[Note from the Editor]: I thought I ought to put this at the top, or some of you might miss it: There is new artwork in development for 6-Commando!  To get a preview of it, vote every day this week – each day there will be a new character drawing from Chapter 2 on TopWebComics.com’s vote site for this comic!  So vote away, and let’s get 6-Commando into the top 150, if we can!

This little strip started off as a doodle I did in anger, and I found the result so amusing that it made me feel a whole lot better by the end.  Essentially, I got a message from someone I don’t know, saying that they’d been directed to 6-Commando by a friend of theirs, but hated the art style and thought the story was too slow-paced, but they thought “it’s nice that you’re giving it a try.”  Yeah, fuck you, too.

As artists go I think I’m pretty thick-skinned.  I have to be in my line of work, since every time I do something in the stuido where I work, it is guaranteed to be pused, pulled, and prodded until it bears little resemblance to the original idea.  It’s the nature of the work, and I accept it.  Frankly, a part of me likes it.  But this message just felt… I don’t know.  Personal.  I mean, why even write that to me?  Not to mention that, this weekend, I went to New York City to buy some fencing equipment and ended up getting totally stuck in the city for like 9 hours when all the trains back to New England got totally screwed up.  So I was feeling a little bit confrontational when I finally got back to my studio and took pencil in hand, so to speak.

So I sat down and banged out this little piece as my artistic “answer.”  And so here it is.  By the time I was done, I found that I’d been cheered up enormously, and so I kept it for this little interstitial week, here, to regale you with.

Now on to business.  I think I am going to need another week of prep time before I can get Chapter 2 really rolling.  There’s been a lot of preliminary stuff I have had to do, not the least of which was reformatting my computer, which unceremoniously crashed just after I finished Chapter 1 last week (thank goodness I back up my files daily!)  On the artistic side, I am really looking critically at the first chapter now that it’s done, and reassessing a lot of things that I want to do with the plot and characters.  The biggest things are that (1) I’m trying to do a major overhaul on the artwork; and (2) I’m focussing in on some particularly important parts, where the first chapter was mainly more expansive, to introduce the whole thing.  I also have to conceputalize this as a whole book, with beginning middle and end, and as a result, I can tell you now that Chapter 2 is going to raise a lot more questions than it answers.  It’s how stories are.  Answering every question in the beginning would make the end awfully boring.

Anyhow, I hope that I piqued your interest with the “art overhaul” comment because, starting today and going every day this week, I’m posting a new sketch of a character who has a major role in Chapter 2, drawn in the new style and technique I’m introducing.  And if you want to see them, vote for 6-Commando every day this week!  Again, I know it’s kind of silly and these ranking systems are artificial and skewed towards the ten which ALWAYS make it to the top (I suspect there’s something iffy about that, in all honesty, but what the hell do I know about it?)  But still, to get into the top 150 or even the top 100 would really increase 6-Commando’s exposure, and that would make me a happy dude.  You know, just in a general sort of way.

Otherwise, I will keep you posted.  As of now, my estimated start date for Chapter 2 is 26 July, so we’ll just keep shooting for that.  Until then, my little gag comics will tide you over, I hope.

Another one down, folks.  See you next week!