A couple chapters ago I decided I would use rounded corners as comic symbolism to denote flashbacks… and then forgot about it when I got to Carl’s Hiawatha story. So that’s why the first couple pages have straight-edged corners, and the rounded ones don’t begin until here. I’ll put it all right for the eventual printed volume, but here online is where I preserve all my original mistakes!

Many thanks to acrisp for posting the answer first to my mystery from last week, to Brad for (independently) posting it second, and to everyone else who went looking. I really appreciated it!

I hope this page gives a little satisfaction to those among you who’ve been feeling a tad fed up with Carl lately.

Are you a pre-webcomic reader of Galaxion? If so, you may be able to help me with  a minor mystery. I recall having written about the Galaxion’s– I mean the actual ship here–backstory, a little throwaway line that Fusella likely uttered about why the ship is so unusual. The problem is, I can’t locate where this was. It may have been somewhere in the 13 issues of the comic series, or it may even have been in the earlier minicomics from the mid-’90s. It’s possible I’m completely mistaken and this line I’m remembering got cut out of a script or something, but my two most valuable Galaxion readers (my husband David and Galaxion’s co-creator Wendy ) also seem to remember it, so that makes me think it might be in the old pages somewhere. Does this sound familiar to you? If you think you know what I’m talking about, I would be very grateful if you could drop me a note. (It’s no big deal if I don’t end up finding it– this is just an itch I’ve been trying to scratch for days!)

Huh. Now where have we seen that before. Oh, in case you don’t remember who that guy is running the engine room, we first met him here.

Do you all remember that Star Pirates thing I blogged about a few weeks back? I wanted to mention that our little Galaxion Fleet is running along quite nicely now, and we had our first little war. It feels awkward to say it, but gosh, war is fun! I think it’s fair to say we all bonded over the experience, and had a great time running our little ships around the solar system in search of enemy pirates. If you want to join in, or even just poke your nose in to check out what it’s all about, you can use this link to get you there.

All of you still waiting for Carl to answer certain other questions may feel free to vent your frustration by… um… illustrating what you think Carl’s answers ought to be. And sending your clever (and quite possibly hideously sarcastic) drawings to me. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Hope you all in Canada/USA had great holidays in the past week… we spent ours watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. I’m talking the cartoon, not the movie. Since everyone has been telling me how great this show is, and since my kids got to take in a little live show of Avatar: The Last Puppetbender when we were at the Kids Read Comics convention, I decided it was about time to buy some of it on DVD. Also, if you will pardon my dropping into parent-mode for a minute, I was really excited about finding a cartoon with positive role models that my kids would enjoy. The TV shows my kids regularly aren’t exactly bad, but they lack a sense of adventure and some heroes worth looking up to. Plus a fine story and a sense of humour that isn’t all about the gross-out factor (never that funny to being with). We watched about half a dozen episodes, and took in some fireworks. A great way to spend our Canada Day weekend.

I’m just going to apologize now to all of you who are feeling just as impatient and frustrated as Scavina. I swear, when I wrote this chapter it didn’t seem like Carl was dragging his feet about answering Scavina’s concerns as much as he appears to be, in the week-to-week. I’ll try to nudge Carl along in the future pages, because he does in fact have a lot to say.

And now for another apology! I am going to have to take a break from the First Friday updates, at least for the summer months, while I try to build up my buffer again. One thing I’ve discovered about my work flow is that having a buffer isn’t just about the added security of having finished pages ready to go, but it’s also about being able to work faster. I can do all the comic tasks (drawing, lettering, inking, toning) more efficiently when I can do them in at least 5-page batches. Thumbnail 5 pages, pencil 5 pages, letter 5 pages, ink 5 pages, etc. The first page in a batch always takes the longest, and after that I get into the groove (or the zone, if you like) and do the other pages more quickly. At the moment I’m only managing at best 3 pages pencilled before I have to start the inks (so I don’t miss the update), which if you do the math means significantly more “slow” pages. I want to build that buffer up again so I can get back into that happy work flow! So to make a long story short I won’t have new page for you this Friday, but I will have art to share. I’ve got some super fan-art that I’ve been meaning to post for a while so you’ll get to see that for sure. Regular Tuesday updates will continue as usual!

Some great book suggestions last week, and thank you to all! This week I’m finally allowing myself to dive into a novel I’ve been anticipating for a while– Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones. She’s been one of my favourite authors for quite some time now, so anything new by her is a treat. But I saw the very sad news several weeks back that she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and although she has already undergone extensive treatment, I fear this may be her last book. I remember how shocked I felt after hearing a couple years back that Terry Pratchett (another favourite author) is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s. This was yet another blow to my literary world. So I’m savouring Enchanted Glass as best I can. And if you’re not a fan already (I would not be at all surprised to learn that many of you are), I urge you to check out Diana Wynne Jones’ many wonderful novels.

I haven’t gone into the background of the joint TerSA and IP project yet, but yes, it is rather unusual for the two organizations to be working together on the Jump technology.

I’ve been so absorbed with conventions and other activities (not to mention drawing the pages!) that I haven’t had much time to devote to reading for pleasure– a situation that I find distasteful, believe me– but I have managed to get hooked into Robin Hobb’s recent novel, Dragon Keeper. A free edition for the Kindle was offered a short while ago (I’m not sure if this deal has since ended), so I grabbed it and finally started reading it. If it hadn’t been free I probably wouldn’t have touched it, since I got tired of the dragon genre a while ago (with the exception of Naomi Novik’s His Majesty’s Dragon, which has more in common with the Hornblower series than it has with Pern), but I find I’m enjoying it. Although I expect I’ll be grumpy when I get to the end of it, since it’s very clearly the first of a trilogy, and most of the plot threads will undoubtedly be left hanging. I almost dread to ask this, since my reading time has been limited recently to a few pages before I fall asleep at night and it’ll be a while before I catch up, but then again I’m a book lover so I can’t not ask, once I’ve brought up the topic… has anyone read anything good recently they want to recommend?

Thanks to everyone who came out to Kids Read Comics this past weekend! The rain held out, miraculously, so nobody’s comics got overly wet. Big thanks go out to the organizers, especially Jerzy Drozd, Dan Mishkin, Edith Burney of the Chelsea District Library, and Dan Merrit of Green Brain Comics for all their efforts. It wasn’t a big show by any means, but the nice thing about quiet little shows is you get a rare opportunity to chat at length with the attendees as well as your fellow creators. I heard so many neat stories– like Ryan Estrada who is probably on his way to Costa Rica as I type this, to draw comics there until he decides it’s time to pick a new country to experience. Or Diana Nock, who led a “Build-a-Bot” workshop that totally inspired my 9-yr-old to draw lots of robot comics. I also want to give a special shout-out to Perry, who made my day when he brought by a small stack of my old comics for me to sign– including a copy of my very first minicomic (the cover of which you can see here) from 1993! Talk about a time warp. I happened to notice on the inside front cover I had written, “Find me at a con and I’ll draw something in this space!” Perry was amused to see I kept the promise, even after 17 years.

Please be sure to check out my blog post below for something that might be a fun diversion for Galaxion readers!

This week you may notice an advertisement running in the Skyscraper spot alongside the comic– one featuring a few characters from Galaxion! This ad is for a free browser-based game called Star Pirates. The game is set in a future where the Earth has been destroyed and all that are left are space pirates, roaming the asteroids and struggling to survive. And dominate.

Star Pirates do the sorts of things you’d expect pirates to do– raiding, fighting, gambling, etc– but you also improve your ship with researching technology, you meet and hire crew, and you take on mining jobs. All the while you are gaining experience and credits as you try to save up enough credit to buy those fancy bigger ships.

When the folks at Snakehead games first contacted me to design an ad for them, I thought it would just be a job. But you know what? I played the game and quickly got addicted! I like that this game can be played in little quick bursts whenever I have a few moments. I can hop over and do a quick Salvage Foray, a bit of research to improve my ship, and maybe attack another pirate or two to gain experience and increase my stats. You deplete your fuel and energy (not to mention Hull Points, if you’re battling) with each action, and then you have to wait for these to replenish before you can do it again. For me, this is a good thing because it ensures I parcel out my playing in little coffee-break-style spurts instead of frittering away hours at a go (and we won’t talk about games that’ve caused me to do that!). Supposedly this makes it ideal for bored cubicle workers, but I work from home so I don’t get that bored.

But what makes the game really neat– and what’s got me really excited about promoting it– is the social aspect. Pirates can join up into fleets, and fleets can combine into armadas. Wouldn’t it be awesome to join a Galaxion-themed fleet, with our own little community there, where we can go a-plundering and conspire to take over the universe (or at least just have a nice chat over some virtual tea and cookies)? A number of other sci-fi webcomics have already done just this, and I gotta say, it sounds like a lot of fun. Pirate-y role-playing is encouraged, but totally optional.

So if you too think this sounds like fun, joining up is easy. Click on the ad, or else click this link here which will take you to our very own welcome page, where you can register to receive your invitation to join the Galaxion fleet! Or take a quick tour of the game first, and see what you think. Warning: surprisingly addictive! Did I mention it’s free? Oh, and one thing to know is, you will have to achieve a few levels (easy to do) before you are permitted to post in the general forums, but until then you can read what’s been posted by others, and there’s lots of good game play tips and advice to be found there.

One more thing I should mention– Star Pirates is a totally separate entity from the comic, and I have no control over the game or the fleet (though I will happily play along). The in-game “story”, such as it is, is very much a creation of the players (who are nearly 50,000 strong).

My, my, somebody’s pretty grumpy…

As those of you who came out to the Toronto ComiCon this past weekend know, I just barely squeaked out this page in time– much of it was inked at the con! I try not to let that happen too often, but at least a few of you got to enjoy a little sneak peek. This recent show was one of the more quiet ones I’ve done recently (which meant inking a page at my table was actually possible), which on the surface may not sound like a good thing, but on the plus side it meant I had a chance to chat at length with my table neighbours, Scott Chantler and Leonard Kirk, two excellent guys from two very different sides of the comic track. Scott’s upcoming graphic novel Two Generals looks like it’s going to take the comic world by storm (no pun intended), particularly for Canadian reviews, who are always delighted to see more CanCon. And although I wasn’t sitting anywhere near them, I was happy to see Jeff and Chris of Dressed for Success doing well there. Chris made me a cute little Aria hand puppet that I will be sure to post a picture of by next week.

Don’t forget, this weekend is Kids Read Comics! in Dearborn, Michigan! It’s going to be lots of fun with plenty of comic workshops and other activities (plus a great guest list) so if you’re anywhere near the area, please come by and say hi!

Don’t know what’s going on? That’s because you’re jumping in at the end of a chapter! You’ll have a much easier time if you start at the beginning of the chapter, or even the beginning of the story.

That wraps it up for Chapter Five! Let’s hope Carl elaborates on that statement in Chapter Six.

One more reminder for this weekend– I’ll be at the Toronto Comicon down at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It’s their Fan Appreciation Event, which means on Sunday you can get a $10 voucher for your $10 admission to spend at any of the retailers at the show, so you effectively get in for free! Saturday is regular price, $10. I’ll be at table #20 in the guest/artist alley, but I don’t have a map of the floor so I don’t know how much help that’ll be. And it seems I’ll be on a panel titled “21st Century Webcomics” on Saturday at 12 noon, so, come on out with any questions you may have!

Also! Next weekend I’ll be in Dearborn, Michigan for Kids Read Comics! This event is hosted by the Dearborn Public Library and is totally free to attend. It’s aimed at kids of all ages so it’s a great to bring your kids/nieces/nephews/grandkids out to, but if you’re like me, you’ll like the all the great comics the guests are bringing to sell just as much as the kids will (I mean, have you read the Muppet Show comic by Roger Langridge? Brilliant. And he’ll be there!). And there is an excellent programming track for adults as well as kids, so there will be plenty to do. I’m really looking forward to this one.

Finally, you may have noticed the new “Support the Comic” button over to the right. Yep, that’s one o’ them donation buttons that allows you to throw a few coins into the virtual tip jar via PayPal. It’s not part of a donation drive or anything, it’s just there in case you ever feel like it, maybe the new page is really good or something, and you can show your appreciation. I’ve got a nice little thank-you gift available for those who choose to donate; it’s a digital copy of my recent minicomic. I’ll admit– one of my main reasons for choosing the minicomic format is because it’s sized just right to be loaded onto my Kindle. Despite all the hoopla about the iPad I still love my Kindle, and it makes me grin like my 6-yr-old to be able to read my comics on it at last (my regular pages are way too big, alas). The pdf file also reads just fine on any computer, though, so if you don’t use e-readers you can still enjoy it. This little side story won’t be posted on the website and because of its smaller size is unlikely to appear in any future trade paperbacks, so the only way to read it will be to buy one from me at a convention or to get the digital copy.  Tempted yet?