My 8 year old daughter created today’s strip, and I kid you not, without any prompting or direction from me. This was solely her idea, and she executed it all on her own. I love how in its own weird internal logic, it’s a complete idea. Who would’ve guessed creating comics could be carried down through the genes?

It’s a little hard to read the dialogue so I’ll transcribe the text for you:

Frame 1: Man: H’m I wonder where my Dad is?

Frame 2: Man: Oh there my Dad is.

Frame 3: Dad: What are you looking at?

Man: Nothing.

Frame 4: Man: Sorry Dad.

Frame 5: Dad: Ahhhh… (after being stepped on by Man.)

Frame 6: The End.

I love this strip but I had to ask Chloe who the Dad in the strip was, she replied,

“You.”

“Why am I getting squashed by the huge man?”

“Sorry.”

I either have a comic genius for a daughter or I see huge therapy bills in my future.

You can’t imagine my delight when firing up the Google homepage and being greeted by this:

Popeye

In fact, it put me in such a good mood, I’ll mail a 5×7 original color art-card of anybody in Podscape you want to the first person who correctly identifies which character in Podscape, Popeye is based on!

Email me or leave a comment with your answers.

Those of you who are linked to my Facebook and Twitter accounts know that I’m still putting my brain back together after New England Webcomic’s Weekend. Once I have all put all the teeny little pieces collectively into some working gray matter (well mostly working,) I’m going to post some pictures of the event to my flickr page, from which I’ll link too from here.

It almost goes without saying this past weekend was amazing, and not only do I hope they do it again next year, but I can’t wait to see what will change from this one to the next as the field grows and matures.

If there was one major theme to the NEWW experience this year, I am going to go ahead and stick my neck out and say it was that webcomic’s time has come. You see a lot of mainstream articles talking about the inevitable migration of daily comic strips from the newspapers to the web, but they always talk about them in the future tense. Well, I can safely tell you those author’s have miscalculated, the webcomic’s revolution will not happen in ten, five, or even two years, but is ongoing now. You could feel the sea change at the NY Comic-Con this year, but a lot of old media was diluting the message, making it harder to tell if this is really happening or just some magical hype.

Spared of the ongoing carnival theatrics of NY-Comic-Con ( which don’t get me wrong…I am a fan of ) it was easier to connect to the message at NEWW and it was very apparent that not even the current dismal economy can slow the growth and progress of webcomic’s everywhere.

Which of course, lead into a lot of talk about the demise of the comic strip page as part of American newspaper experience, and then on to the downfall of printed materials in general, some of which could have been almost taken as gloating, but actually I believe really just showed the amazing and overwhelming total love everyone in attendance has for the medium and the work they are willing to do to see it survive into it’s next form. Which brings me to the little talked about aspect of webcomic’s at the show, it is going to be a rough road for a while until new and better ways come about to spread the word about the creativity and talent going on in web comics right now. However, as anyone can tell who was there, the time for speculation is over, regardless of hits or misses, webcomic’s time is here.

Maybe now we can just start calling them comics again, and drop the tedious “web” distinction.

Arrrgh….It’s Wednesday and I’m late with Podscape. Not only late this week, but a week late; this is the part where I curl up into the fetal position and pray to the story and art gods to grant me divine inspiration and eternal forgiveness on the part of the Podscape fans out there.

Actually that’s not really the issue, I have several storylines I’m currently writing, editing, writing some more, and editing some more by just tossing out to the floor. There are more characters to reveal, a lot more, and more ideas to work out and debut on the site. It is not the lack of interest or love I have for this strip or the characters in it that is causing me to fall behind, it’s the time constraints that are killing me and have been for the last two months. Every since Western Civilization decided to hit the skids big time last fall, my job has gone into freak-out overdrive in both workload and intense paranoia about the economy. Plus factor in about a zillion other complications because of the weekly series of snowstorms we have been getting in the north east and you have a lethal cocktail brewing for posting tardiness. Albeit great source material for future story –arcs as well, so it’s not all bad.

However, I do want to add and stress that Podscape is just starting and there is a lot more to come. I am entirely committed to continuing and taking my modest strip to the next level, even if it means the eventual loss of my sanity and or physical health, whichever should go first (the smart money is on sanity to buy it in Q2.) But Podscape is going to continue, and there are plans to even fill in the missing weeks in the archive. Then when I’m back on track with the weekly posting and have a buffer to fall back on; Podscape the Podcast will go into production. To be followed by a series of short films that extends the Podscape narrative into different direction. Oh and in there somewhere there should be an old sk00l 2d platforming Podscape game in there somewhere. In fact you got a sneak peek of Xris in his 2d alter-ego in the Jan. 21^st strip.

It’s going to be a fun rollercoaster ride and I can’t wait to see you in the front car. 

Five years in the same office with the same people and not one greeting card has ever been sent around for everyone to sign…is it me, or is that strange?

Not one single congratulatory moment has happened to anyone in this office in 5 years; no births, deaths, marriages, or graduations?

Frumph.NET’s Great Holiday Hunt Clue: “and”