Ken Meyer Jr. is writing a column over at comicattack.net called Ink Stains that I’m enjoying quite a bit. The latest column focuses on the work of one of my favorite early ’80s creators, Rick McCollum. (McCollum is mentioned favorably in the Past Works section of this website.) It has a long quote on Rick’s work from yours truly.

I’ve recently upgraded this blog to the latest version of WordPress. I had read a number of reports on a malicious worm attacking and wrecking any number of blogs running older versions. Thankfully, the upgrade ended up ending up being relatively easy. I’d like to do a little bit of tweaking and updating yet, but that will have to wait for another day.

I haven’t had much of a web presence lately, but this is something I intend to change very shortly.

I’m in the process of upgrading WordPress to the latest version because of some news about a worm I just got. This site may look a little out of whack for a day or so because of this. (However, if I do nothing, I’m afraid I’ll have a much bigger mess of my hands.)

More to come…

A few folks have been wondering where I’ve been. http://www.benadamsarts.com/?p=235 explains why I haven’t been blogging much.

I hope to be back shortly with a post reaffirming where I want to go with this blog and the Misfit’s Journey story in the months to come.

I’m glad the Dems did well in the ‘06 elections. Edwards and Kucinich are currently my favorite ‘08 candidates (but this is subject to change). I loved the Ultimate Superman DVD Collection, but the Richard Donner Superman II cut wasn’t quite as good as I expected it to be. Little Miss Sunshine was my favorite film of ‘06. I’m really glad that Rob Walton published that big Ragmop volume, but I still don’t have a copy. I saw some Bill Moyers footage from a media reform conference that was really great.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about above, please Google some of the terms above and learn something new.

Got questions that need answers? Ask ‘em here.

Some people do webcomics because they want to make a living doing them. Some people realize the improbablity of this happening, but want to make some ancillary income off their webcomics. Some people hope that their webcomic will lead to a deal with a print comics company or perhaps a TV or movie deal. These are some of the most common goals that webcomics creators seem to have. Personally, I wouldn’t mind at all if these things did come about for me, but I can see OTHER benefits to doing this comic.

The process of writing MJ allows me to reflect on who I have been and who I’m capable of being. It allows to develop my presentation of who I have been, who I am now, and who I could be. It helps me maintain a sense of purpose to my life. I can see the process of writing it helping me to write books and screenplays in the future. I can see the themes in it carrying over into Op-Ed pieces I might write, inspirational speeches I might give, or even into some kind of run for public office.

On the short term, I don’t see MJ making big bucks for me, but I think it could lead to any number of positive things for me in the future.

Frankly, I see plenty of better ways for me to make good money than doing webcomics. They just aren’t that lucrative for me right now compared to other things I can do. I want to keep working on this story anyway, though, but I see many other gains to be made in doing so.

In an academic kind of way, I’m curious about the possible ways people CAN make money with webcomics. I want to do some of my own experiments in this area, but I’m honestly not planning on webcomics being my sole source of income.

I see myself as being something of a booster of grassroots/”homegrown”/small press/alternative comics. Actually, I’m a fan of independent film and alternative music and the things THEY can do too. I’m immensely curious about just how alt comics change with the times, and I honestly think webcomics are a big part of the future of alternative comics. At minimum, I want to be a spectator who observes the future of alt comics. Perhaps, just perhaps, my webcomics work will have some effect on the future of alt comics. We’ll have to see, won’t we?

Webcomickers like to write about the merits of keeping regular schedules for their work and the merits of webcomics portals like ModernTales.com. Personally, I’ve decided I’d rather focus on doing a good job with future MJ stories than maintaining a strict schedule. My experiments earlier this year have lead me to discover that I really don’t need a regular schedule or an affiliation with a portal to bring lots of traffic over to my stories. I may not make a lot of money right off the bat with the approach I’m taking to doing MJ, but I see myself maintaining a strong readership that could lead to any number of positive things in the future.

While I just don’t feel the pressure to do MJ on a tight schedule, I DO feel the pressure to blog regularly. Some months I’ll be blogging more than others, but I fully intend to maintain some kind of regular presence at BenAdamsArts.com.

For whatever reason, this poll — summarized on this page — didn’t get as many responses as the last one. Most likely, this is just because the first one was running when the first MISFIT’S JOURNEY episode was getting over a hundred visitors a day and a lot of those visitors were also coming over to this blog.

For the record, all the possible answers from the poll will be covered in future episodes of MISFIT’S JOURNEY.

I’m perhaps a little disappointed that the poll didn’t get more responses, but on the other hand — for reasons covered in my last post — I haven’t had the time to focus on keeping the traffic coming over here.

I’ve learned a lot of traffic-building tricks when I published the first MJ on the web, so I’m confident I’ll be bringing over skads of traffic here in the months to come, but things are probably going to stay fairly quiet here on the short term.

Nevertheless, I like the idea of having polls here to facilitate some amount of communication with visitors, so I hope to continue with the polls later this year.

I plan to be writing more about how I intend to bring the next wave of traffic over here once I have the time.

So, yeah, things have been quiet here lately. The big reason for this is that I’m in the process of making a couple of big changes to my life that are just giving me less time to work on this blog and my comics.

First of all, I started a new job a little less than a month ago. Over the long haul, this is going to improve my life, but it’s creating a lot of short-term chaos.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’m also about to move to a new apartment. All the extra space is going to be worth the trouble though. I’m planning on spending a fair amount of time furnishing and decorating the new place, and, realistically, this is going to cut into the time I have to work on this blog and my comics.

I expect to have settled into a new routine that will give me more time to blog and work on comics in late September or early October. Don’t be surprised, though, if things are quiet here for a little over a month.

I want to go into my plans for the next MISFIT’S JOURNEY, and I will do that when I have the time. Also, even though I’m busy, I promise to promptly attend to any comments that show up here.

Due to some major changes in my life, I’m really hurting for time right now. This is a situation that will abate in a month or two, BUT I need to make some short term changes to this blog until the storm passes (so to speak). The MISFIT’S JOURNEY poll in the sidebar has ended. The results to it can be seen here. Due to a lack of time, I’m NOT starting a new one. I want to be back with a new one in a month or two though.

I’ll be back soon with my thoughts on this last poll and an explanation for why I’ve been so busy lately.

The next poll is going to be on blogs…all kinds of blogs. I’ll try to have it up later this week. Honest.

The next MISFIT’S JOURNEY story is called “Confessions Of An Overworked Grad Student”. It will be 6 30 page chapters. (The page size will be the same size used on the current episode.) I’ve got a very detailed plot worked up already, but it needs to be finessed just a little. I’d like to have the first chapter out either late this year or early next year. I’d like to have four chapters out sometime next year.

I’m still getting a handful of visitors to the first MJ on a daily basis. (Comments are always nice, folks.)

I’m going through some changes in my life that have slowed down my blogging, but I plan to be back with a vengeance later this week. (I’ll go into the changes very shortly.)

I’m behind on my email too. *sigh*

More to come…

Some new poll questions and news on the next MISFIT’S JOURNEY episode will be on the way in a day or so.

I know I’ve been quiet lately. I’ve back back with some substantial thoughts, news, and musings soon.

Just recently, I managed to finish working my way through a folder full of MISFIT’S JOURNEY related email that I had trouble answering right away.

There were a few respondents who wrote and told me about their online efforts. Since I liked what they’re doing, I’ve decided to go ahead and link to it:

1. Nate Bear is currently in a “post grad state of limbo” and works at a supermarket making “miserable wages”. You can check out his comic strips at his Cramped Comics site. He said in his email that he relates to the experiences described in the first MISFIT’S JOURNEY.

2. Skip Williamson is an underground comix legend and the creator of CLASS WAR COMIX. He’s known Robert Crumb, Jay Lynch, and many other notable creators. His website is here. He didn’t say anything about my comics in his email, but I’m flattered that he thought it was worth the effort to email me about his site.

3. Blake (no last name in his email) is a graduate of Macalester College (which is here in Minneapolis). He says he “throughly enjoyed” the first MJ. I’ve run into other Macalester grads who really liked the first episode too. I suspect this is because Macalester and Saint Olaf College — where I went to school — are colleges that are somewhat similar. He has a political blog called TheNextLeft.com that I’ve enjoyed reading. (Right now, it’s down, so I can’t look up his last name.)

4. Bruce-Erik Osborn didn’t send me any cool links, but I like what he said about artists who, like me, have backgrounds in physics: “There are many great artists, even filmmakers, who have a background in physics. The director of the Fred Astaire movie “Top Hat” (I forget his name), and Frank Capra (a graduate of Cal-Tech), come immediately to mind. The enquiring nature of such individuals can lead to original insights which they often find ways of affixing into a particular medium with new clarity. I would say in your case that its greatest asset IS its individuality, in several dimensions.” (Cartoonist Ted Rall, animator and filmmaker Mike Judge, and Robocop director Paul Verhoeven are three other artists I can think of who have physics backgrounds.)

Here’s a photo of a war protest I went to at Macalester College when the war in Iraq first broke out:

I knew then that Dubya’s war was a very, very bad idea. Time has proven me right, hasn’t it?

I took a couple dozen pictures of the protest actually. I’m planning on using some these photos as reference material for crowd scenes for future episodes of MISFIT’S JOURNEY. I noted in my last post some of the improvements I want to make to my 3d art. These photos are going to help me in doing just that.

That’s all for now. I’ll try to be back soon.

Criminy! I haven’t posted here in over a month! Here’s an update on what’s happening in this neck of the woods.

Things are going pretty well with me. I’ve been lurking around at various webcomic-related and comics-related sites quite a bit. I want to start participating a little more than I have been, so there may be more posts from me on sites like Fleen, The Webcomics Examiner, Comixpedia, and the Comics Journal Message Board in the days to come.

In addition to having a job and a life away from the web, I’ve been heavily preoccupied with the launch of MISFIT’S JOURNEY and I’m the process of working on the second episode. I’ve gotten over 4,000 visitors to the Episode One page on my WCN site so far, and a fair number of comments, donations, and emails too. I ended up getting a little overwhelmed by all the email too, but I finally managed to answer everything.

I used blog ads and Google AdWords ads to drive a lot of traffic over to the story. The most effective ad was the one I placed on Tom Tomorrow’s thismodernworld.com site. It resulted in some of the best emails and comments I received on the story.

I had been considering doing the second MJ story arc as a daily or weekly webcomic, but I’ve decided against that. Instead, I’m just going to post chapters running approximately 25 pages whenever I get them done. My experiences with the first episode lead me to conclude that I will still have a substantial readership if I release the chapters in this way. Maybe going daily or weekly would take the numbers up even higher, but I think the quality of the work would suffer if I tried to do that. I’m open to doing this in the future, of course, but I just don’t think it’s the right call at this time. (I’ll see how things go with the second big story and take things from there.)

I’m still finalizing some of the details, but it looks like the next story will be 4-6 25 page chapters. I’ll release each chapter as I get it done, but I’m going to try to avoid extra long delays. The story I’m planning focusses on my year in graduate school and the various forces that derailed me. It has some long flashbacks to my youth in southern Minnesota and my Saint Olaf College education. It also has a “flashforward” to a period in Seattle when I’m fairly happy and have what I think I want.

While I’m proud of what I accomplished with the first story, I’m not completely happy with the 3d art and want to impliment some improvements for the second story. I want my Poser characters to have a wider variety of body types. I want more variation in how clothes fit the characters and I want to do a better job with clothing folds and wrinkles.

I’ll be posting links to more of my Poser art here in the days and weeks to come.

Comments and questions are always welcome!