While the title of today’s post might sound like the title of a very interesting term paper for an English Lit major, it is not. It is far less serious than that.

First, I’d like to point out that according to our statistics program, the top 3 countries that read this webcomic are the US, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates. The internet is a surprising and wonderful thing! So hello, Dubai, hope you’re enjoying!

Second, who remembers that great Sci-Fi show that ran in the ’90’s, Mystery Science Theater 3000? We all loved Joel and Mike and their zany talking robots, trapped in space and mercilessly forced to watch awful B-rated flicks that would make Ed Wood cringe in pain. Who doesn’t love a good viewing of Night of the Lepus, or Hercules Versus the Moon Men, after all? Especially with expert comedy commentary in the background.

Well, if you were a fan, you should know that Mr. Nelson and his band of merry men are far from done with their critical comical anaylsis of bad movies. They’ve started their own side program called Rifftrax, which are companion commentaries for the PC that you play overtop of a DVD. They run around $3 a piece and they are for all kinds of modern movies these days. I highly recommend any of the new Star Wars trilogy which I had the pleasure (and horror) of watching the other night. If anything, their sense of humor has only gotten better from the original show.

My next news item is for anyone who steeped in the wonderful world of H.P. Lovecraft: I found (thanks to my friend Cynthia), a musical version of Shadow Over Innsmouth. And I have had this song stuck in my head on loop for a week straight. If you don’t know what’s going on, read the story synopsis first.

Now I will stop abusing Wikipedia and bid you adieu for the week.

Jen

I’ve got nothin’ today, folks. Nada. Zilch. Zippo.

Hope everyone is having a good Monday.

I suppose this week when I get around to seeing Watchmen I’ll have a blog post to write, but until then, sorry. Today I’ve got no juice.

- Jen

 
Good morning! Firstly, say hello to Germany and Sweden, who are still topping out lists for non native English speaking nations. Hi guys, keep coming. Tell your friends.

A few things - one, you’ve noticed that I posted two pages today. While that eats the buffer up a little bit, it’s necessary because they were painfully boring, and I am trying to get us to Page 12 (the start of what I consider to be actual plot and tight writing) as fast as possible. This is the ONLY time two pages will be posted, sorry, but they all get better from here.

As for the news of the day, may I please draw your attention to a very interesting art show that is coming into my neck of the woods: The Vader Project is a very unique art show that takes hot new artists and has them decorate Darth Vader’s helmet in various ways. This strange and gorgeous phenomenon was spawned at Star Wars Celebration IV in Los Angeles in 2007, and traveled out from there across the UK and the United States. They come out beautifully, all odd and one-of-a-kind, and this is totally worth seeing.

The flier, below:

It will be at the Warhol on the Northside, I encourage any Pittsburghers to go. I know I certainly will.

Until next week,

Jen

Good morning!

A few things for your Monday: one, is a ‘new’ comic suggestion for a comic that has been running for a few years now called The Adventures of Popsicleman. Without giving away any spoilers, it is a black and white weekly comic… about a popsicle that fights crime, and it is also packed full of completely non-sequitor, g-rated, outlandish and sometimes downright ridiculous geek humor. If you are a geek, and you want to see a guy who is a frozen snack treat put villains behind bars, well, you’re a very specific person, and you’re also in luck.

Second is perhaps the coolest thing google search has yielded me in a long time, and that is lunch bag art. This guy is a graphic artist who decorates his kids’s lunch bags during his break at work every day, and he’s got some phenomenal skills.

^ From the movie Labyrinth, which I found terrifying, mostly because I find David Bowie terrifying. Note the giant spike mullet and contact juggling ball. Still, despite the creepiness, this was one of my favorites.

^ How could I resist loving this one? A very stylized Morpheus and Matthew from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series.

So, go check him out, there’s a goldmine of sci-fi/fantasy art floating around over there.

See you next week.

- Jen

Hello and good Monday. I checked the stats and found that the top three countries viewing the comic are the USA, Canada, and a surprise with Germany passing up the UK now. Hi, Germany! Glad to have you!

Let’s see, first I’d like to apologize for the delay of comic today - I’m still getting used to all of the functions of comic press, and as Anne mentioned in the last, there are plenty of buttons you can touch that will break things. But it’s all arights now, and the next month’s comics are all all uploaded and ready, along with the vote incentives, so we’ll cross our fingers and hope that works. On to better business.

Upon seeing the first 10 pages I realized, with some dismay, how painfully slow the story moves. They’re all important pages, as you will see later, but I think it took me seeing them in order to figure out how to make things move at their proper pacing. So I went and revised the script from page 10 on and it is a lot tighter now, but that still leaves us wading through the swamp for now. Anne and I have discussed eventually going back and redoing some of those pages, and perhaps we will. But for now, we will go ever forwards, safe in the knowledge that both the writing and the architectural perspective get better from here.

On a non-comic related note, I went to see Neil Gaiman’s Coraline last Friday and it was, in summary, wonderfully creepy. First, as far as the animation and the cinematography is concerned, the choice to go with stop motion was perfectly apropos for the story, as it gave a very doll-like quality to the characters. Things weren’t as oozy as they generally are in Gaiman stories, but it still made the movie as far as ambiance went.

As far as the story itself, though there were some things changed from the book, overall I thought they did a good job, and I understand why some things were added or altered. I’m a little surprised that Gaiman himself did not do the treatment and the screenplay, as he already proved his chops with Stardust and Beowulf, but Selick did a good job. Nothing can quite compare to the prickling sensation one gets on the back of the neck when reading Gaiman’s narratives, but I found myself jumping out of my seat plenty of times nevertheless.

So if you’re looking for something to do this weekend, Coraline. I recommend it.

See you next week,

Jen

Hello!  Look, a shiny new blog thingy!  Jen was so kind as to instruct me in its use (as well as the 40 zillion ways I could mangle the site if I pressed the wrong button, eep!).

Thank you, first of all, to everyone who helped to get this site up and running.   All the tech support, the encouragement, the patience with midnight coding emergencies, and the people who let me “borrow their eyeballs” are greatly appreciated. 

I’m trying not to panic, as my art has suddenly gone from mostly private to about as public as it gets — the internet.   But ever so slowly, I find myself adjusting to the idea, and seeing all potential reactions & criticisms as a challenge and a chance to improve, rather than a reason to feel inadequate as an artist.   (…Yeah, I have issues with perfectionism.   Me and, oh, just about every artist ever.  I’m managing.)

Right now, I’m itching for the comic to move forwards.   Only not really, because I want to keep a buffer of several comics ahead of the current post.   But my art has been improving so very quickly, much to my surprise and pleasure, that I squirm every time I look at the first few pages.   I seem to be stuck in one of those phases where the page I’m working on right now is the best I’ve ever done, the page I did before it is at least passable, and everything before that, I would just as soon sweep under the rug.  It’s a good sign that I’m improving, if I could only hang onto my pride in my earlier work….

I’m up around page 16, right now, and the art has taken a leap for the better.  Suddenly, we have dynamic angles!  Varying distances!  Proper perspective!!!   And I’m feeling less and less scared to try unfamiliar approaches, and more and more eager to, because I’m starting to trust my own abilities.   I may not know how to do some things, but I’m smart and a good artist and there’s no reason why I can’t learn.

(Also, I’m finally out of the diner scene.   Thank heaven.)

Really, the worst thing is that this is my first graphic novel, and there’s just no getting around that.  I can either go back to the beginning and draw every single page over again, or I can make my peace with that fact, get over it, and keep moving forwards.  So, on I go!

Hello and good morning, internet.

It’s been a heckuva week, but we sailed through it with minimal damage. Catastrophes were all averted, and though my blood pressure has raised 10 points during the process, the site now runs silky smooth.

The updates will come regularly on Mondays now, supposedly at midnight, but due to that being a very heavy traffic hour for Comicpress, it will more likely be up around 2am, along with the Top Web Comics vote incentives.

May I start out with a great big thank you: Brian Hykes, you are a darling and a prince for giving up a few evenings to help out with the templates, Mike Cuccaro, again thanks for the hours and the effort, the colors and the text look awesome, and Casse L, your pixel pushing has paid off because everything looks spectacular. Oh, and Dad, thanks for helping me install everything.  I can’t tell you how grateful we are. 

You computer people, you are pretty awesome. 

As for the State of the Tempest this morning, everything is looking good. Anne is back to her normal schedule of page producing, and we are experimenting with her doing more than one page per week. We’re going to try it for a few months and let the buffer run up and if it seems to be working, we might consider going up from a Monday update to a Monday/Friday update. We will wait and see.

Also, I want to say THANK YOU to all the readers: out of over 9,000 comics you managed to put the Tempest at #167 with your votes over at TWC, which is incredibly exciting for us. But we need the support, so please, continue clicking that happy little button and let’s get us in the top 20!

In another piece of news, I did some web surfing and found two new comics for you:

1. If anyone is interested in the horrifically wonderful world of H.P. Lovecraft, I highly recommend Larry Latham’s Lovecraft Is Missing. It’s well written, it’s creepy, the art is fantastic, what more could you want? Plus, Larry is a swell guy, so go check him out.

2. Also, if you’re an American history buff, I just ran across what has to be the most adorable comic ever about civil war re-enacters called The Battle of Dovecote Crest. It’s not very far along yet, but I’m already quite in love with it. Hailey Bachrach and Bridget Underwood are a fantastic author/artist duo, so you should surf over and visit them.

That’s all for now. See you next Monday.

Jen

Whatever the bug was, I managed to fix it. Now I’ll sit on my hands and wait to see if it sticks.

-j

Before I get a slew of emails I wanted to let everyone know that yes, I’m aware that Page 1 isn’t loading right. I have no idea why this is, but we’re working on it. It will hopefully be fixed in the next 24 hours. Ah well, what’s a website launch without some bugs? Thanks for the patience!

-j