Working on today’s strip (Issue 249) took far longer than I expected. The very unexpected reason was that it was quite the challenge doing Mr. Smiley’s armchair. When we wrote the script, I kept thinking about where Mr. Smiley would make the call to the cops. I didn’t want to do it in his living. We’ve already seen the foyer, bedroom, living room, and kitchen. I realized there had to be another room in the house. Perhaps a study or office. I just imagine a place where he would sit to read his paper, make his calls, etc., I got this image of this Archie Bunker chair (and, yes, I realize I’m old enough that many of our young readers will have no idea who Archie Bunker is). I managed to find a few models of chairs that were close to work off of, but ended up having to do quite a bit of pixelling to get what I wanted. Anyhow, I know it’s such a small thing, but I really am nutty about details like that.

Everyone is on the mend on the home front. This weekend is the big push to get several projects done. After that, hoping we have some breathing room to get back on schedule with the strip…and get a Booyah done!

I have to admit, we’re having a great time with this current storyline. We are finally getting to do things that we have been planning, literally, for years! Another thing that I am personally enjoying is how much I’m starting to like certain characters. There is a lot of talking in writing that when you develop a character they take a life of their own, and in essence the story writes itself. Well, at least as far as the characters are concerned. Based on their personality, they will do things a certain way, and of course that will affect what is going on around them. For me, I am growing very fond of Verde. When Jim and I first started the comic, we actually had more plans for Char, the mother of the K kids, rather than their father. We knew he worked for the city and that was pretty much it. As time has gone on, he has taken a prominent role in the strip, and his character has not only evolved, but has become a crucial element to the strip. I know it sounds kinda odd that as the creator I could be disconnected enough to see the character in this way–but that really is what writing is about. It’s about creating something that can stand alone and apart from you, even if without you it would not have been here. I suppose that can be said about parenting too.

This storyline also breaks another milestone for us, being our longest connected run of strips. We’ve done other arcs which were covered through a series of strips peppered over a longer run. This arc is now 15 strips long, and has a few more to go before the end. We’re moving into new territory. Granted, we will still have the short mini-arcs, and we like to pace out the strip going between the different storylines and areas (meaning the workplace, home, CD, etc.), but this is setting a precedence, where we will now almost have to be doing more extensive runs, and dare I say a bit more of the serious stuff, in the future.

Another milestone to note is that this month we saw our biggest readership since January of 2008. I will very honestly admit that our erratic updating and other issue caused our hits to dip through the middle of this past year. However, we’re happy that not only are the numbers back, but they are stronger than ever! Over 500 new readers bookmarked the site in December! This readership has been a nice climb over the past few months, but it really is encouraging for us to see those nice high numbers again. We are uber excited and hope to do you proud as we continue this strip into it’s third year! (We’ll officially be 2 years old in March.)

All I can say is this. When we were toying around and throwing out computer phrases to work into the script, the name Cold Fusion (Issue 236) just sounded like the most awesome supervillian name. We came up with this quite some time ago and it’s really neat to finally introduce this character. Of course, getting back to our superhero roots, we’re really excited to have a story with a bit of suspense in it.

Wanted to post that comment graphic here because I know not everyone saw it on the splash page on Christmas. Love Mr. Smiley as Scrooge. Hope everyone had a happy holiday season, and here’s to a better (and more stable) 2009 ahead.