Friday, November 29, 2013

Touching Base #15

Another round of Touching Base, and it's been a while, to which I apologize, but I was in Texas for a lot longer than I intended.

Guess I'll start with the "bad" news.  I say bad because it's not really, no comics died since August, but Shi Long Pang and Zebra Girl did go on an announced hiatus after completing their most recent chapters.  Shi Long Pang's artist is cleaning his pallet with a side project (that's not being put online from what I can tell) while he writes out the story for the final volume of Shi Long Pang.  Zebra Girl, meanwhile, is mostly doing site updates (supposedly, heard that story before) and plans to be back up next year.  WHEN next year is a question.

Makeshift Miracle is updating again, but I'm having issues getting back into it.  Not sure what the problem is, maybe the long delay between chapters or something.  Anyway, it's still in the Monthly file because I'm kind of lazy about it.

I'm not lazy, however, when it comes to Alex Ze Pirate who made a promise to get back to T-Th and I moved it in my bookmarks over to said directory.  And it hasn't updated since September now.  Yeah.  So I'm too lazy to change it's position in the list here, but it's getting damn close to being shifted off to Hiatus.

Speaking of Hiatus, looks like Edible Dirt will probably be reassigned to Dead next month.  It'll be over a year since it last updated mid December, and I won't be waiting for it any more after that.  Sad to see it go, but again, it hasn't updated in a year, so no big loss at this point.

Of course, The Meek is also at it's year marker, but he at least told us why it's not updating, so it gets to stay in Hiatus.

Meanwhile, Twilight Lady's alternate comic, Vine, um, pretty much hasn't done anything after the first few posts.  Oh, it's got a full edition, which you can purchase, but no more updates online, I guess.  Doesn't matter, but it does seem to connect to Twilight Lady somehow, though I am unclear on that.

Sinfest has been having some odd uptime issues of late.  I don't know if it's server issues or what, no news on that front, but I have my suspicions.  Suspicions that someone has been DDoSing the site or something otherwise underhanded.  Lots of negative reaction to Sinfest as of late, and it seems anything written about the comic gets attention.  In fact, my brief article on Sinfest I did a bit ago has gotten more individual hits than any other article on the blog.  I think that's due to the fact that the Bad Webcomic Wiki linked to it.  Hi to those from there, BTW.

Last bit of negative news is the continued truncated schedule for Sluggy Freelance due to injury to Abram's hand.  Hope he gets better soon, but I'm surprised he can keep the comic looking as good as it does despite the injury.  I do wonder if he'll scale back permanently, but no way to know for now.

Okay, enough downer to bad news.  Elsie Hooper announced a new format:  Full pages once a week.  Which is better than the 2 or 3 panels whenever he feels like it.  I joke, but the schedule and format were kind of haphazard before so declaring a more regular design is a good step towards finally ending this comic which has been near the end of it's run for, um, a while now.

Does Not Play Well With Others has started a Patreon campaign.  What is it?  Well, you sign up, offering to pay so much for each page he draws.  If he doesn't draw a comic, he doesn't get paid, if he does, he gets paid.  Simple as that.  It's actually an interesting idea and a way to get him motivated to draw it in between reworking Errant Story for publication.  Speaking of which, apparently they've been struggling with cleaning up some of the flash back pages for Errant Story and are possibly looking for help in doing it for future pages, so contact them if you're interested.

Derelict has finished up it's first book.  Yes, it remains one of my favorite comics, and I am thinking about pitching in to it's kickstarter despite not having money.  Second book is set to start with the new year.

I skipped it because I was in Texas, but back in October was Sandra and Woo's 5th anniversary.  Not many comics continue a steady production like that so I do want to congratulate everyone involved, even if it is a bit late.

Speaking of Sandra and Woo, it and Gunnerkrig Court share something in common:  budding sexuality.  Both of their recent storylines have focused on the sexuality of a couple of their characters, and it's been very tasteful and well done.  And likely won't get either comic any flack for it.  I've talked about sexuality, particularly homosexuality (which is what this related to kids) before, and I may revisit the topic again but less about what comics are doing it, and more about WHY they're doing it, but that's an article for another day.

Which brings me to my last topic, that of Dead Winter's artist, who announced her dealing with trans/gender dysphoria for what sounds like the bulk of her life.  I know little about the subject (outside of Material Girl, which isn't much to be honest), but I do give her my full support and hope that things go well for her in the near future.  And it's not just because she draws a comic I throughly enjoy (that's part of it, of course) but because it's the decent and right thing to do.

Next week, assuming I can power through them in time, I might actually have a batch of reviews, if not, I'll say something.  Until then kiddies.

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