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

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

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

It’s been a while, but we’re still here.

Good morning, fellows. Especially those from Russia and the Balkans, which we seem to become very popular with this month. Privyet, good to see you.

There are a few news bits today, first of which is that you should all check out our links tab: we have a few new friends over there, a few really kickin’ comics! Give them a skim, if you have time.

Also, two of my personal favorites have status changes - Dovecote Crest has finished its first story arc and it is simply too adorable. If you haven’t read it, now is a good time as they are on guest art hiatus. Second is that Lovecraft is Missing is coming back from it’s hiatus on May 27th, be there, or be an equilateral rectangle.

The next piece of news, following my penchant for geek culture movie reviews,  is that I went and saw the Wolverine movie (I have yet to see Star Trek, that is next, don’t worry).

What can I say about this movie? It was… pretty gosh darn terrible. It had halfway done cinematography, no story continuity with the comic, too many random cameos that did not make any sense, and a script so bad I could have knocked a can of alphabet soup off the table and had a better finished draft written on my floor. But you know what? It was definitely watchable. One does not approach this type of thing with high expectations: I went to see Hugh Jackmanangst about his past and blow up half the Canadian landscape, and that is what I got. So if you’re into that kind of thing, go to see it. Just don’t get angry over what they did to Deadpool.

Alright onto happier topics: What ho! Did Neil Gaiman and Craig Russell make a graphic novel out of Coraline? Why yes, they did. How fantastic! Let’s all go see what that’s about.

Oh, and the last bit, check out the credits on this week’s page - two of our designers made cameos, and they will pop up again. See if you can find them a couple of pages from now.

That’s all, see you next week.

- Jen

Hi all.

Just a quick update to say that I will be making an appearance tonight at the KA-BLAM! Convention in Pittsburgh. What is KA-BLAM you ask? It’s the annual benefit event for the Pittsburgh ToonSeum, it should be a lot of fun, and a few of the local celebrities of the comic world should be making their rounds there. Starts at 7pm and all other information can be found on the ToonSeum blog site.

It’s a great convention for those looking to learn about or support the comic community here. I am flattered to get the invitation from Ricochet Graphics, and I anticipate adventure and fun! Hope to see you there!

- Jen