V’s first question after recovering from the shock, assuming the fight doesn’t continue: “How in the Lower Planes do you know about soul splices?” Hey, now that the robe’s red and eyes’re normal again, maybe Redcloak recognizes her as an OOTS member.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized end of the line.)

Technically, I still owe you an OOTS post for April, and this doesn’t count. But it does give me some ideas for a full-fledged OOTS post, which I was planning to have next week… assuming I can get a post I was planning for this week in by then. Because it’s been too long since I reviewed another webcomic blog.

Yes, Blogger-in-Draft is still making it impossible to upload images and forcing me to go back to old Blogger (screwing people who had made Draft their default dashboard and can’t go back no matter what they try), why do you ask?
But anyway, since I normally make posts on Big Events and the forums are down as usual, I might as well make some comments here.

First, reflecting back on my original post on the splice, for two reasons. First, Burlew did a good job of keeping us on our toes with the splice. I started out thinking that, despite the power level, V had a good chance of hanging on to it into the next book; then it was revealed that V would lose splices one at a time and I thought that meant it made the most sense for them to all be lost within the current book; then plotlines started getting used up left and right, and things kept happening to V and he never lost a splice to them, and I started thinking there wasn’t enough room for two splices to be lost in the relatively small time left in the current book. Then he decided to take on Xykon.

The pattern established with Haer(t)a seemed obvious: use an epic spell that would see the spliced caster appear “in the background” behind Vaarsuvius, then that caster would have their splice lost. While all the plotlines were being wrapped up, V had already used Ganonron’s epic spell, so every time something happened that might ordinarily cause a splice break, I figured that meant V had one more teleport in her. And there was enough portent in V’s decision to run to Xykon to figure that last teleport had arrived.

It would have been bad enough, in my view, for V to lose Ganonron alone and thus the ability to teleport away from the scene of the crime. I can certainly see the logic in Haer(t)a being the only lone splice lost – to establish that a splice could be lost at any time, to take her spells off the table, that sort of thing. But the fact that Jephton was not able to get off an epic spell doesn’t sit well with me, and tells me that either Rich couldn’t find a place for a third epic spell (a second “Epic Teleport” doesn’t count) or changed his plans at some point after #643 – possibly, given the suddenness of the last two strips, just lost patience with the splice. Certainly I could have seen Ganonron lost but Jephton able to get off an epic spell against Xykon before he was lost – it seems Rich couldn’t figure out what to do that would be big enough to give that shadow shot. (Some forumites suggested Jephton be given a completely ineffectual joke spell, though, so even that’s not a show-stopper.)

Second, after the previous strip I figured that since Xykon had just fired off two Energy Drains and might have more in store, severely weakening the splices (seriously, if Jephton lost all his epic spell slots after the first, he might well be lower level than V after the second) the prudent thing for V to do was get out while the getting was good. Therefore, I figured something would happen to prevent V from leaving. Survey says… not really. I can see going for the Bixby’s Hand after the energy drains, but staying in the game after Xykon neutralizes even that? With your next move being a simple Disintegrate?

It actually makes an odd level of sense, but in a way I doubt Rich intended. While it’s possible that either V, Rich, or both weren’t thinking the circumstances through (less likely than you’d think in the former’s case with two more clear-thinking souls along for the ride with the most to lose), I prefer to think that this is V’s pride and hubris rearing its ugly head again. V really does believe “my power… EXCEEDS yours!” and he can still defeat Xykon with brute force even after evidence comes up to the contrary, only realizing the prudency of retreat once it’s too late. (That pre-current-book V’s style of pounding on a problem until it falls fits the situation is an idea worth considering as well.)

I’m holding off on most of my future predictions until next week, and even then I’ll want to hold off on some because I have a between-books state-of planned for when the current book ends. But for now I have only this: I think we’re more than set up for the remainder of the book between any Team Evil-Vaarsuvius discussions and any discussions surrounding Roy’s resurrection. We’re already about halfway through the “20-strip cooldown period” I’ve identified at the end of each book. I can easily see three strips or more to wrap up the battle and have some catching up to do and tie up loose ends here, plus at least three strips to cover Roy’s resurrection, throw in the usual splash page at the end – that’s seven right there, out of about ten – and since we haven’t seen any of the Linear Guild in the book so far, if they’re to have any real substansive role in the next book – and it’s becoming a fairly firm consensus they will, for reasons relating to Elan’s and Nale’s family – or just appear in this one, they better show up soon.

And if there’s any importance to Roy meeting V’s “subcontractors”, could it be the knowledge that V could have lost them and remain trapped in Azure City, life status uncertain?

Blog of Webcomics’ Identity Crisis: The End of the Second Comic Book Distribution System?

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Once upon a time, you went to the newsstand to pick up the newspaper, some highbrow and lowbrow magazines, and the favorite comic books. That was the first comic book distribution system. It was marked by a wide variety of genres and publishers until about the 1960s.

Then comic book stores and the direct market sprung up. That was the second system, and it was marked by the dominance of superheroes, DC and Marvel superheroes especially.

Now DC and Marvel are making considerable gobs of money outside comic books while Diamond’s anti-small-publisher practices portend a potential mass move to the Internet and comics are starting to bang on the door of bookstores.

So if DC and Marvel eventually decide to scale back and rethink the way they do comic books, Sean Kleefeld thinks that will be the death of Diamond.

I’m not sure what will replace it or if anything other than webcomics replaces it, or what the third system will look like, either in terms of the distribution mechanism, the selection of genres, or the diversity of publishers. But it’ll be very different from the second system.

(The model of the monthly comic is really rooted in the first system. If DC and Marvel decide to move to mostly a graphic novel format, or move entirely to the web, I think you’ll see those “pamphlets” become basically unheard of.)

You may try, but until you get attention for this you’re not the fifth major.

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Day 35 or 36 on the BottomLine Watch. It keeps on turning…

We all know that, among other ways Augusta National is intensely protective of its Masters broadcasts, it forces CBS and now ESPN to use a 1995-ish CBS graphics package for the Masters.

But either NBC has a change to its graphics in the works and its production of the Golf Channel’s coverage of the Players Championship includes graphics, or the Players is just as controlling about its graphics as Augusta.

NBC Graphics at the Players:

NBC’s normal golf graphics:

Golf Channel’s normal graphics:

Rnd.1 Highlights: AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am – video powered by Metacafe

Golf Channel using Player’s Championship graphics (you’ll need to get about 42 seconds in or more):

I posted a strip I never should have, so I have two strips redundant with it.

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(From Sandsday. Click for full-sized going around in circles.)

EDIT: I forgot to remove this post when I actually DID post the strip before leaving earlier today. I’m spending the weekend in the Portland area for a wedding. I may have street signs NEXT weekend. But not as many as I would have otherwise hoped, at least from this trip.

Some sports graphics stuff I’ve been meaning to get to

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Day 32 or 33 of the BottomLine Watch, and still the BottomLine remains the “old” BottomLine. Perhaps ESPN’s technicians should experiment less with adding periods to the end of headlines and more with getting the new BottomLine back on the air – assuming they’re still changing it.

TNT has been rather interesting to watch during the playoffs for the experimentation they’ve done with the little line above the box assuring you that yes, this is a playoff game. First, although early in the season words like “OPENING WEEK” or “REMEMBERING MLK” would appear standalone above the box with no background other than the action, at the All-Star Break a long rounded rectangle appeared.

This rounded rectangle continued into the playoffs, alternating between “2009 PLAYOFFS” and some indication of where the series stood…

…but the indication of where the series stood quickly changed to look similar to the “2009 PLAYOFFS” logo, instead of plain white text on a dark grey background. Why? My guess: readability.

That’s not the end to the changes! Just in time for Celtics-Bulls Game 7 came another change, with “2009 PLAYOFFS” gone entirely…

…and for the Conference Semifinals, it’s now alternating between “2009 EAST/WEST SEMIFINALS” and the same indication of the status of the series as before.

Maybe this will actually remain constant through TNT’s coverage of the Eastern Conference Finals.

Finally, Versus introduced a new banner for its coverage of the NHL’s Conference Semifinals.

I have to say, it looks a lot more professional – the font isn’t right out of ESPN’s graphics early this decade, and the team logos aren’t standing alone and hovering over slightly turned-to-the-side circles in a way that just screams “cheapo operation”… too bad the banner was the ONLY thing that changed, and all the other graphics look exactly the same, creating jarring dissonance. If you’re going to change your graphics package, change it ALL AT ONCE. You couldn’t wait until next season? (Assuming they ARE going to change the rest of the graphics…) And what are those things on the side in HD? You couldn’t just have the stripes extend across the whole screen, you had to put doodads on the sides?

(I hold out hope this will mean Versus’ hockey, college football, and college basketball graphics will actually look like one another, and the IndyCar graphics will have at least a superficial resemblance, but who knows?)

(Can someone explain to me why every YouTube video of an IndyCar race I can find is either direct from IndyCar.com and lacks any graphics, or has what appears to be an international or online graphic directly based on the graphics ESPN used last year, not the Versus graphics? I found one video after the first race that would work IF it didn’t somehow manage to avoid showing the banner at all. It’s a shame, as Versus has tweaked the graphics somehow after just about every race, mostly in ways having to do with the display of positioning for “on-board” cameras, which was impossible to read for double-digit positions in Race 1.)

Image upload hasn’t been working on Blogger in Draft since at least last weekend’s Darths and Droids post. If they won’t fix it, I will.

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(From Irregular Webcomic! Click for full-sized diary of death.)

Well, the idea that every theme would reset to the beginning, and my idea for the last episode of IWC, appears to be dead.

Instead, we get the first appearance of “Me” in over four months, seemingly unaffected by the chaos enveloping IWC in the meantime.

If I may say so myself, I would suggest that David Morgan-Mar would need to do a lot of lawyering to claim he hasn’t violated his original “someone dies!!!” strip. “No ghosts”? “No witty banter with the Head Death before returning”? Well, technically the Me that got killed didn’t become a ghost, and technically this isn’t the same Me that had “witty banter with the Head Death”…

Honestly, I’m not sure what to expect from IWC for the rest of the year, or the rest of its existence.

Random Internet Discovery of the Week

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Yes, my laptop is back in proper working order.

I was directed to the specific image, not the page itself, and I find it fascinating that there are lights popping up only in what could be called “civilized” areas. Not just localized in cities; almost exclusively in the US, Europe, and to a lesser extent, India, East Asia, and for whatever reason, the southeast coast of South America.

Da Blog Poll on the future of the RID is being extended through the end of June. Someone is going to tell me what to do with the RID if it’s the last thing I do.