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Unity turns 10

2017/02/12 12:00 AM

10 years ago today I posted the first Unity comic. Why not read it from the start?

Or, better yet, buy it in paperback or PDF. Don’t worry, I have many many copies left…

Anyway, book 1 was the first time I’d managed to make an entire comic series from beginning to end without losing interest or giving up. I learned a lot about my creative process from it, and got a lot better at managing my attention and plotting. Book 1 was incredibly rough in places and there were a lot of dangling plot hooks that never went anywhere or got resolved in a weird way, but that was part of my ongoing learning experience with not simply making everything up as I went along. Most of my comics since then have been at least somewhat plotted out in advance (but not so closely as to make it impossible to improvise as I go).

I also learned a lot about myself along the way and of course used this as a framework for exploring aspects of my identity. My own gender stuff is always at least in the background (and sometimes the foreground) of these comics, and later on (especially in book 2) I started to explore the dichotomy between my scientific rationality with my latent spirituality. (This is, of course, a much more prominent theme in Lewi, but I digress.) And now in the year 2017 I can say that I’m… still transgender (and my genitals are finally configured correctly, although still a bit sore), and I’m also finally working towards embracing at least the ethnic side of my heritage.

Who knows, maybe in another 10 years I’ll have finally started drawing book 3!

(Any day, now…)

So, a funny thing happened on the way to the comic

2017/03/18 11:30 PM

First I had surgery in late January.

Then that got infected.

Then the antibiotics for the infection knocked out my intestinal flora.

Then the recovery from that left my immune system vulnerable and I got a cold that lasted about a month (although to be fair apparently everyone on the entire left coast has been laid waste by this).

Then the latest Zelda game came out.

So really, it’s amazing I’ve gotten any comics done at all.

Switching to Disqus

2017/03/22 11:32 AM

A helpful reader emailed me to point out that the comment system was subtly broken, and rather than try to fix a miasma of duct tape and paperclips once again I decided to switch to Disqus.

Currently the legacy comment system isn’t visible but don’t worry, the comments still exist! I’m working on writing an importer to get the old comments over to the new system. The comments have all been imported. It isn’t great but they’re there.

Meanwhile, Disqus gives a few advantages. It has pretty decent spam filtering, anyone can upvote/downvote comments, and you can stalk follow fellow commenters on other Disqus-enabled sites! (If you do not want to be followed in this way it is easy enough to disable your public profile on your Disqus settings.) There’s also some nice comment reply notification stuff that lets you know about goings-on across whatever sites you use that also use Disqus.

I’m not a huge fan of handing all this data over to third parties, but keep in mind that all the comments were being indexed/stored by Google et al anyway, and Disqus has been around for a while and has shown themselves to be at least reasonably trustworthy as far as pervasive Internet things go. The only thing I really dislike is the requirement to use Javascript and that’s kind of unavoidable these days.

Anyway, the other option was to remove comments entirely and I figure that’s a last-resort measure.

Nearing the end of Act 1

2017/04/27 12:00 AM

Act 1 of Lewi will end with strip 73, which is essentially four strips' worth of content (72 is double-sized). After that I’m going to assemble Act 1’s strips into a small book for the purpose of getting it printed. After that I’ll either go right into Act 2 of Lewi (which I have vaguely plotted out but I need to spend a lot more time fleshing out the story arc) or maybe I’ll finally start drawing Book 3 of Unity. Who knows!

In addition to comics stuff I’m also trying to get going on some music things, and also on some modern art things. If you want to keep up with all of it, my Patreon is a pretty good place to do it.

The end of Act 1

2017/05/06 12:00 AM

This comic is the last one for Act 1 of Lewi. I’m going to spend some time trying to put together a book of it, and work on a few other projects for a while. If you want to keep up with what I’m working on, feel free to subscribe to my Patreon.

Lewi Act 1 now available for preorder

2017/06/15 4:10 PM

The proof came back all nice and good, and so I’ve opened up preorders. If you want a physical copy, now’s the time to get one!

Lewi Act 1 is now shipping!

2017/06/28 12:00 AM

I’m mailing out orders for Lewi: Act 1 as they come in. Stock is going! Don’t delay in ordering!

Inktober is upon us

2017/10/04 12:47 AM

It’s October. Well, it’s been October for a few days, but between being busy at GeekGirlCon and getting sick once again, I’m pretty far behind. Oh well.

Update: It’s over yonder.

Oh yeah I have comics to make

2017/11/09 12:00 AM

It’s amazing how busy one can get when one is starting a new business, making a lot of music, and working on a bunch of games.

I do want to get back to both Lewi and Unity at some point though! Your patience is appreciated.

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