Rants 2007 January - June

I think I've realized that I'll have to draw Galehaut's face once.

1/18/08

Some days you just gotta hope that no new readers start today.

1/24/08

1/25/08

I started to do this one in line drawing, but I changed my mind because I wanted maximum parallelism in the images from the future and present. There's something that triangles are objectively better for The original version of the same gag:

Astute readers and/or readers who've just been with me that long will recognize this cartoon as fanfiction of the imaginary screen property King Arthur in Time and Space; specifically of the movie KAITAS III: The Search for Lancelot. The stretch of road I was driving when I wrote this gag still makes me think of it.

2/14/08

I didn't realize till two days ago that this gag was going to end up my Valentine's Day gag.

2/15/08

My version of this scene is cribbed from memory from the version in The Once and Future King. Certainly Lancelot calling Galahad's and Arthur's names while his mind slowly gives way is an outright swipe.

2/25/08

Due to circumstances with which I shan't bore you in this space, as you may have noticed I was unable to update the cartoons for Sunday through today at the usual times. In case you hadn't already checked, I made an announcement at the AKOTAS message board and temporarily uploaded the cartoon at the in-progress mirror site. The precise present circumstances aren't likely to recur, but in future cases of being unable to update here at the main site, if any, I'll follow the same procedure. (Of course, if the in-progress mirror site ever gets caught up, I'll be posting current cartoons there on some value of a regular basis anyway, but till then...)

3/16/08

A reader seems to have emailed me about the conclusion of the Galehaute arc. I say "seems to have emailed" because I've checked all the other places where I get AKOTAS feedback and I don't find the message there. I don't find it in my inbox either, which means I must have accidentally deleted it. Oops. Sorry. But, since I was asked, I do want to address the issue brought up. We saw the other day, in the space arc Galehaute is doomed to pine away and die in a few weeks from being on the outs with Lancelot. In the fairy tale/baseline arc Galehaute will soon pine away and die from Lancelot being missing; if you know the sources, you knew that. My accidentally ignored correspondent asked whether what's going to happen in the contemporary arc is any more pleasant, since it's his last chance for a happy ending, at least in the three major arcs. I can't make up my mind. On the one hand, I've set up the character as a co-worker of Morgan and as having moved to the Camelot metropolitan area purely on the strength of his attraction for Lancelot. It won't be giving anything away to longtime readers, after some of the flashforwards I've put up, to say that the contemporary arc has several examples of characters coming to less unpleasant ends than in the legends, and Galehaute could come to be one of them. On the other hand it'd be awfully neat and tidy, after Galehaute's running gag all along being that he's too tall for his head to fit in the panels, for his last appearance to be the one when his face was revealed.

4/1/08

Dap seems to have been an invention of T.H. White; I don't find him in the Morte or the Vulgate. He's described as a brother of Ban (Lancelot's and Ector de Maris' father) and Bors senior (Bors junior's and Lionel's father), but - extrapolating from the naming conventions of the day which White alludes to briefly - with a name like Gwenbors he's most likely a bastard half-brother. This would explain how he comes to be a mere squire (if also a trainer) rather than a landed prince like Ban and Bors. Recall that Arthur, generally assumed to be Ector de Forest Sauvage's bastard (by all but Ector), was slated to be Kay's squire till his true heritage was revealed. Uncle Dap is another instance of the same sort of relationship.

4/2/08

It's been awhile since any of Merlin's webcartoonist friends appeared in AKOTAS. Merlin is alluding to Monday's Real Life. I pledged when young never to see The Sound of Music or 2001: A Space Odyssey until I could see them on the big screen. Then in 1985 2010: Odyssey Two opened in theaters and my friends all told me I needed to see 2001 first. So I watched it from a rental copy. On VHS. On a 12-inch tv screen. In black and white. I still haven't seen The Sound of Music. For anyone who thinks it matters, I wrote this gag before I read Tuesday's Real Life.

4/3/08

I am reliably informed that Gwenbors does appear in the Morte and the Vulgate. He just doesn't appear in the capacity White (and I) gave him, nor (therefore) in the scene where I was looking for him.

4/4/08

Well this is a first. Today's cartoon marks the first time that I executed an AKOTAS in triangle style despite having drawn pencil rushes for the gag already. Remember how sometimes my scanner craps out on me? No? Well, it does. Unplugging it and waiting for awhile seems to set it right. But when you get home from class at 21:30 and you're just starting to pull things together, that doesn't seem a viable option. Tried one last time at the last minute. Also this must be the first time since I started an LJ that I've run newsposts here three four days in a row.

4/12/08

Yesterday's AKOTAS was drawn with the mouse when my scanner failed at about 02:45 GMT, 0:45 past the opening of the update window described in the FAQ. I didn't want to wait for the scanner to get better, which it does when I unplug it as described in previous newsposts, so I drew yesterday's with the mouse. But I didn't like how that came out and, today once the scanner had spent some time unplugged and had recovered, I successfully scanned yesterday's rushes and replaced the original update with the one it ought've been. For historical purposes, here's how yesterday's appeared for the first day it was up:

At time of writing this, I still haven't got a gag for today ...

4/14/08

Here's part of the reason I decided to make Elaine fictional in the contemporary arc, like Aihok and Effex and Morgan's other fey allies from the baseline and space arcs: So she could appear in this storyline swiped from cartoons I drew when I was the age Arthur is now, and perhaps in revivals of other gags written for the same character. The other part is that I couldn't think of a variation on Elaine's story worth setting in the contemporary arc, given that [spoiler deleted]. But I didn't feel I could leave her out of it either.

5/21/08

Four years, no missed updates. I've had a couple of rought semesters in a row and I think often that AKOTAS has suffered. At the moment just less than 5% of daily updates in four years have been fillers, and that's not counting regular updates done in triangle style because I didn't trust myself with a pencil that day or that month. But the past few weeks I've felt I've been getting back into the swing of it. We'll see whether that outlasts summer vacation.

6/2/08

The flashback in the middle frame is to this cartoon.

6/21/08

If you didn't know this was coming, you may have missed or forgotten this one.

6/26/08

I always said that it'd be the single-panel rule that'd do me in. The Daily Grind rules disallow single-panel cartoons more often than once in two weeks. I drew a single-panel gag for Monday 6/16 and failed, as has been my practice, to make note of it in my reminders spreadsheet. I don't remember that I even thought of it - I guess, since I was drawing on a Sunday, maybe I forgot that this cartoon was a weekday, Grind cartoon. I drew another single-panel gag two days ago, Tuesday 6/24, a week and a day after the other one. (This one I did enter into my reminders spreadsheet.) It was noted on the Daily Grind message board, three hours before the 6/24 deadline, that I was in danger. But lately I only check that message board on Fridays. I was sent a private message on the subject by one of the message board members. But it didn't come until about an hour and a half before the deadline. So I didn't see notice of the private message till the morning of the 25th, too late to throw together a rescue panel. At this writing, as of the last time I looked at the message board the judges haven't ruled. There was some talk on the message board that I may still be alright, on the grounds that I uploaded my cartoon for the 25th before the deadline for the 24th. But I recall that the judges recently set a rule that all panels for a given day's Grind cartoon must be the same image file, so they can tell which portions of a multiple-day upload are to be counted for which days. Or perhaps that ruling only applies to multiple-day uploads; but I still don't think that that hairsplitting is going to save me. I feel a little stupid, but I'll also feel relieved if I no longer have to contrive extra panels out of gags whose delivery is naturally single-paneled if they fall on weekdays. Of course I'm still committed to putting up a cartoon every day, just as I already was before the Daily Grind.

6/28/08

As expected, the judges of the Daily Grind contest have ruled that I'm out on grounds of violation of the single-panel rule. Today's is the 1500th daily AKOTAS since it began. It almost wasn't. At 16:55 CDT yesterday I sat down to create this cartoon, and a storm came through my town and knocked power out in scattered areas all over the city, including our townhouse complex. My wife and I fell back on the ancient and honored method for passing time of reading a book, for about an hour and a half. Then we decided that going to see whether there was still power at the restaurant hosting my 30th high school reunion get-together was better than sitting at home waiting to see when the power would come back on. The restaurant did have power. We enjoyed ourselves, but we heard while we were there that there's at least one section of the city that may be without power for four or five days, and on the way back from the restaurant all the traffic lights that had been dead on our way out were still dead. We got home about 22:30. If we hadn't had any power, this cartoon would have to have waited to be completed and uploaded as much as fourteen to sixteen hours later than usual, till I'd got to a public library. But we did discover that power was back on - since, according to the lapsed time on the stove clock, about forty-five minutes before we got home. So here we are.

6/30/08

Huncamunca was the name of Arthur's daughter in The Tale of Tom Thumb. The eponymous hero won her hand in marriage. She was also a small person, I think (I really need to replace my New Arthurian Encyclopedia. The copy I had went missing in a car theft two Decembers ago, which is a real bummer because it was a birthday gift from my mother.). At this time there are no plans to incorporate that episode into AKOTAS. Guenevere's doctor is Isolde. I'm sure three or four weeks is way, way too early to tell gender from an ultrasound, but this was the joke that came to me today. Think of it as a flashforward if you like.

Email Arthur, King of Time and Space

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