03.08.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Firstly, Cheyenne Wright, colorist extraordinaire of Girl Genius, was recently hospitalized. They're taking donations to help with the associated costs. I'd appreciate it if you sent some cash his way. We colorists have to stick together.

Secondly, You Say it First and NamirDeiter.net both had anniversaries last month. YSiF is six and ND.Net is five. We should've mentioned it earlier, but we were really, really busy last month and time flies when you're in a ruthaving fun.

Thirdly, You Say it First and Namir Deiter are both available through Archive Binge. You know how we have thousands of comics in the archives? Instead of spending one day (or a week) reading through everything, this can send up to 10 comics a day to you through the magic of RSS. That way you catch up quickly and easily. If you set it to give you 10 ND strips a day, you'd be up to speed by the end of April.

03.03.2010 - Terrence Marks:

I come home from a twelve-hour workday at 1 AM and there's a notice on our door - water's going to be off for "scheduled maintenance" from 10 to 5 tomorrow. As I've mentioned, I work swing shift so this is a serious inconvenience for us. Isabel is going to try to get comics done, but this will probably throw our schedule off for the day. And what's the point of scheduling maintenance if you're not going to give people at least two days notice about it, seriously?

Unrelatedly, if you've have trouble with any automatic renewal or subscription, please let me know.

03.01.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Thank you, everyone for supporting the comic. We didn't make the full $700 goal in February, but we're going to keep up the five-day-a-week schedule. As you may know, You Say it First's regular schedule is three a week. We're considering adding a space for five comics a week to the donation bar.

02.25.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Hi, everyone! We're back on schedule and looking to stay there. Sorry about the delays earlier in the month; I've been working a lot of overtime, which put a lot more work on Isabel, both with the comics and at home.

We've also been working on things behind the scenes like the new You Say it First cast page. Isabel drew new images for very nearly everybody, and I re-read the comic in its entirety. More than that, I revised things as I went. Typos were fixed. Lines were re-written for clarity and brevity. Punchlines were punched up. A very small number of comics were re-written for continuity. (For example, in the original version of this comic, it was Brisbane's department that met quota. We've established that Brisbane doesn't have a department, so that got adjusted).

This process, going through and revising the comic into a the next draft makes me feel like a writer. I've been reading writerly things lately, and the idea of revising and improving things appeals to me. So, should you re-read the archives? Continuity has not changed. You don't have to. I don't think you'd notice a difference unless you had the comics memorized. Would I recommend doing this to other cartoonists? No. It's very easy to start fixing things and never stop. But I feel better for doing it, and I think the comic is a little better as well.

02.15.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Isabel is still inking comics. I have added the recommended reading links to You Say it First. We expect comics to be up around Monday night. In the meantime, I invite you to check out Wil Wheaton's blog. He's a writer and actor with some great stories about life, his family, and the cool people he hangs out with. Some of that hanging out was on the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but there's more to him than that. So, read that and come back here later on tonight for comics.

02.05.2010 - Terrence Marks:

Namir Deiter, You Say it First, and Spare Parts now all have next/previous storyline buttons in the archives for easier navigation. Also, if you go through the You Say it First archives, you'll see footnotes that say "Recommended Reading". I'm still adding them. They initially showed up on the main page during Singles Cruise, with links to Sofia's Trip and Minervacon, so you could get Sofia, Caleb, and Michelle's backstory.

Why? For when we have a reference to a previous story or a character who hasn't shown up in a while. I hope that everyone can enjoy each comic, whether they know the backstory or not, but some of them are more enjoyable if you know the full story. Or if you're browsing the archives, that you might want to start back there to get the whole story. Or if you're following the comic casually and you wonder "When did that happen?", we'll try to link to when it happened. Or if a character says "You remember that time when we -", you can go and see when they did.

We're still trying to decide what gets them and what doesn't. We're not going to footnote the wedding every time Brisbane and Kimberly talk about being married. We're not going to footnote back to Unlike Minerva if we can help it. I'm not sure what we'll do when we have stories that directly follow each other (like Chair Trouble/The Troublesome Trouble of Kimberly Taylor-Adams/What Happened). I mean, if you were to pick a random story and start reading, What Happened isn't a very good place to start because it's the epilogue of a larger story. On the other hand, if you're reading straight through there's no point sending you back where you just were.

Right now, I'm halfway through You Say it First. Namir Deiter is next. Unlike Minerva has enough notation as-is, and I can't offhand think of any place that Spare Parts needs it. If you, the reader, care to point out any places where you feel a recommended reading link would be helpful.

Also, over on NamirDeiter.net, commentary has been converted. I was up until about 4 AM last night working on it, and if I did it right you won't see anything different. But donors now have a weekly-with-commentary view (and a few comments from back in 2007 that apparently never got uploaded until now).

01.25.2010 - Terrence Marks:

We're working on comics. In the meantime, I invite you to check out The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace (real life - he invented computers, she invented programming [to grossly simplify things]) team up to fight crime. It includes regular footnotes from Charles Babbage's autobiography. It's (mostly) true, and it's awesome in a way that only (mostly) true things can be. As a lapsed history nerd, I seriously recommend it to you.

Also You Say it First now has storyline-based navigation, which I'm proud of.