Offer Expires Soon

Over the weekend, Amy treated us to an afternoon of pottery painting. We painted a bowl and a plate for her to use at work. Amy went abstract decorative on the bowl. I went fanboy and did the Venture Bros. skull on a plate. We won’t get them back from the store until this weekend. I’ll post pics of them when we do.

“Lost” returns tonight. As Amy put it, I’m kinda jazzed. It’s the best sci-fi on tv right now.

Arkham Polytech – New strip over at ArkhamPolytech.com.

Girl and Her Gunship – First chapter coming along. First chapters are always rough. You’ve got to establish the universe, the main characters, the style and tone, and do it all without losing the reader to exposition.

Flashlights do not Wear Headphones

Man, without caff, getting started in the morning is a lot harder. Doesn’t help my sinuses are balloon-filled today.

Had to replace the case fan in my main PC over the weekend. It had started to rattle. Probably nothing, but why risk a fan failure? So bought a new “quiet” fan. Case temp seems normal.

Girl and Her Gunship – Started in on chapter one Friday. Full steam ahead today.

Arkham Polytech – New strip tomorrow. The next five strips are already “done”, to varying degrees — drawn and inked, and just waiting to be digitized. Haven’t gotten much feedback on ‘em at all. Few viewers. But the only “marketing” I’m doing is low-key twitter and friends on facebook. At this point I really don’t want a lot of viewers — the strip is still evolving. Once I get 50 strips up, then I’ll worry about getting viewers.

It’s Not What You Think

Planes Trains and Hovercars

Watched the return of Psyche last night. Great show. Good episode. The WWE or whatever guest star could almost act.

Girl and Her Gunship – Leaping into the writing this morning. Got the first sentence, so the book’s as good as done.

Arkham Polytech – New strip. Slice and Dice.

Other webcomics to check out: http://www.madscottcomic.com/

and now, this:

iUnion

Okay, one iPad joke and then I’m done.

“iPad just works. But you’ll only need it once a month. And not at all if you’re over sixty.”

But seriously, it’s a five-hundred dollar (at a minimum) web browser. It doesn’t even have a phone, which means you still have to carry around your cell. And instead of a real op system it’s running the iPhone/App store system, which means it’s a closed garden system you can only run “approved” software on. And no stylus means it won’t even be any good as a digital drawing tablet. I’ll pass — on this round, anyway. ‘Course if I didn’t already have a Kindle, I’d be thinking about it.

Didn’t watch the State of the Union. I’m done with politics, and politicians. Unless I’m elected, of course. Then I promise to usher in an age of graft and corruption not seen since the Taft administration, and you’re all invited to the party.

Check Out This Webcomic – Strangegods.

Girl and Her Gunship – Outlined it yesterday. Doing a breakdown of the first third today.

Now Taking Donations for a Cintiq

Once again, we did not hit it big on the lottery. We did however win three dollars. On a five dollar ticket. There’s got to be a better kind of retirement plan out there.

Tonight, new episodes of Psyche return. And it’s about time. It’s one of the best shows on TV. If I were a younger man, and lived in LA, I’d be scheming to get on the writing staff — just to learn.

Netflix streaming has added Have Gun, Will Travel. Turns out Richard Boone can’t act. But it’s still an addictive old western.

Anybody see Caprica? I’m still pissed at the way BSG ended, not to mention I hate prequels.

Webcomic You Should Check Out – Spud Comics.

A Girl and Her Gunship - We have a plot! We have a plot! Expanding and fleshing it out today, probably tomorrow, too. Then back to actually writing. And nope, it’s not an origin story.

Arkham Polytech – Reached ten unique visitors yesterday for the first time. Sounds tiny, but I’ll celebrate any milestone I can get.

You Are Not Your Credit Rating

The local NPR station is in the middle of pledge drive. They can suck it. It’s the 21st century. Just tell us a web site and ask us to donate. Then get back to the show. No need to ramble on anymore.

It snowed a bit over-night. Gotta go shovel.

Arkham Polytech: New strip. Ia! Ia!

Girl and her Gunship: Reboot prep coming along nicely.

Webcomics You Should Check Out: Cleopatra in Spaaace!

Throw the Cards in the Blender and Hit Reboot

Had an absolutely lovely weekend hanging out with Amy. Saw Up in the Air — pretty good, with a very non-Hollywood ending. Played a good deal of Borderlands. Got a couple Arkham Polytech strips done for posting later this week.

We stopped by the SPCA, starting the process of finding a dog. Spent some quality time with a 9 month hound with the unfortunate name of Miley. A cute little bugger who spent the entire time we were with her in the human-cage sniffing the floor and watching other dogs pass in the hallway.  The search continues. If it goes longer than a few months, I’m gonna say screw it, let’s just get a Roomba.

A Girl and Her Gunship – It’s reboot time! Took a break from this last week to get my head sorted out about it. I was going all spastic over whether it was gonna be an origin story or not. And if not an origin story, what would the first sentence be. (If I don’t know the first sentence, I just can’t start writing.) Figured out a potential non-origin first sentence Friday, and it’s all clicked from there. An article over at io9 (which I won’t link to because they’re a bastard closed-garden site that doesn’t let you use a url when you leave comments) sealed the deal when it pointed out neither James T Kirk  nor Han Solo didn’t needed an origin story — in fact, when their origin stories were delved into, they kinda lost some of their cool.

Today’s Webcomic You Should Check Out: Not Invented Here.

Sites: Redesigned mishmashocrap.com and arkhampolytech.com over the weekend. Over the next month, I’ll be redesigning the t-shirt store site (probably going back to using fourthcult.com for it) and giving slackpocalypse.com a thorough nuking and rebirth. In case ya didn’t notice, Mishmashocrap.com is now my primary blog of choice, again. It just felt right.

Arkham Polytech Gets Its Own Site

As of this Friday’s update, Arkham Polytech updates will occur at it’s new site — Arkhampolytech.com. I’m rather excited about this. You, on the other hand, can be forgiven for a lack of enthusiasm. Anyway, the site’s live now, why not give it a click?

George Lucas Can Still Bite Me

…for churning out such crappy prequels, but damn, i have to admit, Clone Wars looks mighty shiny in hi-def. Story still makes no sense… they’re fighting a faked war. They don’t know it’s faked, of course, but since I know it is, I find myself unable to care.

Radical Makeover: Splish Edition

Did a sketch of Splish. Think he’s gonna start looking a lot more like this starting with the next strip.

A Webcomic Experiment

So, this whole webcomic thing has been pretty fun. I’m digging the creative process of developing Arkham Polytech and sharing the development in near-real time, although it is kinda frightening sharing what amounts to first drafts with the universe. But the hope is after twenty or so strips, and the accompanying feedback loop, I’ll end up with something people like, and that I’m proud to draw on an ongoing basis.

So far, after a month, been able to keep a once-a-week update schedule. The drawing/digitizing/posting process is still taking about three hours a strip, mostly because I’m still figuring out what tools work best and experiment (right now it’s hand-draw the scripts, scan into photoshop for cleaning, import into illustrator for vectorizing, coloring, lettering). If I can get that process under two hours a strip, I’ll bite the bullet and go to two-strips-a-week.

Bunch of non-strip work I still need to do — need to put together a character page and need to build audience. Building audience is the tricky part… being good alone won’t generate page views (and it’s far from being “good” yet). Have to build word of mouth, and start participating in online comic/writing communities, which for an anti-social beast like me (with a  day job and a novel in progress) might be a chore. But then again I might like it. Guess we’ll see.

Arkham Polytech – The Strip Has Landed

Behold! The dorm-life adventures of a mad god… Arkham Polytech.

What’s the skinny? I felt like starting a weekly strip (for now, updating once a week). It’s an experiment of sorts. Hopefully over the next few months it’ll evolve into something a little more polished… or devolve into something spectacularly bad. Either way, why not come along for the train wreck?

This being an experiment, I’m hungry for comments / critiques / haiku on just how bad you think it is. Go ahead. Let me know what you think of it. I’ve got thick skin. And a panoply of dark and mystical curses I can throw right back at ya, you over-critical meat-bags.

4thCULT Tees is Now Mishmash o’ Crap!

All the mind-melting Cthulhu and occult t-shirts you’ve come to expect from 4thCULT… and more. Check back soon for a whole crapload of new designs.