News: March 2002

         

Sunday, March 24, 2002
    Silvan Migdal, artist of A God's Life, comes through with another Guest Artist Sunday strip! And this one even makes sense! ;-)

Monday, March 18, 2002
    Sorry about the lack of new material here recently. I put the latest strip back up (since a mild SNAFU made it unavailable in the archive after I put the hockey sketch up).
    A couple people have e-mailed me about the end of Avalon, which is a topic I guess I really haven't expanded on. Avalon was originally slated to conclude on August 30 this year, after the characters graduate. By then, just about every plot thread would have been resolved. However, considering that I can't keep up a daily schedule anymore, it's become pretty unlikely that everything can conclude in a satisfactory way by August 30. So that date is now sundered. I might still try to get everything finished by November, so then I can rerun every Avalon strip from the beginning (with addded annotations/commentary, and maybe even full-colour). But time will tell at this point.
    Also, when I finally get back to drawing new comics, the dating of each strip might be confusing. Avalon takes place in the present, and mirrors the "real world"... so each strip will be dated to reflect the fact that the events are taking place in a specific timeline. A shorter way of saying that is that the next strip you see will be dated March 4, and each subsequent comic will be dated the 5th, 6th, etc In fact, this is pretty much what I was doing before, but I was always skipping periods of time to catch up with "real time." I guess this will all be clearer in the future. And I know I'm mentioning this very vague "future" a lot. :-)

Thursday, March 14, 2002
    On the up side, I've developed a regular sleeping pattern, and have been getting in to work on time for a whole week now (without the whole zombie thing). On the down side, Avalon's fallen by the wayside. :-/ I think I'm going to get back into the swing of things shortly (just not for tomorrow... I'm at the Sens game tonight).
    The Keenspot message boards (including Avalon Forum) have been upgraded big-time (no more UBB!)so go check 'em out.
    And finally... HAPPY PI DAY!

Monday, March 11, 2002
    First off, today's comic is delayed until at least tomorrow. I got home pretty late last night after being out of town for the weekend, so I didn't have time to find some fan art for the front page. Sorry. :-/
    Secondly, I've decided to drop this "daily" thing, since it obviously hasn't been working out for about a year now. And a lot of that is because of my non-webcomics responsibilities (stupid real life), which I'm certain I've complained about before. Ultimately, what this means is that updates will be effectively random... like they are now, but I'm not going to pretend otherwise. :-)
    One of the things that's been suggested to me many times before is to make Avalon three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). I never liked that because a) it means it'll be tougher for me to finish the story in the time left before August 30th, and b) I'm far too used to the 5-day format (from storytelling and archival points of view). But I might give it a shot unofficially. I might just have to experiment a bit with different update formats and see if I can fall into a reliable pattern. Perhaps I can keep doing 5 strips per week if I include weekends, and skip two days at random. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
    My sincerest thanks go out to everyone who's stuck around during the past year. Your patience means a lot, and makes me feel a lot better about Avalon despite the fact I can't give it the time and effort it really needs to be a great webcomic. The last thing I want to do is allow Avalon to get any worse (exactly why I've refused to do this in the past... though I hadn't really thought through it well enough until now). By the comic's end (and there *will* be an end), the story will be told, and it won't be done half-assed. Have patience and a little faith, and I promise you Avalon will not disappoint.

Thursday, March 7, 2002
    Today's comic is half-drawn, but I just can't stay up any longer to finish it. So it'll be up tomorrow. In the meantime, here's the latest from my other comic strip, Cartoon University.

Friday, March 1, 2002
    This comic strip is part of the prize won by Stephen Lichtwark (aka slichtwark) in the 2001 Avalon Hockey Playoff Pool. He tied for second place overall, and won a cameo appearance in an Avalon comic strip. Congrats to him. :-)