Thanks for reading.

11/19/13

I had more than one reader write in to complain about the analysis in the AKOTAS of November 17 of the situation with the President and the cancellation of health insurance plans. That's fair; I said in this space over a year ago that politics and government are not actually an interest of mine and I wasn't certain how well I could pull off doing cartoons about them. I also said in this space a few weeks ago that I hadn't anticipated doing cartoons about them in an era when they'd make me so angry, so it's turning out not so good for me either. So it wasn't a new idea to me when one reader went on to suggest that I ought to just get back to retelling the Arthurian legends. The problem I'm having with this idea is that, barring another timeskip, there're three and a half years to go on this project and hardly any legends left. In the classical sources - e.g., the Vulgate, Malory, White - there's the Pinel business and the Meliagrant business, and then there's nothing else before Mordred and Agravaine confront Arthur about Lancelot and Guenevere, and the manure hits the fan. You may recall, until the timeskip that led directly into the Grail year, I was in the habit, whenever stuck for a gag, of going into Malory's tales of Tristram and picking up wherever I had left off there. This worked because a) Tristram's story takes place nearly all away from Camelot and could be dipped into without mucking up what plot arcs were running with the main characters b) it was a means of getting genuine legends covered in my project. But that well's dry now. There are at least a few stories I skipped over and could do in flashback: Tristram and Isolde's first meeting after his fight with Morholt, Lanval, the Loathly Lady. But each of those is probably good for a month, tops, as Gareth was. Morholt, Lanval, Ragnell, Pinel, Meliagrant - five months out of thirty or thirty-six that would still have to be filled out with stand-alone dailies. My enthusiasm is at low ebb at the moment due to outside causes, obviously, when we're doing the intermediate hiatus format thing again. It's the wrong time to be making any longterm decisions assuming that low enthusiasm due to outside causes doesn't become the new status quo. But there's a thought that has always been lurking since the last timeskip: one more, final timeskip, one that would bring on the fall of Camelot next spring (for the AKOTAS tenth anniversary) or the spring after that.

Webcomics I read mornings: Kevin & Kell, For Better Or For Worse, C'est la Vie, Bring Back Roomies, Dumbing of Age

Webcomics I read M-W-F mornings: General Protection Fault, Nukees, Newshounds, Spacetrawler, Girl Genius

Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa mornings: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, All New Issues, Ctrl+Alt+Del

Webcomics I read middays: Calvin & Hobbes, Least I Could Do, User Friendly, LuAnn, Pearls Before Swine, Schlock Mercenary

Webcomics I read weekday evenings: Something Positive, Girls With Slingshots, Questionable Content, El Goonish Shive, Striptease, Dinosaur Comics, Medium Large, Shortpacked, Hijinks Ensue, Wapsi Square, Scenes from a Multiverse, Sheldon, Sluggy Freelance, Devil's Panties, Welcome To The Future, Help Desk, Real Life, PvP, LitBrick, Mary Elizabeth's Sock

Webcomics I read M-W-F evenings: Two Lumps, Bruno, Little Dee, Gospel of Carol, xkcd

Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa evenings: Darths & Droids, The Gutters, Bruno, Little Dee, NIMONA

Webcomics I read bedtimes: B.C., Station V3, Sinfest, Skin Horse, Peanuts

Webcomics I read Sundays: Order of the Stick, College Roommates from Hell!!!, Get Out of My Head, Blue Milk Special, Three Panel Soul, Zortic, The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, Megatokyo, Punch an' Pie, Gronk, Head Trip, Irregular Comic, Sporkman

Webcomics I hope will start updating again: Boxjam's Doodle, The Angriest Rice Cooker In The World, My Name is Might Have Been, Dandy & Company, AppleGeeks, No Room for Magic, Li'l Mell, Breakfast of the Gods, Something Happens, Butternut Squash, Sketchies, 13 Seconds, Anywhere But Here, Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break, Count Your Sheep, Kismetropolis, The Magnificent Adventures of Hieronymus Bosch, esquire, The Green Avenger, I Draw Comics, Reasoned Cognition, Tux & Bunny, Perry Bible Fellowship, Let's Be Friends Again, The Whovian Observer, Gossamer Commons

See also The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, Talk About Comics, The Living Comic, Online Comics Day, The Belfry Comics Index, The Webcomic List, Mister Bloo, Nth Degree, 100% Originality Theatre, Brian Roney's Webcomic Reviews, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed), Fleen, Mr. Myth, Comixtalk and Websnark.

Arthuriana sources I use or recommend:
Arthurian Legend
Arthuriana - the Journal of Arthurian Studies; the website of the quarterly journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society.
The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.
Camelot In Four Colors: A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics
Mystical-WWW - The Arthurian A2Z knowledge Bank which has encyclopedically-arranged entries on the characters of the Arthurian legends.
Early British Kingdoms - Arthurian Bios.
Historia Ecclesiastica.
Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table, Volume 1 and Volume 2.