida out, but not sounding too harsh.  At the end of the day, it is a perfectly acceptable curseword, just rather overused in anime and otaku-dom.

I saw and enjoyed Watchmen. There are some fine aspects to the film that can propel it easily into the top ten of comicbook movies with ease, but my overall feeling was that something was off.  The thing is, I can’t put my finger on what that was.  The plot changes were odd, but Lord of the Rings showed us that we could make fine movies with them.  The Watchmen casting was fantastic (Jackie Earle Haley stole scenes as Rorshach, and Patrick Wilson was sneakily perfect as Dan Dreiberg), and Zack Snyder learned to reign in his slow motion fetish a bit and use it as a tool/technique and less as a style.

The conclusion I came to is that something was still missing, and that thing was that Snyder didn’t get something about the Watchmen graphic novel brilliantly created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons so many years ago.  Don’t get me wrong… it is clear to me that Snyder adores the source material, and tried his best to stay true to it, but it struck me that there were aspects of the thematics and spirit of the original story that he didn’t have a grasp on, and thus, were not in the film.  Furthermore, I cannot fault him because I can’t identify what it is either.  Somewhere in the weave of all the elements of the original graphic novel, and in the carefully thought out words of Alan Moore is something that is there, but not in the movie.

That being said, I enjoyed it.  At the same time, I can see why it isn’t slaying the box office in the way that The Dark Night, Iron Man and even 300 did.  Watchmen is almost parody of the superhero mythology.  Scott Kurtz called it comic book porn.  To really enjoy and get it, you have to possess a pretty decent appreciation of the genre, or in the very least, an understanding.  Iron Man worked for everyone because it was a cool looking action movie with a very charismatic lead.  The Dark Knight worked because it was a clever story built on a previous clever story, and propelled by some wonderful performances.  You could walk into either of those movies knowing nothing of the source material, and enjoy them.

I am guessing the initial rush to see Watchmen was from fans of the comic, who were mostly sated, then from the general movie public who saw some great scenes, but no doubt became lost in the plot.  And then when asked about the film by friends, they probably said things like, “It was pretty cool, but…”

I was happy.  Some people seem to have something against Snyder and his style; I do not.  Much like a Paul Greengrass film has Paul Greengrass things, or a Ridley Scott film is going to have Ridley Scott things, Zack Snyder films are going to have Zack Snyder things (Slow motion, violence, stylized action).  The only bones I had to pick with the film was the odd placement of two songs (I thought most of the other selections were fine, but 99 Luftballons felt forced and loud, and Everybody Wants to Rule the World was too obvious.), parts where the plots was clumsily pushed ahead, and the omission of some back story elements. (mainly, the origin of Rorshach that obviously would have eaten up too much screentime, but explains him so much.  - Funny aside about Rorshach… it is curious that the he is the guy that most epitomizes what we hold as heroic ideals in other heroes such as Superman and Spiderman.  Aside from the fact that he is a psychotic.)

If you’re a fan of the comic, or comics in general, do see it.  Even you are not, see it anyway… just pay attention.

Back Friday.

We had a bit of an internet outage on Friday, but Aikida is back today!

Today, since we are going to be rather spartan when it comes to funny moments in the storyline, I thought I’d give you something sexy-ish instead.

I hope the dialogue today didn’t come out as overly cliche.  I rewrote it a few times, as this is the strip that is going to set the mood for the rest of the story.  Yes, most people are not this introspective, but we have to factor in not only the shock of losing a family member, but the fact that it seems Aikida hasn’t slept in who knows how long.  I don’t know about you, but my mind wanders to odd places at that stage, and as we have established, Aikida is very internal.

I haven’t acknowledged the presence of other webcomics in quite awhile (I really am in the creative bunker right now), but two have stood out to me recently so I thought I should point them out.  First, Scott Kurtz’ Watchmen parody the other day was great.  The subsequent ones have been fun too, but the first one really accomplished everything that was necessary.  Just fantastic.

Second, I have exchanged some emails with Tom “the Braze” Brazelton over at Theater Hopper for his latest storyline (which was/is awesome).  He jumped into the (terrifying at first) “no punchline” strips that are really necessary at times for a good story, and wove a great tale that enriches a few of his characters.  I suspect he has bore the brunt of a few people opposed to the episode, but that is the nature of things.  At the same time, as I told him, when people reflect on TH years from now, it is the stories like those that stick out.  Click here to start at the beginning of that chapter.

Come back Friday.  We’ll be firing up the flashback machine.