Just wanted to let you know that I finally got the wallpaper section back on its feet. Download till yer heart’s content.

I was recently interviewed by the fine gents over at Comics Coast to Coast. We discussed the pronunciation of my last name, why I hand letter my comics, and my plans for 2012. Click here to check it out.

Well, thanks to Phil (aka: Frumph) from ComicPress, the site is back up.

I’m aware that there’s still some little problems with how the site looks and I’m doing my best to fix them. Problem is, I’m no web designer and I’m having trouble finding anyone who knows how to make these changes. If you got any advice, I’m all ears.

Edit: I’ve decided, in the interest of speed, to pursue outside help and have begun talking to certain folks about doing a little webdesign work for me. I’m interested in “prettying” up the site anyway, might as well let a real professional take a crack at it.

Just wanted to give you all the scoop on what the heck is happening to my website. My host server decided to do some maintenance this morning and my site went down. No big deal, it happens. But my site stayed down for a good six hours. I contacted them on my lunch break and got the runaround. I got home from work and the site was still down. I contacted them again, again, and again. Finally, the best they could do was to give me this lousy, default version of WordPress. No ComicPress (which is the theme I use to post comics) and no apologies.

They broke my site and refused to fix it.

So now I’m back to square one. I’ll figure it out. But let this be a lesson to all you webcartoonists out there – BACK UP YOUR WEBSITE! Do NOT for a second think that your host can do it for you.

I’ll be spending the weekend repairing the damage they’ve done, but the site should be up by Monday. Thank you very much for your patience.

I’ll give you a moment to let that whopper of a revelation sink in.

I’m predisposed to groovin’ on comic book movies. So when I saw the line-up of summer movies this year I said: “Oh Hell yeah!” and  immediately began compiling a list of movies I would see this year. First up: Thor.

Now I’ve never been a huge fan of Thor, though I did love his work in Adventures in Babysitting. But I was looking forward to seeing this movie as well as the new Captain America flick because these movies are pieces of this massive puzzle that Marvel is putting together which is all leading up to a massive cinematic event: Battleship, The Movie!

No, that’s not true, but can you believe someone greenlit that idea?

Anyway, Thor came out (the film was released, he didn’t reveal that he was gay) and I had every intention of seeing this movie as soon as possible. But now that it’s here I’m overcome with a “Meh, I’ll catch the matinee” attitude.

My problem is that, after seeing the trailers, I feel I’ve already seen the movie. I’m guessing the movie starts in Asgard, Thor says something blasphemous (like “I really empathize with the mortals on Jersey Shore“), Thor then gets kicked out of Asgard, he meets Natalie Portman and goes through a gauntlet of fish-out-of-water sequences (“Thou has a magic carriage!” “Thou has a magic box that contains moving paintings!” “Thou has Wikipedia!”), Agents of SHIELD conk him on the head and drag them back to their headquarters (which is made up of flimsy, paper tubes for some reason), Loki drops off some death-dealing robot like a mother dropping off her destructive child to a daycare facility, Thor gets his hammer back and hits lots of things with it, the end.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope it’s a great flick that’s able to stand shoulder to shoulder with Spider-Man and Iron Man. But I fear it’s, at best, “OK.”

You don’t want that, do you?

Instead, sit back and listen to a live recording of the Geeks of Steel podcast this Friday night! Geeks of Steel is a weekly podcast hosted by me and Matt Forcum (the cartoonist behind Robot Beach) where we discuss all sorts of geeky stuff. This will be our first attempt at doing a live show and we’re hoping, assuming the technology doesn’t fail us (or vice versa), to make this a regular thing. It’ll be on Matt’s Ustream channel – click here to be whisked away there right now. The broadcast will start around 8:00 PM central time.

Hope to see you guys there!

The Book of Biff is a great gag-a-day webcomic created by Chris Hallbeck, which puts the titular character through a gauntlet of surrealistic circumstances.  Also – he has antennae eyebrows for some reason. It’s one of those bizarre, brilliant comics that’s hard to stop clicking through. “One more comic” I’ll think to myself as I’m trying to leave his website.

In celebration of his five year anniversary, Chris is posting guest comics (one of them is drawn by yours truly) and offering 25% off all his books this week. Click here to check him out.

Matt and I have had many wonderfully geeky conversations over Skype. Then it hit us: It’s wrong to hoard all this dorky conversation to ourselves. We should allow other people to hear us talk about everything from Batman’s butler’s drinking problem to zombies pulling jury duty. So we’re starting a weekly podcast called “Geeks of Steel”.

Our first two episodes are up and ready for yer ears (click here to check ‘em out). Our plan is to have a new episode up every Sunday night (give you something to take to work with you on Monday). If you got any feedback regarding the show, please feel free to email us at geeksofsteel@gmail.com.

I’ve been thinking about doing some Bug strips that stay on a particular subject for a full week; like doing a whole week where I riff on going to movie theaters. Stuff like that. I was (and am) a bit worried that devoting a whole week to a subject may turn some people off, but folks seemed to like the Zombie Week I did a while back – though I’m sure that had more to do to people just liking zombies.

I don’t think it’d be a regular thing, just something to break up the monotony every month or so, but who knows? It might be a new way for me to do these strips. I’ve been drawing these strips for around a year and a half now and I still feel like I haven’t gotten a real grasp on how to do it. If memory serves, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the creators of South Park) said they didn’t really figure out their show until season five or six, and I’m sure this strip will be very different five years from now, both visually and writing-wise.

So what do you guys think?

I also want to thank Mary Varn, creator of the wonderfully geeky webcomic: NPC – click here to check it out, for all her help. I bothered her with many emails asking her questions like, “What sizes should I make the wallpaper at?” and “How do I get all this to display properly?” and “Why must all this stuff be so difficult?” and “Should I have a doctor look at this lump on my neck?”. Her knowledge and patience has been indispensable.

So have fun with the wallpaper. I’ll hopefully have time to make more goodies for you guys in the coming months.