I'm trying to reflect back on my weekend, searching for something that might be interesting to the public, and failing. I've been through sleepless nights, cookouts, sword duels, and board games, and all in all it's been a pretty laid-back weekend with absolutely nothing of general interest going on. Of course, I haven't even checked out the news (mainstream or geekly), so darned if I know what's up there.

I'm going to exercise my Labor Day privileges and neglect to labor now. Maybe play some DDR. Or Far Cry. Coding can happen after the holiday--right now, I just need some relaxation.

(Oh yes, that is to say: the apartment is in a state which I deem sufficiently unpacked that I can begin work on releasing the code to Metrophix. Look for it within two weeks, barring ugliness. Naturally, that's a bullhorn call to all ugliness within the surrounding fifty miles to come running towards my code....)

[Edit 2006-09-01 12:16PST: Due to a sudden and severely widespread lack of internet access, Artis hasn't been able to get the comic posted today; with any luck Comcast will have its act together soon. It will be arriving as soon as humanly possible.]

In pursuit of my ponderings on the future of webcomics, a whole host of new curiosities has started nagging at my mind: the ever-present conundrum of making the medium new.

Comics have remained pretty much the same--medium-wise, that is--for several centuries now. Of course, it makes sense, since there's only so much one can do with paper. Having made the transition to the internet with aplomb, though, I've been wondering for a while what comes next. Here we have a medium that allows all sorts of new things--interactivity foremost among them--and comics are still in their static, page-by-page serial existence. Not that it's a bad existence, mind you, I just have this feeling that there's so much more that could be done.

In his book Understanding Comics, published before this webcomic thing ever got underway (or indeed, I think, even before the web did), Scott Kurtz diagramed an idea he had: a comic whose flow wasn't necessarily serial. It could twist, divide, and intersect with itself, telling a slightly different story along each path--much like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book from the 80s. Such a thing would be great for the web, if there were an artist brave enough to tackle such a task. Or, relatedly, have one story with many comics told from each participant's perspective: set up an image map and every time the reader clicked on a character, the subsequent comics would follow that character throughout the story as he or she interacted with others. Another click, and woosh! The story is told from another persepctive.

Of course, that would be murder on the artist--not only keeping track of the dealings of that many characters, but just the sheer requirement of drawing as many comics as there are characters would be murder on any hand. Well, all right, have a whole bunch of artists, then. Each artist gets their own character to interact with other artists' characters as they choose--essentially crossing over into other comics in the same way as the syndicates have been doing for a while now (for good or ill), only on a longer-term, more central basis. It would almost be like a co-operative role-playing exercise.

Of course, neither of these is likely to happen. Still, there's a nagging feeling I have that comics could become a great deal more than they are with the power of the web--even more than the excellent Broken Saints, which despite its use of all available media remains ever a comic.

If any of you have ideas for other ways to enhance comics, we'd love to hear them over in the forums. Brainstorming has been the word of the week, it seems.

Okay, I just ate a four-year-old packet of candied ginger root, so bear with me if this gets a little surreal.

I've been thinking about the market for webcomics lately. Mostly this was cued by something a panelist said at Connecticon that's been mulling in my head ever since: a lot of people think that the webcomic scene is past its prime, that it's starting to dwindle, and that if one wants to be famous in that world then one has to have started a comic four years ago since those are the ones that are popular now. Not so, said the panelist. It just means that it takes about four years for a webcomic to get really well-known.

It's true, of course: it takes a long, long while for a comic to achieve any sort of fame. But I have to wonder if in some way the perception is right. I'm seeing a lot more growth than attrition in the webcomics world--normally a good thing--and new services such as Rocket Pirates are still popping up (and, apparently, becoming madly popular).

So what does this all lead to?

The fatalist in me says it'll be more of the same. Most webcomics will only be very minor players in the grand world of Comicking. A few will rise to the top, some justfiably and some for reasons beyond the ken of any living creature. Comic Genesis will continue to see nine out of ten comics update two or three times and fold. Webcomic authors will get disappointed that they don't have thousands of readers within a month, put their dreams of fame, glory, and Nobel Prizes in the cupboard, and go do something productive. People who do comics for themselves will continue to do comics regardless of who reads, occasionally have complete meltdowns, and hang up their brushes and pens when they feel they're damn well ready and not before. Status quo, right?

Well, not forever. At some point one of two things has to happen: webcomics evolve, or they fade away.

Say they fade away. We're left with syndicated material, a couple of brave independents trying to get recognized and break into the syndicated world, and a bit less clutter on the web. We are, in the very strict view of webcomics, transported back to 1996. Three years later the whole thing will probably begin again, because even those who remember history often repeat it. Probably they just want something to do.

Say webcomics evolve. Say they get gills, pointy claws, prehensile tails, whiskers, nictitating membranes, a niche in life, really crinkly brains, and outright sentience. Say they reach the point where they can out-move, out-think, and out-exist their traditional bretheren. Sure seems like they might be close to that point now, as authors and readers are in constant dialogue with each other thanks to forums, as the web allows for instantaneous and unlimited publishing, and there are a hell of a lot more web comics than syndicated comics. What then?

Hey, anyone's guess, really. I suck at prognosticating. You want me to tell the future? I couldn't even tell that four-year-old ginger would make my stomach burn. It only gets meaner with age, you know, being cooped up in the package like that. I sure would if I were a piece of ginger.

It certainly does feel, though, like webcomics are a different beast now than they were four years ago. I can't blame people for comparing the two epochs and saying "yeah, it's a different game now." It is, although it's one where we get to change rules from time to time (as it always has been). And it will be a different scene four years from now, I'm sure of it. As a new comic, I wonder constantly what our place might be in the future. I guess we'll just have to find out, now won't we?

I'm also disappointed the ginger didn't give me any special powers--aside from the power of "oh wow, I can feel my stomache tingling from the future." Which, let's face it, is pretty lame.

I've been discovering lately tha there is one problem with doing a plot-driven, continuous comic: you can't just drop everything and go in a completely different diection at a whim. I don't know what it is--the sunburn on my scalp, perhaps, which seems to have stimulated those little spindly idea critters in my brain to overdrive--but I've been getting idea after idea for comics the last few days. None of them, of course, fit with Metrophor, so I'm left with no recourse but to write them down and hope that sometime later I can do something with one or two of them. I understand this is a curse that real authors have to live with in perpetuity--I never believed it before now. How horrible it must be to have a constant barrage of ideas, all shadowed by the knowledge that you'll never be able to act on all of them! The mind quakes in fear and disbelief.

In more directly related matters, the new apartment is getting a distinctly lived-in feel to it, which is to say that many things have been unpacked and there's a steadily rising mountain of boxes in my kitchen (upon which I spy the occasional bold explorer being chased off the cardboard precipices by little box-yeti). Books have started to gravitate towards shelves, and although I wouldn't say there's a direct relationship between them yet there's a sort of cloud of potential surrounding them, as if the books--were I not able to accurately judge their speed and position--might sometime in the night leap onto the shelves out of entropic disdain. (Or I would be so lucky, at any rate.) It's not much beyond there that I can declare moving finished and proceed to other things like, say, releasing Metrophix or writing the next couple of comics.

I'm finally back, after much wrangling with the cable company and running of cable throughout my new apartment. I now reside in a legitimate Lair--underground and evil machines and everything!--from which I can spew forth my message into the unsuspecting internet. Go forth, my message, and wreak what oddities you will!

In all virtual respects, everything is in place--firewall, file server, web server, sundry other special-purpose computers... everything in its order, wired and waiting to be used. In all other respects, the place is still a mess. I need to spend this week deciding such mundanities as where furniture will go, what do I have room for, what do I have use for, etc. This is coupled with the usual fun moving-in games such as "Hunt for the bath towels and soap," "Where'd that thing go that I know was in one of these boxes?", and "Stub your toe on something in the dark you thought wasn't there." Good times, good times.

...

Comcast can bite me. That's all I have to say. More later when I'm not relying on work for my sole means of internet access... still. So next Friday, in other words. If I'm lucky.

Well, not so much dead, exactly, as much as that the new apartment has no internet access until the wires perform their rite of connection to the greater world sometime Tuesday afternoon. Effectively dead to the world, in other words. Should I survive the information deprivation (and should the cable company do their job, which is a far shakier assumption), I'll be back on Friday.

So, Artis has Gencon happenings to arrange. Myself, I'm working on packing up my apartment in preparation for moving this weekend. I wish we didn't have to disappoint you like this, but if ever there was time for filler then this would be it--the double ambush of cons and moving is a little overwhelming, and our legions of time are woefully unable to withstand the onslaught of Life Happenings.

So I recently found out that there's a Shadowrun MMO that's in the works--I also found out I'm not actually supposed to link to it, which I think is a patently ridiculous thing to demand if you're putting a public site up on this great international network, but I'll respect their desires and just mention that the creative among you should be able to find it without much trouble. Normally I wouldn't write much about video games in the news post, except that Shadowrun is one of the primary influences of the comic (as I look into several of your heads from afar I can see little blocks moving and going click, click, click now as they form connections...). It's no secret that the Microsoft-sponsored version takes some, er, liberties with the source material, an idea which leaves many fans such as myself sitting here with our "Deus has Exited the Machina" T-shirts and "Lofwyr--No Fear!" penants wondering exactly what to do: it's as though we showed up fully regailed for a party only to find that the entire event had in fact been replaced with a bar mitzvah. There's nothing left to do but grab some proverbial cookies with a confused and insincere "mazel tov", try to puzzle out why this thing in front of us is so wildly different than we expected, and shuffle home to hope that the next one--if such should come--actually gets things right.

The MMO, by contrast, looks to be somewhat closer to the source material--perhaps even to a fault. Granted, there's no actual product just yet (unless a few concept sketches and a lot of talk count for product these days), but from what's been posted over on the website I'm getting a much more bouyant feeling than I am looking at 1996-era graphics displaying a barely-seasoned deathmatch game. One simply has to hope that Microsoft will recognize the folly of their licensing and pick up this game instead, or at least consent to its development using their property.

If anybody has any spare genies or wishing wells, be a pal. We--that is, the fans and, y'know, Harlequin and Dunkelzahn and all of them--would be ever so grateful.

This is old news to many--two and a half years, or so--but I just stumbled across it today while finally reading my copy of MAKE magazine. Apparently there's some creative individual out there who's taken it upon himself to modify his own body with a simple magnet (contains photos of the surgery, for those squeamish among you), allowing him to effectively gain a sixth sense and "feel" magnetic fields such as those given off by live wires.

I'm sitting here thinking, "Wow. What could I do with that?" To be fair, it wouldn't come in terribly handy in the course of my workaday life. In fact, I don't deal with magnetic elements nearly often enough to justify such a modifcation. Besides the brief daydream wherein I saved the world from the malicious Inductor and his armies of rogue magnetic fields invisible to all but those with this superhuman sense, I actually have trouble thinking of any dire need for me to have a modification such as this. Well, other than the obvious one: it's cool.

In Alankha, of course, thaumods are quite common and far more exotic than this. Even so, it warms my heart a little to see the world becoming every so slightly more like my fantasies day by day. It's a beginning, if nothing else.

I wish I could figure out why I'm amused that everybody is treating the word "rotoscoping" as new to the English language. Since the release of A Scanner Darkly, the media seems to have latched onto the term as a revolutionary (er, no pun intended) new animation technique--never mind that it's nearly a century old.

Of course, it's certainly not been used in this way before--and that's what I love. People have taken a practically ancient technique (used on Disney's Snow White, even) and given it a new life in a way that nobody prior has yet done. Not that there's anything new in the technique even--people have been combining rotoscopy and computers for years: just look at the original Prince of Persia (no, the original) for an example. But the style puts a new face on everything that's come before, a kind of half-cell-shaded, half photorealist sheen, and that's the sort of thing I just eat up. Co-opting something old to make something new: bravo.

I hate Comcast. They suck. Grr.

Yeah, my internet well and truly went kaput on Thursday afternoon. Sure, there had been blips before...sometimes the router went crazy, or sometimes there was a blip on their end. Though frequent and annoying, it wasn't anything like this. The worst part is that they couldn't get anyone out here until Sunday morning to work on it, and my friends who used to live next door just moved, so I couldn't borrow their connection.

Apparently what happened was this: a Comcast employee was installing internet for someone who'd recently moved in to my complex, and he unpluged our cable to plug theirs in. Ours wasn't labeled properly, so he thought we were leeching internet for free. We were most...displeased.

If they didn't have such a monopoly on this area, I'd go with someone else in a heartbeat. Well, okay, not AOL or anything...

Say, IS there such a thing as a good internet service provider?

Despite all apearances to the contrary, there's a very philosophical side to webcomicking. I don't mean the stories, little lessons in morality, or social commentary...I mean the underlying thought in the act itself. A lot of webcartoonists, particularly those who have been doing it for a while and network with other webtoonists, think alot about their place in the comic world as a whole.

It isn't particularly high up.

At least, it isn't considered to be so. The old staples are still king and mistrust this newcomer. Well, there are a lot of really bad webcomics out there. But then again, webcomics are created for a great many reasons, unlike comics in the print world. Be they for fun, as an experiment, or as a professional endeavor so long as they stick to their purpose I have no beef with them. And certainly, that purpose can change over time. It's a matter of context, really. However, the broad and encompassing nature of webcomics is baffling if you're used to the way things have been. It seems roughshawed, unfinished...and large parts of it are. And it doesn't necissarily ascribe to the indy comic scene, that biting and oft times raw trend in comics that's achieved a somewhat artsy ambiance.

But whatever the status of webcomics is in the larger world of comicking, it is undeniable that they have a LOT of readers (hi guys!) and that some few professional webcomics have become insanely successful. It's not an easy thing to get your name out there like that, and it's not an easy thing to find your niche in the larger scheme. Most never do.

And then there's Penny Arcade. Love it (I do) or loathe it, one must admit that it's gone beyond what just about any other webcomic has been able to do, achieving things that I would never have believed. So it was with frank awe that I read this little piece of news. Yes, Penny Arcade is getting its own video game- Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. Good lord.

Though aramaic is actually one of the languages that I have not studied. But yes, classes have started once more! Fortunately my internship counts as a class, so I don't have to do 20 hours of internship work on top of three other classes like I did last semester. Yes, it was pretty atrocious. I didn't sleep much near the end there.

It's funny, but the beginning of classes makes me think about their end...and what I'll do after. It's very much up in the air. Ultimately, I would like to make a living doing comics. Not webcomics...that is very hard...but to be published. Of course, this is no small feat in and of itself, particularly if I'm supposed to support myself on it. Still, I can work on a portfolio and send it in to places, right?

P.S. HAH! NOW YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS, CIJIL!!! And you wonder how it is that I do so many side comics! =D

Industrious Mixed Myth fan Catherine has done a little something with Mixed Myth...she's turned it into panel by panel videos! At least, she's got most of part one up on YouTube. You can check it out here. I know she's looking for voice talents for the characters, too. My but the art has changed alot.

As for me...well, classes start again in two days. Ah, how precious my hours seem!

...so it'll be short. ;D I've discovered that I can get some interesting effects with a worn out brush pen. It makes shading very interesting indeed! I'll ccertainly have to remember this.

Oh yes, and I have a large quantity of signed and numbered prints left over from GenCon, as well as three figurines. Here is what the prints look like. I'll have to snap some new photos of the figurines. Most of the prints are $10, save for the Wildship, which is $7, and the large Mixed Myth poster, which is $15. If you're interested, please do drop me a line. I'll try to get some better images up. We're still working on getting an actual store up, I fear.

I am SO exhausted. GenCon was great. I think the best part was seeing friends I didn't even expect to see again, as they had long since gone on their merry ways, scattering across the country as though the midwest were contaminated. Heh. Having a booth meant that I got to run into them a lot more.

I also met at least three Mixed Myth fans and one Metrophor fan! You guys rock! I cannot count how many business cards for the comic I went through.

That said, I still have merch left. I plan on making them available for purchase. I have quite a number of Mixed Myth prints that are signed and numbered on the backs, along with some other pieces and 3 polymer clay figurines.

Sorry, folks. Filler for today! But I will definately have a comic up on Monday, as I am working on it.

Ah fillers. We try to avoid them like the plague. I know cijil, in particular, hates them. Perhaps we should work ahead...but it's very, VERY difficult, particularly when this isn't a job. Ten times as hard when it's a con. I had to work twice as much in three days this week to get time off even go to the con, I had to get products ready, I have to spend time with the con, I have to spend time helping friends who are crashing here out and making sure they're taken care of, and I have to make sure the products/table are maintained...last minute changes and all that.

So I suppose this is my stance: I will keep to the schedule, drive myself to stick to it. I treat it very seriously. I'm not going to slack off or 'take a break' like many webcomics do frequently unless there is a tremendous, and I mean tremendous, need for it. But the fact is that this is not a job. I have full time school coming up, and a job that counts as an internship and work which I must answer to. I don't do this full time, and a comic takes hours to draw and prepare. So if it is not humanly possible, then it is not humanly possible. There is a reason that even the most professional, frequently updating webcomics out there have fillers during conventions 90% of the time.

Well, that was a bit rantish. Buuuut I thought I'd clear the air. That said, I already met one Metrophor fan at Gencon, and one Mixed Myth fan! You guys are awesome! Chances are good that I'll have prints left over from Gencon that I can put up for sale, too.

And away I go!

Cijil may wish a sixth 'magnetic' sense. I do not. No, no.

I want prehensile teeth.

Think about it! You could wiggle them back and forth! Grip things really well with your mouth! Play the piano! And going to the dentist would be so much easier, much less flossing at all!

I could draw with my mouth. Right handed, left handed, and mouth handed!

I really need something to listen to at work. Badly. But I have no money. The solution? Podcasts! Oh how I do love them. Okay, actually most of them are pretty lame. Any schmo with a mike can make one. But hey, I think that's actually the cool part. Just because you don't have a budget doesn't mean you can't make good stuff. (Why ye, I am a Dr Who fan, why do you ask? ;D )

In particular, I like radio drama style podcasts. You know...back before there was TV and they had radio shows that were actually stories? It's been a more or less dead art for years now, but it's nice to see it's coming back through the internet. Sort of a rebirth. I think the first I saw of these wasn't actually a podcast, per se, but was sort of a promo campaign for Halo. No I don't play the games, but even so I Love Bees is amazingly good. Don't be put off by the odd site design...it's supposed to do that. And yeah, you jump right into the plot, but it really comes together the more you listen and is pretty self contained.

Additionally, I just discovered Silent Universe. Yeah, it has ads. But if you like Metrophor, I'm sure you'll like this. Gadgets, distopian feel, humor... it's got the same grit, though it's sci fi. I highly recommend it. Besides, Mr. Fry is the man.