04.08.2010 - Terrence Marks:

So what happened? Internet outage. When I write about it, it's angry and not very funny. Maybe I'll explain more later. But I was going through some fansubbed anime this morning, killing time before Verizon showed up. I realize that some of it will be to my liking and most of it won't, so I put it on double-speed. I read fast enough and I may as well get the bad ones out of the way quickly.

And I come across a most unusual one. It started out normal enough; three sisters doing unremarkably domestic things.

Then it got weird.
Two of them are trying to decide what to cook and they say...
"Let go of me!
I've lied to you
I don't care what you say, the world
I saw a student kissing a teacher today
And in other news...
the loincloth festival has begun today.
attendance is expected to be high"

Now, you're thinking: in context, it probably makes sense.

You're wrong. It comes out of nowhere, without any relation to the onscreen action or previous dialogue.

Also: the loincloth festival is real. But that's another story that you don't have to know right now.

As I was saying, maybe they're quoting some anime that I haven't heard of. Maybe it's a really important scene that everyone in Japan - or at least in their target audience - would recognize. If we're talking about banking and I say that Old Man Potter wants to shut down the savings & loan, you know what I mean if you've seen It's A Wonderful Life. Otherwise, I'm talking nonsense.

They talk a bit more, start cooking, squabble over what to make and who should make it, and five minutes later they repeat it again:

"Let go of me!
I've lied to you
I don't care what you say, the world
I saw a student kissing a teacher today
And in other news...
the loincloth festival has begun today.
attendance is expected to be high"

Is one of them quoting that bit of surrealism back at the other? Does that exchange mean something profound that I don't get?

Anyhow, they eat. There's a commercial break. The third sister is home and they're all watching a TV program; a teacher kisses a student. She says "Let go of me"
He replies "I've lied to you. I don't care what you say, the world". The younger sister says she saw a student kissing a teacher today.

One of the sisters changes the channel. "And in other news," the reporter says, "the loincloth festival has begun today. Attendance is expected to be high".

And it all ties together. Why were they quoting tonight's newscast before it airs? That's a pretty good hook, isn't it? It went from surreal to mysterious. Three ordinary sisters, doing ordinary domestic things, who had become unstuck in time. They don't go on adventures. They don't save the world. They don't solve mysteries or hunt criminals of the past. It's like Lucky Star (without the anime references) meets Dr. Who (without the bad guys and monsters). Or Seinfeld (without the jokes) meets Slaughterhouse Five (without, umm, well, anything that actually shows up in Slaughterhouse Five)

It felt like The King In Yellow - the first act was very banal and a bit confusing, but it's just setting you up so the horror of the second act can really blow your mind.

So I go back and watch the last scene at normal speed to see if they quote it exactly: it's not there. Just the discussion about pancakes. I go back to the first quoting: not there either. They're just talking about getting food delivered.

The series was suddenly a lot less interesting. I think that the subtitles ran faster than the visuals since I was watching at double-speed. Why did it do that? Yeah, that's a good question, but a lot less compelling.

PS. Dear Japan: Could you please make an anime like the one I thought I was watching? It'd be really awesome. Honest. Thank you

04.07.2010 - Isabel Marks:

For the last couple of weeks, I've been fighting a nasty cold that I believe has turned into an infection. I mention this because on Monday night/ going on Tuesday I decided to take it easy and sleep to try and get over things sooner, and missed the update. The next day, otherwise known as Tuesday afternoon to the rest of the world, the Internet decided to go out on us. Terrence tried to fix it, but in the end we had to call our ISP for service. Service they were supposed to have delivered on Wednesday late morning, but didn't bother trying to contact us (as they were asked to) when they tried to come in and were accosted by the stupid completely useless parking security gate the apartment has that doesn't keep bad people out, only the lazy ones. Anyway... if you're reading this it's either late Wednesday and I managed (with the help of Terrence, more than likely) to get our old modem working in my computer and am on dial up, this is 1 am on Thursday and Terrence on his own got the dialup working or this is Thursday late morning/ afternoon and they got our Internet working and the technician found our apartment despite.

Sorry for the rant... anyhow if you're reading this- both Namir Deiter and You Say it First are up and ready to read, and even if we don't have Internet Thursday night, there should an update. Stuff for .net SHOULD be updated, but not all of it might be there. I'm still working on the comics for that site and the wallpapers still need to be inked... and commentary files haven't even been made. Sorry about that folks. I really appreciate your patience throughout all this. I really didn't want to take any breaks, I was just feeling miserable on Monday. I'm still sick and will probably be sicker tomorrow from all the stress the stupidity of our ISP put us through today. Please enjoy and spread the word about the updates!

Oh, and we might not be available for a day or so and will definitely be slow to reply to emails and things, even slower than usual. Sorry about that. ;___;

Edit: It's the next day. We had to get our own modem and fix it ourselves. The technician left a note on the door but didn't knock.

04.06.2010 - Terrence Marks:

I beat Homeworld the other night. I was surprised. Not by the story, but by how good the Yes song at the end was. I mean "Homeworld" (the song) sounds like 1973 Yes and 1983 Yes got together and collaborated. I kinda gave up on them after Big Generator. And Tales from Topographic Oceans. And Tormato. And maybe Jon & Vangelis. But this brought me back in.

The game was very good as well. Nice blend of strategy and tactics. You can steal your enemies' ships (which is [a] totally cheap and [b] very effective). The plot involved a lot of "Initiating Hyperspace Jump"
"Hyperspace Travel interrupted. Destroy the enemy's hyperspace inhibitors to go to the next level".

I suppose that's kind of necessary; if you can go from point A to point B without stopping anywhere in between, why wouldn't you? If Mario had a hyperspace jump device that took him straight to Bowser in World 8-4, he'd take it. Save everyone some time. Anyhow, I enjoyed the game and the song.

04.01.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Happy April Fools Day, everyone!

Now, it's not that we've been doing this since before April Fools Day was cool, but I organized the first webcomics swap back in 1999. I was a sophomore in college. I didn't, technically, have a webcomic when I started organizing it - Unlike Minerva's launch date got moved up a couple weeks so that I'd have a webcomic in time for the event.
What I did have was a clever plan: do something that syndicated cartoonists had done a few years before, except it's on the Internet and I'm in charge.
Like I said, I was a sophomore.

I got a bunch of cartoonists together - it's not everyone who was anyone back in webcomics in 1999, but it's awfully close - and got them to do this. It was the first time more than three online cartoonists did anything together, as far as I know.

Naturally, I hosted it on my school account and made absolutely no plans for the page to go away when, for example, I graduated. Then my hard drive crashed. I don't have a copy of the page. Archive.org's wayback machine just has a page with a bunch of broken images.

Like I said, I was a sophomore.

I'm sorry the site was lost. I was very impressed by the amount of work that the other cartoonists put into it. I felt like...like Kermit.

No, seriously.

You know how in The Muppet Movie, he says it'd be neat if he went to Hollywood, and if everyone else wanted to come along and share the same dream, they could help each other do it? Like that. Except with a lot less wrangling, more talented participants, and nobody trying to steal my legs. Seriously, if you were part of that in any way, thank you.

I'll probably rebuild the site eventually, but that's another story for another day. For today, we've got special comics, and I ask you readers: are the characters more anthropomorphic or less anthropomorphic like this? Discuss your answer with each other and get back to me.

03.28.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Firstly, my friend Rex Broome turned 39 a week ago. And every day until he turns 40 he will cover a randomly chosen song. Right now, that's 10 down, 355 to go. Go check it out.

Secondly, People have asked me: is "They'll Do It Every Time" a real comic strip?

Yes, is it. It's a single-panel strip about how people are. Y'know: "He complains how money is tight when his wife buys an expensive new hat...but when he sees a new set of golf clubs, he doesn't have trouble finding the money". That kind of thing. The strip ended in 2008 when the cartoonist died. There are a few of them here.

A lot of the ideas are submitted by readers; I remember hearing about a comic snark site (and I don't recall which one, unfortunately) that made fun of it pretty regularly...until their ideas started getting accepted. From then on, they thought it was kinda cool. Turns out, yeah. They'll do it every time.

03.27.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Our RSS feed has been having some troubles. Specifically, some readers (like Google Reader) don't show the most recent comics. If someone who knows how RSS feeds work could lend a hand, we'd greatly appreciate it.

03.13.2010 - Terrence Marks:

New bonus book? It has been a long time, hasn't it? It's part two of Final Battle Adventure Online: The Role-Playing Game. Jun sits down to play a pencil-and-paper RPG with characters from a variety of our comics. If you like gaming, you'll probably like this. And if you donated between August and December of last year, you probably already have access to it!

We're working on part three (of at least four) and hope you enjoy it!