Old News

January 15, 2004

I apologize for not keeping up to date with the comic, however another project has reared its little chrome dome which is syphoning off great gallons of my time like a frat boy on a brewery tour. When I can get back onto the horse that is Boundary Waters I will issue a press release out on comixpedia, Talkaboutcomics and all the other usual suspects. In the meantime I will be sporadically tossing up sketches and whatnot. However, feel free to browse the archive and have fun.

January 2, 2004

Well it is 2004, a number I will not get used to typing for another 3 or 4 months. I apologize that I do not have a fresh update for you, but like all go things, you gotta wait.

December 16, 2003

'Tis the season for Seasons Greetings and all that. Unfortunately also means I am dragged away from my beloved tablet to take part in some folderol or codswallop. Bah humbug indeed! Thus updating will be inconsistant to darn near absent until the new year. This is kind of a bummer as I hate to interupt a storyline in mid stride, but what cha gonna do?

To update you lonely three readers out there I have been spending too much time haunting the message boards at comixpedia and Talkaboutcomics. My uber aim was to flog my comic and get some feedback, however I am now getting sucked into content (I have added way to many comics to my reading list) and conversation. I gotta stop soon as there are too many really good strips out there that are in effect hobbies. As I somehow want to make a buck or two at this I am getting depressed; the quality bar keeps going up and it may soon exceed my meagre talents, and even more critically, my pathatetic abilities at self promotion.

November 19, 2003

And "sketch week" continues on unadulterated. All the best laid plans of rats and architects go kablooie. I had meant to get a slew of strips written, but it has been the best I could do to get these quickies out lately. As of today my hopper sits at a big fat zero. Of course a sick kid, hours of video games (damn you Jak II)and a house full of guests will slow you down. (well really only the hours of video games are at fault). However I am trying to get back on track.

I have rediscovered Scary Go Round by John Allison. I was a major fan of Bobbins when it was hosted by Keenspot, and this new incarnation is a hoot. I like the fact that he is willing to reinvent his style, and the writing is really inventive and funny.

November 20, 2003

I have lately been thinking about why I like webcomics (and the strip format comics in general) rather than comic books. One quick and easy reason is my sheer cheapness, comic books/graphic novels are expensive SOBs and I just cannot afford buy them in any quantity. However, this is really only a very minor concern as I could make room in my budget if I were passionate about them, I mean sticker shock has not gotten between me and my PS2. I think is is more that I have usually been disappointed in comics and/or graphic novels- not in regards to the artwork which can always draw me in, but rather more with the writing. The stories may be high concept, or character driven, but (especially for dramatic or action oriented pieces) they feel really thin (There are exceptions like the Hernandez's Love and Rockets and associated spinoffs). It's rare for me to not predict the direction of the story. Perhaps it is due to the still overwhelming influence of superheros in the US comic book market place. I know that I have less often been bored with the European offerings. This may also be a function of my early influences too (can you tell that I did not outline this little essay, it is dribbling right strait out of my furry little head). I cut my comic and literary teeth in the 70's. I believe that some comic strip aficionados (read weenies) call this the "silver age"; I would more appropriately call it the "rusty crap scraped off the bottom of my 10 year old Civic age". The artwork ranged from pedestrian to horrible, and the tales were worse. So my preferred reading material was those paperback collections of old MAD magazines and Peanuts strips. It wasn't until '76 or '77 when Heavy Metal with its mainly european pieces appeared that I saw the real potential for comic stories. Sadly, outside of a few works by Crepaux, Mobieus, and a few others, it is rare to come across anything from over the atlantic. I also just do not have the patience to wade through the reams of giant robot Manga to find the gems there. However, I'm seriously digressing away from the point I started out to make.

What I find attracts me the most, regardless of medium, is a single author or viewpoint. Most comics, movies, TV and music are products of committees or vast teams of people. I understand the necessity of it because of the sheer scale of the undertaking, but I lose interest in it, it comes off bland or rehashed. I would rather partake in a magnificent flame out then another least common denominator success. I find webcomics with their absurdly low barrier to publication are a great medium for individual visions. Granted there is a vast amount of dreck out there - If I see one more poorly drawn Manga style knockoff with nothing to say I'm going to vomit in 5 languages. But the crap doesn't seem to last, and the passionate authors do, and even if they start off weak, skills usually improve with practice, and the experimentation associated with someone finding their voice is fun to watch.

November 19, 2003

And "sketch week" continues on unadulterated. All the best laid plans of rats and architects go kablooie. I had meant to get a slew of strips written, but it has been the best I could do to get these quickies out lately. As of today my hopper sits at a big fat zero. Of course a sick kid, hours of video games (damn you Jak II)and a house full of guests will slow you down. (well really only the hours of video games are at fault). However I am trying to get back on track.

I have rediscovered Scary Go Round by John Allison. I was a major fan of Bobbins when it was hosted by Keenspot, and this new incarnation is a hoot. I like the fact that he is willing to reinvent his style, and the writing is really inventive and funny.

November 5, 2003

Today I start a few (or more) days of a slightly different format. Boundary Waters is meant to eventually be submitted for daily syndication, and pretty much sticks to the horizontal multi panel strip format. However, putting together the FrightNight submission and the general squalls of daily life have basically wiped out my buffer. So I've got to step back a little and refill the hopper. But I still want to keep the site fresh, thus I'm going to be posting more "experimental" strips for awhile as I work on the "classically" (read slower to produce) formatted strips in the background. The upcoming strips will allow me to work on some technical issues like less reliance on gradients for backgrounds and sound effects lettering without the pesky issue of writing the standard three panel gag. I also want to trot out a few of the characters graphically without working on folding them into the continuity.

By the way, if any of you readers out there in ether have any good ideas about how to promote this comic, please let me know. There is a ton of competition for readers so tell your friends if you like this strip, or tell me if you like something (or don't).

October 13, 2003

Check out the FrightNight comic I put together for Comixpedia. I'll write more on this tomorrow- I'm too tired and cold to do much more tonight.

September 16, 2003

Things seem to be ticking along - I now need to settle into the rhythm of producing at least three strips per week. I should be doable, but on the other hand, coloring these things can take much longer than it should. It does not help that when I sit down to the computer I inevitably end up playing Diablo II for far longer than I should (Yah, I know, I'm about a jillion years out of date, but what the hey, it was cheap - always a good thing - and still a fun game). I won't go into how having protracted construction going on in our little shack is more than a little distracting too - week no 5 and counting for taking out one wall and dry walling. urg

September 10, 2003

I finally took the plunge and bought the stubbscomics.com domain name. I now feel official. Full color should be hitting on September 24th.

September 1, 2003

And we're off! The page is launched- though I have no idea if it is visible to anybody else out there in the world- but no matter. Everything seems to be working and I think it looks good. I now have to work on keeping the hopper filled- A note of interest, I am going to try to go full color, so keep your eyes peeled in a few weeks these chiaroscuro pieces will be in blazing technocolor.

August 23, 2003

I think I have the basic mechanics down for the webpage- I have no idea if this is visible to the rest of the world yet (I'm seeing it through the magic of modifying my hosts table in my system files - a trick I pulled of of the keenspace forum). I going to make the possible over optimistic assumption that this will be available for all by the first of September. I will start my grand opening on or around that date- wish me luck. I now have to really get rolling on my backlog- I want to stay at least a month ahead of my publishing date. If I stick to a M-W-F schedule I should be able to make this- with an occasional sunday thrown in too. My next big task is to figure out how to promote this thing. I want this to be more than a purely vanity project.

August 17, 2003

Well this is it. With luck Keenspace will get their subdomains working and I can test the mechanics of the page before I start posting. It has taken some time to get to this point as I have not done any HTML work in many a moon. However I have to say that as much as I hate coding (or programming of any sort- it makes my brain pop) I really like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - It is a very elegant way to do these pages verses tables and frames and all the clunky ways I had to learn last time I set up any web stuff. Of course the whole exercise of setting up these meager pages has taken entirely too long.

I have to give a shout out (the term looks just as doofy in print as it does over the air) to the guy and community that is responsible for HTML-Kit, a most excellent freeware program for doing the HTML thing.