Avallanath

I guess it didn’t take that long for that whole stupid angry mistake thing Seshna was counting on to kick in.

Looks like Morthaur is well aware of that old axiom about wars being won on the ground, not in the air.

I switched around the panel format for today’s comic. This format helps streamline the coloring process and reduces the time I spent on coloring by a good hour, if not more.

Let’s talk about books.

I’ve been working my way through The Eye of the World for some time now. I had some grand idea of rereading the entire series before the last book came out later this year/early next year but it doesn’t look like that’s happening if my slog through book one is any indication. It’s not that the book is bad. It’s just that every time I start rereading The Wheel of Time I start with The Eye of the World. That’s the one book that I go through every time I do a reread even if I eventually give up on the rest of the books around The Fires of Heaven or A Crown of Swords. I think I’m just suffering from a bit of Wheel of Time exhaustion. At this point I might just wait for the last book to come out and give the series a complete read through then.

I’ve also been rereading Eon by Greg Bear. This book is an interesting case study in what happens when authors set their science fiction in the not too distant future. When I read this book for the first time as a senior in high school back in 2001-2002 the dates in the book still hadn’t taken place, but it was obvious that the future Bear depicted wasn’t happening since it made the classic scifi blunder (common to Bear’s work in the ’80s) of assuming the Soviet Union would still be around after 1991. Now rereading it again we’re past all of the dates mentioned in the book. I suppose that just makes this another example of science fiction that has aged into alternate history.

I also picked up Green Rider, Kushiel’s Dart, and The Light Fantastic over the weekend. The first  two come with good recommendations and the third is Pratchett which speaks for itself. I’ve only gotten about thirty pages into Green Rider. So far it seems like a fun little adventure even if it is a bit by the numbers with writing that gets the job done without astonishing. The only comment on Kushiel came from my wife who looked at the cover and asked why I was buying romance novels.

So here’s the breakdown regarding the lack of color in today’s comic. I started with a small buffer because of a couple of holiday weekends that allowed me to work ahead on the comic. I’ve worked out a good flow where I’m able to pencil and ink in a relatively short amount of time compared to the overall comic composition process. I’ve also discovered that coloring is by far the most time intensive part of putting up a comic even just using simple flats and some texturing for extra flair.

I ran out of my time buffer with color strips and realized that coloring is just unsustainable without a holiday weekend thrown into the mix that lets me play catchup. Given a choice between reliable updates and color I’ve decided to go with the reliable five day a week update. I suppose I could go down to three days a week, but I’d still rather have five days of black and white updates than three days of color updates.

So my apologies for  leading you color enthusiasts on. This time around I’m really trying to figure out problems that could impact my update schedule before they become a problem, and it turns out there’s just not enough time (for me, at least) to color the comic, work 40 hours a week, spend some quality time with my wife, maintain a sane sleep schedule, and get in a little exercise time in the morning. So out of those choices I’m cutting back on my time with Photoshop just a bit.

It’s my sincerest hope that you’ll stick around even without the color updates. I know there are some people out there who refuse to read any comic in black and white, but I’m hoping that a compelling story and humor will be enough to balance that until the grand day when I can make drawing funny pictures on the Internet a full time job.

See you back here tomorrow!