News: July 2000

         

Monday, July 31, 2000
    Whew, lots of news today... first off, there's some new fan art from Martin Lawson and Chris Battey. Thanks, guys! And of course, there's more in the Fan Art section, which can be found under Misc.
    Next, the poll... according to last week's results, if Avalon were an anime, 27% of people would want it to be hentai. I'm not gonna even comment about that. :-) Close behind with 25% was the outer space drama, 21% was the teen melodrama that takes itself way too seriously. 16% wanted to see some magical girl action, and the remaining 11% wanted to see some giant robots. Meanwhile, I advise everyone not to hold their breath for this anime thing. ;-)
    Now, to explain today's poll... every day this week, I'm going to pit two Avalon characters against each other. There will be a different battle every day, and you get to decide the winner. The champion from each day will move on to meet a new challenger the next day, until finally one character remains. Remember, there will be a new battle every day, so make sure you don't miss any!
    And for even more polling fun, all you Ceilidh fans are going to have to hop on over to Keenspot's Bikeeni Summer 2000 site and vote for her as the hottest Keenspot babe! Of course, if you hate Ceilidh, why not go there and vote against her? ;-)
    And finally... I want everyone to go to Acid Reflux and start reading every single comic from the very beginning. I'm ashamed that I didn't start reading that comic until yesterday, and I plowed through the entire archive in a single sitting. It's definately one of my favorites now, and if you enjoy bizarre comedy in a fantasy setting, with some very well-written character development, you owe it to yourself to start reading Acid Reflux!
    That's all for now... more news tomorrow! And maybe we'll get a PG-13 rating for that batch of news, or something tamer than today's. ;-)

Sunday, July 30, 2000
    This very cool guest artist strip is by Someone (well, at least that's what he goes by in the message forum). For some reason I find it amusing that Joe would be killed mercilessly by Heero Yuy. :-) Of course, this one pertains directly to the weekly poll, which will run for one more day. On Monday I hope to have a very interesting poll ready.

Sunday, July 23, 2000
    Today's guest artist is TheBlackCupid, a regular over at the Avalon Forum. This mess of confusion is based on the June 21 strip. Thanks TBC. :-)
    Friday's comic will be up on Monday, along with Monday's regularly-scheduled comic. Please don't kill me. :-) Also, the poll script has been mucking up again, causing the results to be reset. And since I'm sure most people are voting more than once anyway, just keep voting. :-) The poll will stay up 'til next Friday.

Thursday, July 20, 2000
    There... yesterday's comic, and finally a new poll. Let's just say that Phoebe pretty much won the last one. :-) Although I'm pretty dang happy not to have to draw that office staff guy for Keenspot's Bikeeni Summer 2000 event.

Wednesday, July 19, 2000
    I'm back to my old tricks again... I'm tired and uninspired right now, and don't even have today's comic done yet. So I'm pulling a Sluggy Freelance and taking a day off. My apologies once again.
    But as a sorry attempt to redeem myself, up there are some working sketches I did of the band members of Great Big Sea. I did those in preparation for the Feb. 4th strip.
    Okay! Okay! I'm sorry! New strip tomorrow. :-)

Monday, July 17, 2000
    Here's some fanart submitted to me by Chris Battey! You can check out his massive homepage here.
    Jesse Brack introduced me to his brand new comic called Being Seventeen. It's got similar undertones to Avalon, but has a smaller cast. :-)
    Thanks to Chris White and Dave White, co-creators of The Japanese Beetle for making it very apparent that their link to Avalon has been fixed. ;-) If anyone hasn't seen this "superhero" comic yet, you truly haven't lived!
    In local news, Avalon's poll was FUBARed twice last week. The file that contained all the data got wiped out for some unknown reason. Either way, Phoebe would appear to be the winner. :-) The poll is still there since I have absolutely no clue what the next poll should be. I have never had this much poll-question block in my life. If anyone has a moderately pithy idea for a poll question, please tell me!

Sunday, July 16, 2000
    Alex Bebout returns with this Sunday's Guest Artist strip! And this one had me laughing pretty hard after I finally got it. :-) It's taken from May 25th's strip, in the Vote For Joe storyline. Thanks, Alex!

Tuesday, July 11, 2000
    Did anybody find yesterday's comic familiar at all?

Monday, July 10, 2000
    Corey Marie Kitley is back with her successor to Sit & Spin, titled Common Grounds. Go check it out!

Sunday, July 9, 2000
    Hm... this one was submitted quite a while ago... Chris calls this "Pokalon." :-) Thanks, Chris! Now go see Out of Fika!
    The last "weekly" poll got lenghtened to two weeks due to my unexpected absense last weekend, but I guess it was for the better since it was a pretty important poll. The final result was that 40% of readers want me to save the comic strips in PNG format. 31.5% want non-interlaced GIF, and 28.5% want interlaced GIF. These results are too close to be useful in any way whatsoever. ;-) One surprising result is that so many people want PNG. This does not mean that I'm gonna start using PNG right away. I'm going to look a bit deeper into the practicality of using PNG. And I do realize that there are some people with browsers that can't view that particular image format. In the meantime, I think I'll stick to non-interlaced GIF.
    If anyone hasn't seen it yet, Keenspot, Avalon's webhost and primary service provider (and all-around cute and fluffy corporate entity) has a special seasonal event called Bikeeni Summer 2000. Basically, we've moved the smut from the Newsbox and into it's own web site. ;-) If you look around you'll see an Avalon entry there, and I was thinking of trying my hand on some more. The purpose of this week's poll is to see who we all want to see in the next entry. So vote wisely. ;-)

Friday, July 7, 2000
    Rant Time: A lot of sites seem to list this strip as Avalon High. Handbasket Emporium, I'm looking in your direction! This really bugs me! :-) The title of the strip is Avalon. The domain name is avalonhigh.com simply because avalon.* was already taken. So, although I greatly appreciate anyone who links to Avalon, I do dislike it when they don't call it Avalon. :-)

Wednesday, July 5, 2000
    If anyone needs something to tide them over until the comics start up again tomorrow, you can find Ceilidh and Helène among the participants of Bikeeni Summer 2000. I pity the sick-minded individual who made them a part of that event. ;-)
    I thought a lot of people might want to keep an eye out on Corey Marie Kitley's Sit & Spin, since it's just recently ended. However, she's about to begin a really cool comic to take it's place. I was one of the lucky people to get a sneak preview of it, and it's definately one to look out for. So look out for it. :-) Also, Road Waffles is back... now in Guest Artist form!!! Okay, this is news to me, I thought I might pass it on to all the other people who have been without Internet access for the past week. :-)

Tuesday, July 4, 2000
    Well, I'm back. I've got a helluva lot of e-mail to go through, so I'll be working on that this week. :-) I've decided to wait until Thursday before continuing the strip. This way, things will continue just as they left off last week (the last new comic was on a Wednesday), and this will allow me to get a few comics done ahead of schedule (which should mean fewer late nights or skipped days in the future). Wish me luck in acheiving *that* goal. :-)
    And since I missed last Sunday, here's a Guest Artist, um, Tuesday. :-) This one was co-authored by Jerry Alan Dusty Sayers and Cassie, and was actually planned to run during that "The Dance" storyline. Go back a week or two if you're confused. :-) And thanks to Dusty and Cassie!
    D'oh... almost forgot, HAPPY CANADA DAY! Even though that was Saturday. Oh well. And happy Independence Day to those south of the greatest and most annoyingly boastful country in the world. ;-)