Author and Thinker
Morgan Wick Okay, so maybe I’m not posting on another webcomic tonight (Tuesday). In fact it’ll probably not be out until Thursday at the earliest. As I’ve mentioned, several popular webcomics aren’t updating because of the holiday, so I picked out a webcomic for this week fairly late.
I will have two posts both tomorrow and Thursday to make up for it.
One of the things Robert A. Howard accosted me for in his comment-rant a little over a week ago was my tendency to squee like a fangirl at any links whatsoever.
Now, the main reason I post whenever I get linked, aside from being convinced that this is the link that will bring me everlasting fame and I want to commemorate the moment, is to alert potential advertisers of traffic bumps, so they can bump up their bids accordingly. However, I’m not sure it’s particularly useful for that purpose. Most people probably use Project Wonderful’s “campaign” feature to place their bids, which automatically scale to match current traffic, and PW also provides its own tools to alert bidders of important links, albeit from a select list of traffic generators. Find out more here, although I’m not even sure if this system still works. (Not to say that you can’t get on to Da Blog bidding by hand – I did so successfully on what was really a test bid on a couple of webcomics advertising for Sandsday, though I think I only showed up on one. If that makes any sense.)
So in a new Da Blog Poll that’s been running since Sunday and will continue for a couple of weeks, I want to ask: do you find the acknowledgements of traffic bumps useful or annoying? Do you think they’re useful for advertising even if they are a little annoying to anyone else, or are they useless even for advertising because the acknowledgement tends to lag quite a bit behind the bump itself? You can find the poll in the sidebar, and the comment section of this post will allow you to sound off beyond just the two options on the sidebar.
(From Irregular Webcomic! Click for full-sized very fabric of the universe yada yada.)
You know your crisis is reaching monumental proportions when it starts roping in themes that aren’t even regular.
When it starts roping in Harry Potter… and the Star Wars theme that’s been virtually unheard of since Darths and Droids started.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Espionage got involved… or even the Supers theme that hasn’t been heard from in ages. We’ve already seen six themes out of fourteen that aren’t Death, Miscellaneous, or Me. (Cliffhangers, Mythbusters, Shakespeare, and Martians are the others.)
That leaves Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday strips to finish up the seven strips needed to rope in every last theme… but crossovers will almost certainly be included in there, and it would be poetic justice to put the critical moment one year to the day after the death of Me.
(Then again, it evidently never occured to the Comic Irregulars how close Phantom Menace would come to wrapping up in 200 strips, so why should I give DMM credit for minding the one-year gap? Though who am I to speak? For whatever reason, I keep wallowing in Morgan-Mar central instead of just posting on a non-Morgan-Mar, non-OOTS, non-CAD strip on Tuesday like I’m GOING to do.)
(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized planning.)
Just when I say I’m going to move away from a small set of webcomics, Da Blog practically becomes David Morgan-Mar Central. Perhaps because Morgan-Mar has a lot of stuff going on all at once, between this and Irregular Crisis.
My already-slim prediction of ending the current movie at #200 is looking unlikely. But we have started the preparations for the next movie – including a rather… unusual… answer to the question of who Jim will play next.
Huh? First of all, who are we talking about? Padme, or the Queen? They switched places for the bulk of The Phantom Menace, but while on the one hand Jim is excited about being a ruler, implying Amidala, he specifically asks Obi-Wan to give his stuff to Padme…
…and given the blossoming relationship between Padme and Anakin in the second and third movies, that would seem to hold more dramatic potential. (A man and a woman role-play a relationship between a man and a woman… only they play each other’s gender. Awk-ward! And a minefield of potential commentary to boot!)
Although Wikipedia indicates that, contra the impression I had gotten from the Darths and Droids annotations (with some help from Attack of the Clones promo materials), Padme and Amidala are actually the same person and the person dolled up as Amidala for most of Phantom Menace is completely unimportant. (Which when you think about it, would make sense for Leia being a “princess” in the original trilogy.)
In any case, we can begin formulating what might happen for the duration of two movies now on the basis of a single strip. Too bad we can’t seem to formulate what might happen for the duration of a week on Da Blog on the basis of a single post. But we will break out of the rut on Tuesday, I guarantee it!
I was right. The NFL was freaking out over having the slightest chance of Dolphins-Jets being made mostly (not even entirely) irrelevant by game time.
(From Irregular Webcomic! Click for full-sized parallel tearing.)
So, did you hear? Apparently the very fabric of the universe got torn apart today.
Unfortunately it didn’t involve more themes than just two.
Still, it’s kind of funny that the previous comic involved Death of Being Stared At By a Giant Frog going back in time to deliver Me to administer his own death. Good way to build to the moment.
Or maybe it’ll just cause reality to shift to a new paradigm.
Perhaps in this new paradigm, I actually climb out of my three-comic rut.
If I’m getting too mad for me to control myself, the best thing you can do is let it happen.
Whatever you do, don’t attempt to apply some sort of reprimand while it’s in progress, certainly not one stemming from letting my madness make you mad as well.
Don’t try to psychoanalyze it, don’t tell me I’m doing anything wrong, don’t tell me I’m getting mad at something minor. Any of those things will just make the problem worse, or even reignite it if it’s seeming to subside.
Human emotion, by definition, is not rational. So why do we need to make it seem rational? Why do I need to be mad at anything in particular?
Why do I need to become something inhuman? When I get mad, I end up mad at myself for being mad, and then I end up mad at myself for caring whether or not I’m mad or expressing it in a certain way. I’d be a thousand times less mad if I was just allowed to be mad.
(99% of the time, you can get along with me fine, although being friendly or striking up a conversation or even trying to interact with me in any way that’s not mandated in some way is not going to work and it’s going to be counterproductive. But if you don’t take some tidbits away for the other 1% and then label me as a monster – or even seek to reduce that 1% by not lighting the match in the first place – it’s your own damn loss.)
(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized heroic last words.)
I promise, an actual review of an actual webcomic I haven’t properly reviewed before is coming on Tuesday. It’s hard because a lot of popular webcomics are taking the holidays off, and I’m not even getting a full week with the comic I actually intend on reviewing.
But I feel I would be remiss not to note the occurance of something fans of the movies probably all saw coming: the death of the character of Qui-Gon. Perhaps unintentionally, the Comic Irregulars actually made even a cold-hearted bastard like me feel a little bit of sorrow at Qui-Gon’s death, mostly in the previous strip where Jim manipulates himself out of his last chance to save his character.
The rest of this post may come across as me being, well, a cold-hearted bastard. But of course, we know that, the beliefs of certain Christian fundamentalists to the contrary, the death of a character in a game does not equate to the death of the actual person playing him. We know that we can put relatively good money on Jim re-rolling a new character and rejoining the game. I’m not in a position to speculate, not having watched much more than the first half or so of Episode I out of the whole series, and from what I read there’s not much room in Attack of the Clones for any real new character to be introduced and heavily featured.
Which brings me to my next point: we are now entering the denouement of The Phantom Menace, and it’s interesting to note that this strip is #197. It makes me wonder if the Comic Irregulars have a plan in mind to wrap this one up with strip #200, and devote 200 strips to each movie. Based on the Wikipedia synopsis of the movie, I would imagine if that were the case, #198 would be the arrival of Palpatine on Naboo, #199 the scene with the Jedi Council, and #200 the Naboo victory celebration – although that’s still a rather cramped space, and by necessity still excludes some scenes, although aside from Qui-Gon’s dead body, there are no PCs present for the cremation of Qui-Gon.
And that’s about it, and as I am wont to do, I find myself without a real ending for this one. I could talk about how Darths and Droids as a whole has felt as of late, and how for some reason I haven’t really got much of a big-fight feel, mostly because of the head-spinning cross-cutting. But instead I just repeat: a genuine new (but really rather old) webcomic reviewed on Tuesday!
I had a post in mind for Thursday, but I never could quite remember what it was.
I could have easily decided to take today off because of the holiday. But my streak will continue dammit!
I do have something planned for tomorrow though…