Updates of the New Year

With things as they are I haven't done any real work on Cutethulhu. I did make a page for January 01, nothing topical, but I couldn't upload it as I usually do. Found out The host is having some problems with FTP and that sort of technical stuff. So I'm not sure what will happen with updates. I may post the comic for tomorrow on the blog.

Comic 20091228

Exposition is where nothing actually happens but talking about things that have already happened. You will be exposed to a little more before something else happens here. Maybe something is happening though, and we can't see it. I was hoping the Marla's summer would be enough to lead us into the second school year, but there is a bit more lining up to do with a few more people. Cankers 3

Cankers is an amalgam of the dozens of rural bars around me. Beverage laws in PA have created a network of little bars. In my population center of about 1,000 souls (consisting of two towns) I have 4 places I can walk to to sit down and have a beer (but not on Sundays).

Comic 20091227

Another quick 2 color comic. Roland and Mary get to have some chat time. Again I'm not sure about my output over the next few days. I'm still having slight headaches after being sick. The holiday sugar cookie purge hasn't helped much. Cankers 2

Comic 20091225

Merry Christmas. This is a page I've had for years. I may have posted a rough of it around somewhere that I did on a piece of cardboard with sharpies and colored pencils. Is There a Santa?

Not sure about my posting schedule. I've another Roland Wires in the works, but I couldn't tell you how it will progress.

Comic 20091224

With the time frame I have constraining the story I've tried to steer clear of seasonal pages, at least in the prime story. But, I really liked this particular piece and decided to put it in the comic rather than have it be a stand alone work. (I may post it around tomorrow though). Brought Forth

Comic 20091221

A little different with some simple flat colors. My times in the sparse local bars over the years are remembered in various drab and dim colors, sounds, moods. I also like working with skewed perspectives. This is the beginning of a little story arc. This story has been around for a long time and stems from a little joke that I may not even use in it. It may cause some friction with some other things that are going to be happening so, I haven't worked it through entirely. It will be interesting to see what happens. Cankers

I have two comic finished for this week ( or very nearly finished ). I do not know what else I will be able to get too this week.

Comic 20091220

So here is the end of this little bit. Marla seems a little ambivalent but I think she has a lot on her table. Yes, she will not realize that she has forgotten her pants until after the police arrive.Tim <3 Marla 5

Looks like I'm snowed in so I may be doing some more work on the comic if I can get rid of this piddling headache!

Updates dec 18 weekend

beats me. I've a small page ready to scan and a few things coming up. Work and Christmas schedule is getting a little intense and I haven't shaken this nagging little headache from when I was sick.

I have a few more Marla things to round out the summer and a few more Pool and the Gang and a couple Mary and Mabel items then it will be into the next phase of stories.

Comic 20091217

Did some Christmas shopping yesterday, but had to cut it short because of this monstrous sinus headache. For about 4 hours I lay in bed with symptoms very like the worst hangover. But I did manage to get this comic finished up.

Things will be a little different for Marla now.
Tim <3 Marla 4

Comic 20091216

Got the comic finished and uploaded while I wasn't feeling to well. I have two more pages to put together and then we can see if Marla gets the good loving from Tim. He is awful keen on helping her out. Tim <3 Marla 3

A Little Skip

I did a few extra drawing for the next page and decided I needed to redo the layout of the next two pages entirely. So I may end up with one more, the same or one less page than the five I started with.

I'm also not feeling very well with a fever and a head cold so I may be curling up in bed for the evening. If not that then an optional training shift at work. What this all means is that is is not likely there will be a new comic up tomorrow.

edit: I sketched a little preview of part of the next page. From this you will see why I don't work straight from the pen tablet. The preview is a vote incentive

Comic 20091214

2 of 5 isn't too bad considering I'm not feeling very well. I will try to get the next page done tomorrow for Tuesday, but it doesn't look good. We can tell Marla has lost a good bit of weight from the times I drew her before this arc. I may have a few transistion pages dropped in that show her at finer stages. Suffice to say the rigorous training and work schedule is working. Tim <3 Marla 2

Comic 20091213

It is Laundry Day. Goodbye Blue Mondays. Marla starts her laundry routine. Since she doesn't have much free time or very much clothing besides her trusty purple sweatsuits she has to wash everything; leaving her a little underdressed. This is the first of a little five page arc that may resolve a few things. This is the basement in the Hines's Boarding house. It is a big house and a big basement. Tim <3 Marla

Comic 20091212

Marla back down in the basement of the boarding house exercising. Her jumping around her room was likely a little house shaking. We look a little bit into the nature of LLXL and Mary. The question is inferred. What is the Black Sword? Marla Basement 2

Comic 20091211

Here is a comic I never drew when doing the original Marla and Roland pieces from year one. I had sketched it out several times but never got around to finishing a version of it. So here it is finally. Also Roland piece ,'The Ho Ho Manifesto' is mentioned and was origianlly part of this page, but just the name is enough tfor you to figure out what that was about. 'Marla and the Donuts Dilemma' and 'Marla and the Cupcake Conundrum' were also part of this original series by Roland. Roland Likes Boobies

Comic 20091210

Another fancied up sketch. I have in mind several people who live in the boarding house, one a possible recurring character. Most, like Tim, are just a name. Not sure what will become of Tim in the long run, but we will see him again soon. Tim's Insomnia

Comic 20091206

New Exercise 3. It seems I forgot to upload the archives and navigation script with the comic yesterday. I said, "oops", when I realized I didn't do that, which proves it was an accident.

A little bit of a dark turn and a humiliating power struggle between LLXL and Marla, with LLXL holding all the power. Obviously, this one is a little more 'adult' than than what I've done so far. I really decided to forget about them being friendly with each other. According to what has been presented so far LLXL should be gone by the end of this and I don't think there will be any tearful farewells.

Comic 20091204

New Exercise . It took me longer to write these couple of pages. I decided to have this fairly rude thing thrown into Marla's summer training some time ago and scribbled out many pages and takes on it, but I wasn't really comfortable with what I had put down on paper.

The main consideration was Marla's relationship with LLXL. Would it be a buddy cop movie cliche where the two of them eventually bonded or would they remain adversaries up to the end? Each eventual outcome required its own take on this rather gratuitous couple of pages and the rest of Marla's Summer. I'm cheerful that I made my decision and I should be able to get most of these Marla pages done without too much more intellectual hassle. I just need to find some more time to draw them.

Working Working Working

I'd rather be posting an update than making a little post. I don't know what sort of updates there will be for the next week or so. I have some related projects I'm trying to work on but they have been hard to get going. Somewhere in this mess I've lost an entire comp book with some work I wanted to use.

Wish me luck. .. ah. This picture is a possible character/entity sometime in the future time.

New Vote Incentive

Uploaded a new vote incentive for TopWebComics.com. I'm very surprised with how it came out. I mean that it came out much nicer than I thought it would.

I likely won't have a new page for a few days. This is the end of a 12 day streak. Maybe a new record of unbroken updates for me?

I'm going to start putting together some donation incentives. Either wallpapers or a mini-comic for a $1 or so. I'm in a fairly precarious financial situation so I have to think about that sort of thing now.

Here is a vote button to get to the incentive. Be warned; it is not safe for work.

Comic 20091129

Marla Meets Mary 3. The meeting is over. Nothing like a kick in the face to drive a point home. I've a few random Marla summer pages to put together and a couple plot specific ones. Then I'm done with that.

There might not be a regular comic update for a few days. I really need to get some other work and play done this weekend.

Comic 20091127

Anticipation 4. Hmmn I skimped around with this. The original lines for the 4 'Anticipation' pages were done years ago and they were a bit rough, even by my low standards. I spent a little more time on this particular page redrawing a few bits. If I had them to do over again there would definitely be a few changes to make it easier to put together and to read.

The synopsis is that Shub lures or captures men and takes them to this sub-basement, makes the sweet loving on them and then kills them, eventually turning them into tasty supper. She does this a lot and I have never addressed, even to myself, what she does with all the delivery vans. I assume they end up in the river.

Comic 20091126

Anticipation 2. I drew this little series a long time ago and it has bounced around on my computer for a while. I would work on the pages some then set it aside. I'm finally finishing them up. The final page should be out tomorrow and the next Marla's Summer installment the day after that then I'm not sure what updates are coming again.

I'm not fond of the black smudgy dark stuff. I thought it was interesting at first, but now it seems like a dodge. It was intended to just give that dark feeling.

I'm trying to work on banners and incentives but it is tough going at times.

Thanksgiving

I have plenty of nice ideas for holiday themed comics. This is not one of them. I wasn't going to do a thanksgiving holiday comic at all, but at dinner tonight (Thanksgiving eve) we were talking about crazy Thanksgiving legends and wondered; if one of our dimmer relatives were telling the Thanksgiving story how it would go?

This also, is not that comic. What we had a hearty chuckle about over supper was too involved and too full of inside jokes to be feasible in the time I could finish it. Since, the queue for the comic is filled up for Thanksgiving with a non-Thanksgiving Day comic I decided to just post this little snippet here. Hope you liked it.

Comic 20091123

Marla Meets Mary. Woohoo. I have so many little sketches of this section I'm very excited to be finally getting it done up. It will only be two pages, but I hope it makes a start in showing the character of LLXL and Mary. I may not have another page for a few days. I have some home projects I've put off and work too.

Comic 20091122

Not a Good Apology Q's libido is awake. rawr. I wasn't going to do something like this with her for a while, particularly not with Roland, but sometimes things don't work out the way they are planned.

It is interesting to make out the plot with certain character with certain traits then once you put them in the actual situation you see that they may not do what you had planned for them to do.

I have another couple pages where she makes the apology, but that is another one to add later if its needed.

Javascript Navigation

I'm unused to javascript. It is a pain for me but i will suffer through a few hours picking away making a javascript next/previous buttons that will follow the story time and not the creation time.

I actually have one loaded now. It is untested. I don't want to update the comic manually to start testing it. Because, the last time I tried that it updated the comics in the queue and made me think I had traveled to the future. So, I'll wait until tomorrow when the comic auto updates and puts the script on the daily pages. From there I should be able to upload fixes directly.

The script so far has two possible problems already and a part I left out, but it is a bit late in the day to start hunting around for fixes.

I've done a handy amount of perl (moons ago) and php coding and if I could run php easily on the comic server I'd have been done with this moments after the inception.

edit: After working on this for far too long I finally have a working version up. look for the |<- <- title -> ->| near the top of the daily pages. If anybody has problems with this .. keep it to your self. I'm not fooling around with it for a while.

Comic 20091119

Anti-Climax. No big crescendo. They just walk out, make some brief plans and head into the sunset.

There may be a few little pages taking place directly after this but I'm not sure when I will put them together. Roland and Q will need to talk about their time in the plant and Mabel is having a small crisis of training.

Other than that I'm going to be concentrating on working the rest of what is needed in story to continue into the next school year.

Archives and Out of Sequence Comics

Well. You are frustrated I'm sure. Reading along hitting the next comic button and suddenly the story is gone. A whole different story is taking place.

Let me tell you about Star Wars. I saw A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi as they came out. When Star Wars came out I was in the third or fourth grade. We didn't go to the movies much when I was that age. The movies I remember from that era were Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Inframan, and Star Wars. So, as a third of the movie franchises I can recall Star Wars was active in my mind a good bit.

So when the 'prequels' were starting I had some personal misgivings. I already had an Old Republic in my mind. Many of the things that were hinted at or mentioned in the movies I had already fleshed out and had a real mythic substance to me. I have yet to see the newer movies and it is likely I will not. I have absolutely no desire to. I also wish I could unwatch the director's cut of Highlander. I liked having his secretary's past as a mystery.

Before I digress further. I'm writing this comic with several dozen individual story arcs with a definite final conclusion. But, the way I have this all pieced together is rather loose, much of my dialog is first draft. I'm adding things and taking things away and practicing every piece of bad storytelling I can stumble into. I need to leave an opening where I can go back and tack pieces in later. I work on things as I get to them with the only real logic being that I don't post so far ahead to ruin a dramatic moment.

For example, at this time I have to finish Marla's summer with llxl before I can start the next school year because I don't want to give away the outcome of her summer arc before I finish it.

To facilitate the non-linear presentation I created a false fourth wall. That these comics are the ramblings of some third party discovered and studied after an undisclosed event and are being presented as an archives project. In true Lovecraftian fashion reading the works in the raw have unsettled the archivists creating the spotty presentation.

Throw in a 3 year semi-hiatus and the confusion grows.

Their are now two main ways to view the comic now. As it was presented, just plugging away at the 'next comic' button, hoping to figure out what is happening as pages are presented or the Archive Page which lists the comics as they happen (small versions of the archives is framed into the individual comic pages also).

I would be interested in what people think watching the new pages come up and trying to remember where they may fit before 'cheating' and going to the archives page to find out where I put it in the linear story.

What is relevant to what I said about Star Wars prequels is that the actual creation and presentation is not linear and leaves some of the burden of connecting events and filling story gaps to the reader. I personally like the mystery over the fact.

Comic 20091118

End is Near. Tt really is, the Garden of Serenity is almost completed. One final page or two will let it be done.

Comic work has slowed down a bit because I'm having job troubles. I'm looking around for something to supplement or replace my current work and with Christmas looming it is getting distracting. The comic is supposed to be distracting me from that, not the other way around :)

I have a bunch of rough sketches for Marla's summer saga, including some dirty, naughty things and a few things that might make some uncomfortable.

Comic 20091116

Spin. Moving along in a disjointed way. It was lazier to just throw all the text in the empty frame so that is exactly what I did. One of the reasons is this little cat named Mania decided to try to kill and eat my tablet pen while I was coloring. The other reason -> lazy.

Weekend Busy Filler

Another busy weekend ahead. Trying to get out some comic stuff. So far it seems fairly hopeless to expect an update by tomorrow. Just realized it is Friday the 13th. I do have this filler. Which is an un-worked alternate to Classroom Introduction. I do have a few things drawn to be scanned and a few things to draw. The next part of the garden arc is blocked out. I just need to draw it and get it up.

I have to take the time to say I'm pleasantly surprised by the amount of visitors the comic has gotten since I started working on it again. With all the hectic things going on I'm thankful I have this little outlet to draw and write poorly and to know a few people out there like looking at the train wreck.

Comic 20091112

Map-tastic. For reasons unknown it looks like this comic updated a day early .. Have fun. I'm really hacking it up to get this storyline finished. Just a few more pages to go then they leave the Garden ! Then, I will be getting poor Marla through the rest of her summer. finally, we can start with some more interesting things.

I will likely be showing some more gag-a-day sort of things while I organize the arcs coming up. I do have some more bits to fill in here and there and I want to make sure everything is lined up before I start throwing stuff against the wall for year two.

Comic 20091111

Pool Wide Shot
Happy Veteran's Day; A holiday that has nothing to do with today's comic. This is a picture I've had sitting on the drive since the inception of the garden/pool arc. I threw in some bad dialog and called it an update.

As a partial update later I may add some frames at the bottom. Something to do with the excitement of finding a fully functioning pool but without any water.

Comic 20091110

New Fence Ha-rah. Pretty crappy update for the wait. My schedule is a little off, but I'm plugging away. I really hope to have some time to work on things in the morning and get a little bit ahead again.

Updates Coming

This was an exhausting weekend. I am not built to be sociable in crowds. I did have a a good time talking to a few people who were into my wife's work. I did get a few things drawn and I hope to have a brisk update schedule this week and hopefully more than a nod to vote and donation incentives.

Update Schedule Nov 6 Weekend

No schedule :p .. My wife and I are spending the weekend setting up at a Christmas craft show in Eldersville, PA: Christmas in the Village. It is our first year there and with the hours of the show, driving time (about 1.5 hours one way for us) there won't be much time for me to scan and process pictures. I plan on working on some things, but I don't think that work will bear fruit until next week sometime.

I've said this several times before. I really hope to be finishing up the Marla/LLXL (or is it XXLX?) and Garden story lines very soon.

Comic 20091104

Lawn Care During the summer I have 4 lawns I cut. The small one around my house, the two lot yard next door, my neighbor's across the street and a larger lot across the street. I do it all with my little push mower. There is a riding mower here but, meh, I'm not so old I need to use it yet. If I do it all at once it takes about 3+ hours (there are many things I have to mow around and under etc.). Whenever, I think about Marla doing work in the comic it is mowing lawns and whenever I doodle her thinking or talking while working it is mowing lawns and now you know why.

This is a real rush piece. If I get updates the next few days they will be very rushed also.

I would also warn my readers. If you weigh 300+ pounds and are unused to semi strenuous work rabid lawn mowing from dusk till dawn will not help you loose weight, it will kill you.

Comic 20091101

Welcome to November

Sarah Awakens, is a quick and dirty (not dirty in the sense of your dirty mind 'dirty') comic for today. I still have many things going on here this weekend, but I took a little time to crank this one out. I want to get this arc finished up.

The next thing to try and finish is Marla's summer arc. She is mostly on her own in her story, but I need it to finish because after Day 370 she is on screen a little more often.

Happy Halloween, No Update

I doubt I will have an update on the 31st. This will mark the end of a 11 day run. I will be cleaning up some links and other things on the website though. I'm working on a few stand alone pictures and promotional items.

I'm trying to do a few pictures entirely with the old shabby wacom. I do my coloring and other tasks with it, but only a small amount of line work. My hand is not steady with it. I should say my hand is less steady with it. I used to use a piece of paper to add a little friction between the nub and the surface. I may try that again.

All of you out there reading. I appreciate it. I know how bad the comic is in spots in both writing and drawing. Both are unpolished, but I'm making an effort to address the problems I can while keeping the pace up.

After all this time I'm not truly comfortable with this as a writing medium. I may be trying to hard to avoid 'Wall of Text' and I'm not clear which font and image sizes might be working best across different browser and screens. The next things for me to address are characterization and mood of narrative.

Comic 20091030

After nearly 3 years Roland is out of the plant! If I don't throw anything more at them They should be out in 5 more pages / strips. It is all part of my Inhideous Plan. In case you were wondering Roland's backpack did make it out of the plant. I can't draw every little thing because of brevity and poor memory.

This is Halloween weekend so I will really be pushing to update. but, there are a few side things I'd like to do like a donation incentive and a new vote incentive. I have an interesting idea for an automated donation bar for Paypal. You know the ones that gauge donations against a goal? Hopefully, what I'm thinking of doing is feasible.

Archive Links

After a bit of fiddling I stuck a version of the archive links links into the daily pages. I'll get looking a little better, it is just a mass of links but should clean up with collapsing menus.

'We took a ride on the Banchoff Klien Mega-bottle Ride.'

Comic 20091027

Rubies of Eventide. I'm posting this a few days ahead of schedule and scheduling to post when the comic comes out. This comic is about a morpg I put a great many hours into. Generally in these sorts of games I'm not very social. I'm a slow typist and generally not a quick wit when trying to pay attention to more than one thing. But during my time there I made friends.

Like Roland says in this comic the various systems in the game were a joy to play with. And that is what kept me around originally while I figured out mining and crafting and what stats and skills helped what. Eventually, the community there took center stage. They are a good group of people.

That game has passed on into a digital heaven and a large group of the staff and dedicated players are preserving that community and building a new game from scratch around a preexisting engine.

This strip is built around a certain client crash tied to the hill giant mob and as such it is a simple page. I blocked it out years ago but this morning I woke up with a touch of insomnia and had a real hankering to log my archer and shoot arrows at things. I felt pretty bad that I couldn't do that and instead I dug out this rouch comic and spent the morning inking scanning and coloring.

The new game Dawn of Iskirra is discussed here.

Comic 20091026

Mouth Full. This sort of thing wasn't in the 'Big Plot' for these two characters. It seemed like something that she would do on impulse so she did it. I have a good many more pages to get the gang out of the Garden/Pool arc but I'm getting closer.

I was going to spend some more time and shade this, or put in the money shot but I'm not fretting over anything like that for now. I set time to work on these so my paying work and family duties don't suffer. I want to keep as brisk an update schedule as possible.

Comic 20091024

Bobby Steel Sings Again!. This is one of the things that tickles me about making this particular comic. Many years ago I ran a short lived Call of Cthulhu rpg. My players had a nice array of characters, one being Bobby Steel, night club singer. You'll eventually see all the things that may have happened to most of them had we been able to continue the game.

Archival Update

I had a small arc on Comic Space That I decided to move into the main cutethulhu site. I took the extra step to rebuild the site so they appear chronologically in the archives. I can't do this very often, as I'm told it is server intensive. Another reason is I usually do not update the archives is there is not room to cram new art into old story lines. This is a failing of the system used requiring file names, dates the comic order to be the same.

As I often say, 'things will be different when I'm in charge.'

The new / old comics are Top Hat 1,
Top Hat 2,
Top Hat 3,
Top Hat 4

Website Update

Updating the front page slightly with a custom vote button. I hope to have a vote incentive picture up also. It will take some more time to get it ready. I'm also in the thought process for a paypal incentive, but that is a little further down the line.

comic 20091023

Beer I drink. I did a little more work on this one. I did the lines with my clunker Wacom over a scan of the sketch. This is one of the few times it has worked out for me. Though, there are a some shaky lines.

I nested this one in the continuity fairly early. It is before her reconciliation with Mabel.

Comic 20091022

True story - I sat with my wife in the Waynesburg, PA DMV for a couple hours. A few thoughts came to me while we were there and I drew them out. Through the miracle of laziness here is a scan and color of the actual sketches I fiddled with while on the scene.
Simple as D, M, V ... 1,2,3

Writing out the title reminds me of a little OCD joke that I annoy people with. Singing 'ABC' by the Jackson 5 and changing it to 'O, C, D its as easy as 1,2,3 . 1,2,3 . 1,2,3 . 1,2,3 . ... etc'

Which reminds me again of listening to this song in grade school during indoor recess, (yes, back when it was a new release) which a few months ago prompted me to buy it on 45 at a church rummage sale.

Comic 20091020

Boarding House. Hiyas! I may pick up a pencil and sketch out a page. Then ink it then scan it. I could then carefully edit dialog so that it is evocative of the tone and carefully color and shade.

nah.

I'm having a fun time without any expectations of what is going to be uploaded. I lay in bed with a cheap pen and a marble composition book and fiddle around until I fall asleep.

One of the things I set up from the beginning is this is a story told from the point of view of a person who is half crazed, maybe delusional, and trying to get it out in any way he can. A bit self-descriptive to be honest.

Comic 20091018

Emancipation.
Lalala, Here it a little update. Things are moving along. One or two more with Marla then we may not see her for a while. Should be getting back to those kids stuck in the garden behind QT's house. I'm sort of aching to have more time to put some better finished art up for these comics ...

6 Crappy Updates in a Row Ends Now

It is doubtful I will have anything up tomorrow. I'm going to take a little time to put together some nicer pages if the time is there to take. I've a busy weekend coming up. So far I've been having a good time getting some stories moving even if the drawing is poor and the dialog stilted in places. I want to finish the Marla storyline and the Garden one also. The completion of these two and a little more with Grandma Mary are core to getting the next set of stories taking place through the next school year moving along.

comic-20091010

More Disturbing Discoveries - To make more of a mess of things I'm going to post these comments again occasionally. This is another very quick and dirty comic, right out of my composition book and through GIMP.

I'm commenting here mainly to mention the two versions of the same thing. I'm hoping it doesn't disturb the narrative flow, such as it is, too much to have a quick stutter like this. Each picture had elements I wanted (the top pic is a composite of two pictures also) and it was quicker to process both than to rework either of them.

HaHaHa 3 years

I've started updating Cutethulhu again. I could never fully put it aside. At the point I am now I am simply putting up whatever I can get done in a short amount of time as quickly as I can. Much will be unworked sketches straight from my composition books and wherever else I find them.

To read the developing story arcs the http://www.cutethulhu.com/archives.html is essential as the comics are not posted in chronological order. The system doesn't allow tucking in comics between ones already posted without rebuilding the whole thing.