Truly, why does anyone ever say, “what could possibly go wrong?” It’s tempting fate, tempting the gods, tempting the webcomic writers! Of course, I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to realize that things are bound to go wrong, even on a good day. The question is, will today be a good day, or a very bad day…

Whatever you do, don’t ask me about my computer. I might just tell you, and the strip’s up late already. Just suffice it to say I haven’t gotten home earlier than 9:00 all week and I’m less than a happy camper. Tonight looks about that same. At the very least, I can say I got the comic up!

In today’s strip, we get the first glimpse inside the K’s house. For reference, this is Tooey’s room. Of course, I had to go about “building the set” as Jim calls it, and that took a while. I get picky about these things I want them to look a certain way, but know my limitations with the pixel art and our style in this comic. Anyhow, I wanted something a tad nicer than Leroy’s room, considering the K kids’s father is a politician and would be a little more well-off.

Oh, those poor kids. I have to admit, I have been the “mean ol’ mom” on more than one occasion. As with most families, our kids play video games, and even did a short stint on WoW. Most of the time they are good about getting off when I ask. But, on the times they don’t, I have been known to pull the plug mid-game to teach them a lesson. I do admit, most of the time I wait until a lull in the action, and sometimes I’m generous and even let them go quickly save their game first. But, there have been a couple of heated battles with bosses which I’ve interrupted. Though, truthfully the BMW kids handled it a wee bit better than our kids. There is usually a lot of screaming and crying and lamenting when the switch goes unexpectedly off here!

Anyhow, I enjoyed this little detour into the game, and I’m also happy to get back on track on other storylines. Be sure to check in tomorrow.

Of course, I sound like such a broken record about an update (you see I even created a category in this blog for it). But swear on a stack of Batman comics, things have been nuts!

First of all, I have to ask a question. If you have a virus, a nasty virus, but your computer is running okay, do you remove it? My first answer would have been yes, that is until after yesterday. As the tech at my work installed the updated anti-virus and did his magic to fix my computer up, inside little gremlins were doing their duty. Needless to say, after 2 hours of “fixing” my computer was far worse off than it had been before. I was there until 9:00 last night and did not want to even look at computers–even for the comics–when I got home.

Now, most people would say, “So what, don’t you have a home computer? You could have worked on it at home sometimes.” Sure do, and I do most of my art on that normally. Problem is, this particularly line of strips I did at work. My office computer is limping along, but it will not allow me to open certain folders and programs, including my graphics package. So, I’m stuck…for now. I did manage to grab certain files and will be bringing them home, but that is going to delay me until this evening.

Now, I should note the reason I’m not up on this is because this strip diversion into Cosmic Dungeon was not planned. We wanted a little padding out of some other storylines, and came up with this little sidetrack. So, I have been doing it on the fly. I probably should have just stuck with the other stuff, since most of that is done. Ugh.

So, thanks for the patience. I do feel better offering you our amusing fillers. The good news is they have earmarked me to get a new machine at work. Just wish it didn’t take something like this to get me there.

You know, when we created the BYOC, we never imagined it would be the greatest “save-face” for us! On days when things just get too caught up, we can create a filler strip in 10 minutes so that YOU, our fans, have something to read until we can get the new strip up. Now, we don’t always put one up, but when we do, we always have so much fun with it. I do have to give credit to Jim, because he is the one that does them the most…and I think they are just hysterical. He truly is a great comedy writer.

Just to appease your curiosity, Jim and I are working on 2 projects: 1 personal and 1 freelance that will bring us in some much-needed money (can’t blame us for that). Bitmap World is still very important to us, so we want to assure everyone we do make every effort to stay on schedule. But, when we can’t, we’ll still try to entertain.

See you tomorrow!

No, no server issues.  No dramatic power outages (we did have that the other night, but not last night).  No other acts of God.  I fell asleep.  Yep.  After a couple of days of exhausting work at my day-job and on one of my other sites, I told myself I would take a short nap and then put up the comic.  Funny, Jim laid down next to me to do the same thing.  We woke up this morning.

Upside?  We feel pretty good.  Still overly busy, but sleep is a good thing.  So is getting the comic up on time.  Perhaps next time we’ll manage both.

Sorry…

We went around a couple of times on exactly what was going to happen in this comic. Michelle finally decided on the minimalistic direction to take it. When I saw it, my first reactions was, “Harry really is a lunatic, isn’t he?” I don’t know if any of you are playing along in our Laugh Olympics in the forum, but we did mention that this storyline, and Harry’s psychosis about the paperboy, is based loosely on similar situation in one of our favorite movies. If you can guess what movie it is, post in the forum, or leave a comment here.

I think some of the people who read today’s strip (Issue 140) might feel that Harry is being exceptionally rude to Blip when he finds out he’s married. Well, considering how rude Blip is to him, I think it’s a bit justified. Also, it’s one of those cases where you find out something about someone that shocks you so much, you forget all etiquette. I know there have been people I have met with less than stellar personalities, who I later found out were married. I would be shocked, wondering who the heck would have married them, and secretly wondering how they put up with such a person. Granted, I understand that most people act differently when it comes to family and then outside acquaintances. Still, it make you wonder. That was what I was trying to convey with Harry in that strip.

The next 2 strips (Issues 141 and 142) were incredibly fun for me to do. I dreaded having to design the mayor’s office, but ended up loving it once I was into it. First of all, as a bit of trivia, the mayor’s office design is based loosely on a mayor’s office in a popular video game. I actually studied pictures of several real mayor’s offices in the U.S. and thought they all looked so pretentious! They looked like mini Oval Offices. I wanted something a little less flashy, and decided to do a parody of a movie or game one. Thankfully I found one I liked and used it as a model. I have to admit to not ever hearing of the game, much less playing it. Though, I did learn after the fact that my kids had played it a while back, having borrowed it from a family member.

Can I ask, are there ever any good mayors in comics? Most of the ones we run into are all corrupt and shifty. I guess those types of characters are more fun to write, and make for better drama.

Last, I also have to point to an inside joke, which literally only a handful of our close friends will get when reading the comic. Jim and I have been in a role-playing game since before we were married. I truly date myself here, but the campaign has been going on 16 years!–though only 3 years have passed in game time. It’s a superhero based game, using the DC Heroes universe. My character also happens to run an orphanage. Early in our gaming, I ran a game which had major events happens at the yearly “charity carnival.” Little did we know, that would be a recurring event in our game, and always the source of a lot of fun and drama. Thus, my inspiration to use it in the strip.

It’s really funny because the strip has taken on such a different tone lately, moving away from the “new kids on the block” focus of the Pixels, and widening the focus on the town and supporting characters. This was always our plan from Day 1, but as we mentioned before, we did not want to rush things. It’s neat to finally be writing storylines we came up with nearly 2 years ago! Hope you all enjoy them.