Okay, so going back to one page a week was premature. Insomnia, deadlines at work, and the simple fact that this page took me positively FOREVER to lay out properly, simply conspired against me this time. But I’m working on getting back up to the old schedule, so bear with me.
With this page, we enter Act III of Episode I, and I promise you, I’m working up to a conclusion that may surprise you. I’ve known for some time how this chapter was going to end (I wrote the story a while back, so this is mainly a matter of filling in the relevant blanks), but some little opportunities presented themselves for better character development, foreshadowing, and the closing of a few plot holes, so I reworked a couple of things. First and foremost, somewhere along the way I miscounted the number of pages and realized I had one more in this chapter than I’d imagined when I plotted it. Thus, the opportunity to get a slightly better grip on the characters of Mike-One-Echo and Major Rucker, and their interaction, happened here, which I’m happy got into the mix. Mike is an important force in this story, so making sure he’s properly included was important. Also, I took a few hours this week and sat down to figure out exactly where the plot was going and what I had originally imagined it would do on arrival, and I realized that Chapter 2 was going to be a great chance to really get into the meat of some of the main characters, and that to this end the focus really needed to shift pretty drastically – a little rewriting and some sketches later, I think it really stands up and works, and I’ve regained a lot of confidence in the project that I’d lost earlier last week.
On that point, as a matter of fact, I have once again to thank my colleague Joost Haakman, a gentleman I’ve never even met, but who has nevertheless provided a great deal of encouragement and insight as I’ve plodded through this project. In particular, he dropped me a note this week to tell me that I should come to my senses and not get so uptight about editing the chapter before I’ve even finished it. Very wise advice. It’s very easy to spin one’s wheels in that way, and it’s something best avoided. Production is more important at this point – things like editing can sort themselves out later. As ever, I’m deeply indebted to Joost, and to other fellow-cartoonists who’ve chimed in from the depths of cyberspace to offer encouragement and advice.
Now a little housekeeping: I’ll be coloring this page and will update as usual next week, but after that, I will be gone for two weeks, as I travel to Switzerland for a long-overdue vacation (anyone who reads my blog at Vicious Print will know that my previous attempt at a vacation was abortive, at best). In the meantime, mijnheer Haakman, previously mentioned, author and artist of the online comic Semmie the Forest Gnome (which I highly recommend for all ages!) and Mr. Ryan “Drew” Hoffman of the comic Guten Tag have offered to fill in for me, and for this they have earned both my extreme gratitude, and cameo appearances in this very comic, currently scheduled either for the end of this chapter or early in the next. In the meantime, I urge you all to check out their work – for my money, it’s some of the best stuff in web comics these days!
And one last note: I’ve begin trying to increase readership here – note the little slug on the side here, linking us up the “The Comic Blog Elite!” It’s the first of a couple shots I’m taking at getting more viewers into the fold, and I’m currently ranked somewhere around 135th out of I don’t even know how many. But check that link out, and if you feel moved to do so, by all means rate the site and review it! Every bit counts, and the more readership we get, the more motivation I have, and the better the chances are that a) I’ll be able to grapple back onto the weekly schedule, and b) I’ll be able to come up with a viable option for printing this book when the time comes!
So! Another week is upon us! I’ll be back in seven days with color, so until then, be good, and keep the tanks rolling!
”Comment
Just a little mini-update here. Some people commented to me that this story’s premise (a monolithic superpower conflict on the Cold War model) was a little bit passé. Interestingly, though, this article came to hand just today, pointing up the fact that New Imperialism isn’t just for Americans anymore. As a North American of some certain Polish ancestry, the prospect of another war in Europe, centered on Poland, kind of makes me sick to my stomach. It calls to mind, however, one of the underlying ideas in this comic, which is that I happen to have grown up in the final years of the Cold War, in which we were most terrified of the Soviet Union and what we believed it might be capable of doing to the West in its death throes. Throughout the 1980’s, in fact, we really did think that the Russians might end up going batshit and just nuking the crap out of Europe and North America, if for no other reason than for the hell of it, to prove that they still could, even as the Soviet Empire collapsed around them. And modern Russia seems to be coming perilously close to the same thing these days. Or at least, it looks like that on this side of the world.
So an East-West conflict really isn’t so far off the mark as it might seem.
Fallout continued to mount this weekend from my ill-fated “vacation,” and so the update will be a little late, and not quite what I think you’ll expect. This whole situation has thrown a real monkey wrench into just about every aspect of my life, and though I did pencil and ink this week’s page, I am simply out of time and can’t tackle the process of piecing the thing together from half-baked scans. I will make photo reductions tomorrow and post the page, though it may be black and white for the time being.
And as if to add insult to injury, the Phillies are losing the World Series! Good God, things just keep going from bad to worse. For those unfamiliar with baseball as such (European readers, of whom there are a few – Joost et al!) this particular championship is between my home town, Philadelphia, and New York City, and my team who won the Series last year, is doing very poorly against the Yankees, among whose fans I now have to live, and who frankly are more than a little stuck up about it. To get an idea of the importance of the sport, it’s something akin to what soccer (or “football”) is to Europe, at least to us living in the Eastern United States.
*Sigh*
I suppose sometimes you just can’t win for losing. But I’ll get back on track soon enough. My current plan is to forge ahead with the next page, then try to color them both over the weekend, which is definitely doable, assuming I set to it properly. In any case, I will still post the black-and-whites tomorrow afternoon, so the story won’t totally slow down. But this is what comes of trying to take vacations, I suppose!
Joost’s artwork, which will remain posted above until tomorrow, by the way, will take pride of place in the new “Guests” page I’m working up, as the first gallery piece. Once again, I’m bound to thank him for filling in for me while I was away. This second delay was not what I’d wanted, to be sure, nor was it what I expected. But I’ll get things back on track as soon as I can.
Upgrading to WordPress 2.8.5, though a bit nerve-wracking, has gone according to plan. We had a few outages while I tinkered with the database files, and backed up the living daylights out of everything, but we’re all together again, and with minimal pain and suffering.
So, hooray for a shiny new WordPress, that looks and functions just the way it always has!
Well, it had to happen sooner or later…
By Mr. Average on September 21st, 2009Posted In: Interim Postings, Ch. 1
…I’d just hoped it’d be later rather than sooner. But it isn’t. I had a deadline in my office, followed by a last minute trip out of the state, from which I didn’t return until later than I’d expected. Fact is, combinations of circumstances such as this happen in the “real world,” and these combined to put me too far behind schedule to catch up. The page I wish I were posting now is instead sitting on my drawing board, only about 3/4 of the way inked. Oh, well, I suppose these things happen.
Sorry for the lame placeholder above, but there it is. Things will go back on schedule next monday, and I’ll take the extra time this week to make some much-needed upgrades to this site and its parent, so check back this week for compensatory goodness in the way of web upgrades and extra content and background material.
And for those of my artistic compatriots who are reading this, next time this kind of thing happens, I’ll try to forsee it better, and maybe arrange some guest artwork to fill the gap (hint, hint, Joost et al!) My apologies for this week, but this is the world we live in.
“Personnel” and “Glossary” have been added above! These are the first in a series of unrequired but, in webcomics, typical little extras to make the story easier to get into. More is on the way soon, and these will be revised and updated as the story moves on. Enjoy!
