News: July 2001

         

Monday, July 30, 2001
    After doing a Total Reinstall® on my computer, it is now acting up in a truly frustrating manner. So until I can scan and upload the latest comic, you can see last Friday's comic up there. (And thanks to everyone who sent me e-mail about this problem. :-) I think I fixed it... we'll know tonight when I get home from work.)

Sunday, July 29, 2001
    Skullie's back! :-) Big thanks go to him for today's Guest Artist Sunday contribution!

Saturday, July 28, 2001
    Happy birthday, Geddy Lee!! [Josh plays The Big Wheel 48 times in celebration]

Wednesday, July 25, 2001
    My San Diego Comic-Con photos are up! Check them out here.

Tuesday, July 24, 2001
    Whoo, yesterday was a big day! First off, Avalon was featured in a brief article in the Ottawa Citizen's Tech Weekly section, as a follow-up to the article from a couple months ago. This article focuses on Avalon's double-win in this year's Cartoonists' Choice Awards. You can see them in the Awards section (located, as always, under Misc.). If you want to see the article, click here for a scan (since I couldn't find it on the Citizen's site).
    But now here's the kicker: yesterday morning, I received a request from CBC Radio One's afternoon show All In A Day for a live interview! It took place at 4:45pm EDT, and was simulcast on the web. I have the interview recorded on a casette from the radio, and hopefully I'll have it available on this site in some kind of computer format shortly.

Monday, July 23, 2001
    I'm back from the San Diego Comic-Con! I've got some photos showing up shortly in this thread (if I photographed you at the con, please read that thread!), and drawings will show up in this thread.
    If you're looking for mzacher's Avalon 5 comics, you can see them here, here, and here. An Avalon 5 collaborative fanfiction is going on right now in the Forum, so go check it out.
    The Matrix is telling my brain this is CHOP! CHOP! CHOP!

Monday, July 16, 2001
    C'mon, Alison! You/me, right here, right now! Thanks David! ;-)
    I've got some bad news regarding the San Diego Comic-Con... although I'll definitely be in attendance (you can find me at the Keenspot booth), I won't be selling any Avalon books. It turns out that I won't have any books in my hands before I leave on Wednesday. I apologize to anyone who was expecting to purchase a book at the con.

Sunday, July 15, 2001
    Whee, I have Internet access again. Next week will bring some new comic strips. One each day, in fact. :-) I'm taking off Wednesday night for the San Diego Comic-Con, so if you're there, try finding me at the Keenspot booth.
    This week's (leegin' hilarious) Guest Artist Sunday is brought to us by Ben Morrell! Thanks, Ben!
    Oh... and it seems Nick Yu "paid tribute" to Avalon in a recent Bad Boys of Computer Science. As was said in the Forum, it's surprising just how small Ceilidh's skull actually is. ;-)

Tuesday, July 10, 2001
    I just moved into a new apartment, and I don't have any connection to the Internet. Which is why Avalon hasn't updated for five days. :-/ I apologize for the unexpected hiatus... but the good news is that I'm getting a cable modem installed today. With any luck, it'll even be working today. :-)

Thursday, July 5, 2001
    I made a few changes to the site... the first change you should notice is a new comic! ;-) You can now find links to some other kick-arse webcomics over on the left. The links box also points you to some banners and icons if you want to link to Avalon. The Avalon Store now has a spot in the main menu on the top and bottom of every page, and it now includes the Avalon book. And finally, I added Avalon's Cartoonist's Choice Awards to the Awards section (found under Misc.)... along with two awards Damonk gave Avalon a long time ago! I apologize to the Acadian demigod for not putting those up sooner! My only retribution is to command every Avalon reader to check out his comic, Framed! ;-)

Wednesday, July 4, 2001
    Happy Independence Day to the American readers! I'm not changing the logo this time, you'll have to stick with the Keenspot Newsbox. ;-) Up there are the official "prize" banners from the Cartoonist's Choice Awards, along with some fine fan art of Deirdre (as Trinity, from The Matrix), by mzacher.
    And yeah, I'm delaying yet another day... but I think this is working out somewhat. Given the current circumstances in my life (most of which simply culminate in a lack of free time), I'm not always able to get a daily comic up. Occassionally I'll skip a day. Sometimes I'll be able to make it up on Saturday or even Sunday. But after a while, I'll fall back an entire week... and I'll just skip ahead to the current week. Ultimately, it means there will appear to be missing weeks in the archive, but all of Avalon is gonna be there. Hopefully some day I'll be able to go back to a nice, reliable schedule. But this is better than Monday/Wednesday/Friday, trust me. :-)

Monday, July 2, 2001
    This is Avalon's 400th strip! Also, by now you may have noticed I'm using a larger format for the comics strips... now they're 700 pixels wide, instead of 600. I just thought it looked better. I've been keeping the colour depth low in order to keep the filesize the same as it was before (40-45 kB).
    And here's some big news: Avalon has won two Cartoonist's Choice Awards! It won in two categories: Best School-Based Comic, and Best Dramatic Comic. The awards were voted on by fellow webcomic artists, so it means a lot to me that Avalon won in both categories it was nominated for. It was up against some pretty deserving webcomics too, such as Blotto Street, Clan of the Cats, The Class Menagerie, College Roomies From Hell, Fans, Minor Reality, Odd Jobs, and Wandering Ones. So congratulations to all the webcomics nominated for this year's awards, and huge thanks to everyone who voted!
    And finally, in the news that will not end... I've removed the "Weekly" Poll from the site. Hopefully no one's going to miss it much. I found I simply wasn't able to come up with good enough poll questions as of late, and it just adds to the clutter on the left. As for the final results of the last poll, it seems that a mojarity of people read the news section right after the comic each day. 19% of people read it several times a week. 8% of people are nuts and check it several times daily. 3% of people tend to ignore it for a lack of anything good being found there. 3% usually leave the news items for a few weeks then read them all in a big clump. And finally, 2% of people tend not to read them often, simply due to forgetfulness.

Sunday, July 1, 2001
    First of all, happy Canada Day! Next, big thanks to Brian Daniel for his Guest Artist Sunday contribution!