mikailborg | Entries tagged with comics

Once upon a time, I did a guest appearance in a panel of the Fragile Gravity webcomic. Today, the circle is complete, as I've been privileged to write and draw an episode.

Monday morning, my Twitter client lit with a notice from

kittykatya: she and

impink needed two guest strips due to a family emergency. Now, I can draw a little, and I have always dreamed of having the fame and respect of a webcomic artist, so I volunteered. To my great surprise, Barb accepted. Oops: looks like I had to draw something. When would it be due? More oops: Wednesday. But it got done.

Take a look, and be sure to let me know what you think, especially if you liked it. And there's quite a lot more to tell ( behind the scenes... )

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: DI.fm Vocal Trance

08:30 Talking about comic strips at work. Anyone who recognizes the reference to "Uchuu Sensuikan Rabendaa" has known me for quite a long time. #
11:35 Cannot reach any JPop radio station on iTunes today. Found a vocal trance station which at least kinda reminds me of Yoko Kanno. #
12:49 @DontPanicJasz Well, I don't even have an epic flying mount. yet... and the moment I earned my regular one at 68, I headed for Northrend :( #

Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter

10:14 Ok, fandom: if you say, "Oh, I want to be *just like* Rorschach", or indeed any Watchmen char, I suspect you've utterly missed the point. #
10:33 Huh. The WoW Armory seems to be busted, I can't look anyone up. #
11:08 @UrsulaV Fools on the Internet are like the legendary Hydra - cut one down, and two more spring forth to replace it. #
13:21 Meiran's going to want to see this: tinyurl.com/aum42e 1978 "Lost Ark" story conference, Lucas and Spielberg (125pg. PDF) #

Sent subspace radio by LoudTwitter

Since my 'Net connection is still wonky, I may be reduced to watching this year's Doctor Who Christmas Special on SciFi. The horror.

On the other hand, I received a nice Who fandom Xmas present in the from of this Livejournal artwork post by

_tonylee_. The image linked at the bottom cheered me greatly; the likenesses are a bit off, but it's still my desktop wallpaper for a while. (One of them. The other wallpaper is the Apollo 8 "Earthrise" shot right now.)

As Starr works tonight and tomorrow, we finished the majority of our own gift-giving last night. Among other things, I received two hardcovers: an H.P. Lovecraft collection, and a Hitchhiker's omnibus of all five novels and the short story. In each case, these will supersede paperbacks already on my shelf, thus retaining the integrity of the Stuff Reduction Plan. Starr, on the other hand, got a gift card for plenty of crochet yarn, and a brand-new toolbelt to aid in her remodeling projects (she's already done a den and a bathroom). She wore the toolbelt around all evening to 'break it in', so I think it was appreciated.

I am messing with my co-workers today, playing Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra with album breaks provided by cuts from the "Sailor Moon SuperS Christmas For You" album.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Mannheim Steamroller - The Little Drummer Boy - Christmas in the Aire

Space is getting a little more interesting now, with reports of developments in both government and private sectors.

The Chinese astronauts have returned safely to Earth after almost three days in space; one 'taikonaut' performed a spacewalk during the mission, a task which remains difficult and risky despite many successes on the part of the U.S. and Russia. The Chinese return capsule made a 'hard' landing on solid ground, which is a bit trickier than landing in water. According to Wikipedia, an airbag-based 'hard' landing system for NASA's Orion capsule has been removed for weight and complexity reasons, returning Orion to water landings.

Space X's Falcon 1, carrying a dummy payload, achieved orbit around the Earth on Sunday morning. This is the first time a privately funded company has done such a feat with a liquid fuel rocket; the company's press updates page has some cool pictures from a webcam mounted on the side of the launch vehicle. Video is supposed to follow soon. By 2010, the company plans to have a version that will safely launch heavy payloads and human beings.

The last thing the U.S. needs right now is another artificial "space race" where we pick a goal, achieve it, and rest on our laurels for another 40 years. But competition, both at home and abroad, is a good thing if it provides motivation and options. A problem suffered by both the American and Soviet space programs is that they generally had the budget to choose one method to achieve a goal, and if committing fully to that choice turned out to be inefficient, tough. No going back. Perhaps this is changing.

Only vaguely related: if you don't read XKCD, you need to check out "Height". There's a poster of that image, and yes, I want it.

Current Mood: pleased

Richard Pini reports on the ElfQuest website that the latest movie deal has gone through, and it's in the lap of Warner Bros. now.

While Pini is optimistic, so I too shall be, EQ fans have heard this song before. OTOH, fantasy movies are much hotter these days, so who knows?

He links to a story in the Hollywood Reporter as well. Cross your fingers, fans!

Current Mood: optimistic

Wow. I was sick yesterday, and Starr's sick today. Awesome. It might very well have been dehydration on both our parts, though I drink more water these days than I have in years.

I'm From The Future!

I need to watch the latest Doctor Who very soon, it is apparently most excellent, and the net is bursting with spoilers that I am carefully avoiding. Stephen Moffat may be the best Who writer on the new show, responsible for The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances, The Girl In the Fireplace, and Blink; I'm not displeased at all that he's in charge of 2010's Series Five. The "Everybody lives!!" line still gets me right 'there'.

And now, this year's zombie meme:

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:
1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.

* Weapon can be real or fictional; you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.

1) Phaser II, set to "vaporise". With endless ammo, I can just hold down the trigger and sweep.
2) Queen, "Flight of the Hawkmen" (starts at about 1:08 in the video)
3) Tim the Enchanter (I think his skills would be well matched to the situation.)

Starr's list:

1) Sonic Screwdriver ("I'm sure it has a 'defeat zombies' setting.")
2) Meredith Brooks, "Bitch"
3) Kal-El

Current Mood: hot

Swung by the grocery store today to pick up dinner. I was wearing my Technicon 17 (2001) t-shirt, and the cashier kept staring at it. I think

kittenchan's catgirl in Grecian robes confused the heck out of him.

I just don't wear the number of t-shirts I used to. At Staples, I had to wear corporate red, but at B&D, Thrifty Nickel, Decipher, and BCT, I could wear what I wanted as long as it was neat, clean, inoffensive, and gender-appropriate. I owned a LOT of t-shirts. But at NASA, polo shirts are the order of the day, so my t-shirt wear has been cut by five-sevenths, and much of my collection has felt the bite of the ongoing 'stuff' purge.

Kinda sucks, because I kept seeing t-shirts I like at cons - such as an excellent Jennie Breeden shirt at MarsCon - and having to tell myself, "When will you be wearing this, and how much room do you really have in the dresser?" Sigh. I have a rule that I can buy something new for every two objects of similar kind or size I purge. Maybe I need to do another t-shirt purge soon to make room. Wish I could justify doing another run of TeeFive shirts (and find the art for the back).

EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that I was wearing the TCon 18 shirt. Either I fail at reading Roman numerals upside down, or the +1 to Confusion is working better than I thought.

Current Mood: hungry

After starting the series 6 years ago, I finally picked up the last two volumes and have finished reading the Chobits comic. I liked it a lot, and I'm glad I gritted my teeth to read eight graphic novels backwards. (I usually take in an entire comic page in a glance or two, and reading unflipped manga for me is a bit like taking your car up to 55 mph in second gear. You can do it, but it's not comfortable.)

Y'know, only the Japanese could combine 1) a serious examination of computer emotion and sentience, and 2) innocent, adorable robot girls running around unself-consciously in mildly fetishy outfits. It kept confusing me, because between the clothing choices and the male lead's humorous over-reactions to every situation, I wasn't sure I was meant to be taking this seriously, but then the authors would drop back into the real distress experienced by several characters because of the difficult emotional situations they faced.

The ending doesn't contain any real surprises, but the purpose of this tale is the journey, not the destination, and the last book makes sense of several points that I'd expected to be conveniently forgotten. I no longer trust 21st century creators to do this, so it's a welcome change to be able to believe "we were planning this all along" for once.

In completely unrelated news, Midori has found the basket of laundry that I've just pulled from the dryer, and is at this moment the happiest sleeping cat in Portsmouth.

Current Mood: relaxed

Saturday I woke at 8:30, thought to myself "no way, not on a night where I have to stay up 'till 2" and went back to sleep. I woke again at 10:30, went to sit up and was assaulted by nausea and headache. Not, "Oh, I feel like crap, oh well," but "oh God I think I may need to run for the bathroom RIGHT NOW." In the hopes that more rest would help, I rolled over until noon. Couldn't put it off any longer at that point, and made it to McBryde in time for

kittykatya and

impink's Fragile Gravity (http://unseenllc.com/) panel. That was fun, especially when Barb had to change a DVD and Chris was forced to improvise for several minutes. I look forward to Book 3!

Well, you know you're at a real con when two good events are going on at the same time, and much as I wanted to see the General Webcomics Panel, the Spin Doctor had a date at Filking 1025. (Tech uses 4-digit course numbers.) I contributed a couple lines to the weekend's official filk, which we actually finished nice and early! What a concept! An impromptu rendition of "The Dragon and The Lady" followed (NSFW), with joking comments about the fact that the local fandom children are being raised on this stuff. To quote a song that Keith often covers, we'll have a generation of well-rounded outcats.

I dropped by

rattrap and

drich's "First Ones" panel - they are the only attendees who've attended every Technicon. I'd prepared a button that read "Technicon Fourth One" (the best I could do). Lots of old memories flew around that panel; hard to believe the con's 25 years old. I'm fairly sure that's a Virginia fandom record, unless you count RoVaCon / Rising Star as one entity. Still, though, the pain, nausea, and light-headedness continued to build. Barb and others started telling me to Go Lie Down. I talked to Starr a bit - she was having appliance issues at the house right before she had to attend a wedding - and finally gave in and went back to the hotel.

Good news of the evening? While I was semi-comatose,

colleenk gave birth to a little boy. Gratz to her and

yubbie! (Unsurprisingly, this made the con accountant unavailable for the rest of the event.)

I really regret missing the Costume Call and

southernsinger's performance. Every few years at Technicon, I seem to come down with something on Saturday; perhaps I need to start over-medicating the week before, or something. I wasn't the only one, either:

shrewlet had a rough day, and there were bleary eyes elsewhere at the con. However, with modern technology, it's likely that the evening entertainment was all taped, and I'm hoping that someone posted pictures somewhere.

Fortunately, I woke up in possession of a far stabler head and stomach before my evening panels, and headed down to the Microtel conference room. Those panels... are a filtered entry.*grin*

Current Mood: working

Slept reasonably well last night, but for some reason I am sluggish and foggy this morning. I remember bits and pieces of the dream I had... something about gorillas loping calmly out of the old General Electric plant back in Salem. In my dream, it was 3am, and

rattrap and I had been tasked to do something about the gorilla situation, which I protested because I'd been up all night and had work tomorrow.

These are my dreams, folks. They don't get any more coherent.

Despite, or because of, my mental fog this morning, my brain was quite creative on the drive to work. I fleshed out some more concepts for the webcomic I'm never going to have time or skill to do. I really miss plotting out Artificial Intelligence with Tom Monaghan. If I ever fix or replace my scanner, those old comics really ought to go on the web while I can still find the old print collection.

Midori-kitty has been a lot more affectionate to us the last few weeks, but she's been quite hostile to visitors at the same time. We're thinking it's a territory issue, but she really needs to quit it. This remains our place, not hers, until she's willing to pay rent for it. And she doesn't make much money.

Must. Clear. Head. And. Get Work Done.

Current Mood: confused

He heard what now?

Scream of Agony and Terror

I'm amused that, in my opinion, that caricature doesn't look much like Tennant, yet I knew immediately who it was supposed to be before reading the dialogue :)

Current Mood: pleased

Started off the weekend with a fever on Friday, caused probably by having to run around in the cold cold rain on Thursday. But I medicated the heck out of myself, and was well enough to travel with Starr to Williamsburg on Friday for MarsCon.

Most conventions are, for me, opportunities to socialize with friends I don't often get to see.

southernsinger,

kittykatya,

impink,

geckoman, and

stori_lundi were all there, as well as folks I get to see a little more often such as

ptownhiker,

fixitup, and

torn757. Got to spend some quality time with Jesse and Dwight too!

Convention loot: a Devil's Panties graphic novel (Jennie Breeden remembered me from Dragon*Con), character sketches from an artist in the dealer's room, a Carcassonne expansion and an book of Paranoia XP modules, two White Plectrum CDs and a Coyote Run CD, some erotica from Helen Madden's table, and a couple of buttons. After spending the weekend avoiding the purchase of T-shirts, Starr and I were handed free ones by a local game store - now I have to get rid of more old ones to make space!

Next year, the con is supposed to move to a bigger location, and it really needs the space. MarsCon completely overflowed its host hotel, which is a shame, as I think it's a nice place to hold the weekend. I got to hear some other VA con politics I didn't want to hear about, but that's the down side of having friends who are so heavily involved in things.

Speaking of being involved, this was the first time I can recall having my con badge paid for as a "Guest" presenter. I have to say I found it very cool, though somehow I had always imagined it would be for my Great American Science Fiction Novel. Still, the panels (which I talk a bit more about in the Lifestyle filter) were great fun, and I can't wait to do them again next year.

We'd really intended to stay longer on Sunday, but despite finally getting the MarsCon Charity Chair Massage I'd been wanting to try for years, we had a bad case of burnout. Excitement, dancing, endorphins, and little sleep all hit at once, and Starr and I headed home around 1:30 to veg for the rest of the day. Still haven't quite come down though. How long 'till T-Con?

Oh, by the way, for people who didn't go see Cloverfield, or restrained themselves from visiting YouTube this weekend, here's the new Trek movie trailer. Total geekgasm.

Current Mood: happy

Really. The model on the new Microsoft Mactopia page looks like she wants to charge me $2.95 a minute for something, and it ain't tech support. Are they diversifying now that Bill's leaving?

Rough night last night. Starr was quite ill with food poisoning all day and night, and I was way overdue on laundry even without the upcoming con to consider. Did get three loads done, including the kilt, and I think she mostly forgave me for my unskilled nursing attempts. We had no trouble conking out when bedtime rolled around. I swear, at this point I'm considering afternoon naps for the weekend.

Speaking of MarsCon, a preliminary schedule's up. At least I hope it's preliminary. Not only is everything I wish to attend scheduled directly against something else I wish to attend, but there is one timeslot where it appears the webcomics guests will need to be in two places at once.

Tonight: more laundry, packing, and cleaning out the car.

Current Mood: working

I was working on a journal post this morning, but my USB 2 expansion card freaked in the middle of that, ruining an iPod update and crashing the computer. So no post.

That's kinda the tone for the whole month of October. Good things certainly happened, but it's been pretty rough. My workload's been amazing - I netted almost 120 hours in one 2-week period. As well, a carefully-arranged Halloween costume failed to materialize; then sickness killed a carefully-planned Halloween party trip.

On the other hand, I was too lazy to put together an interesting outfit for a later party, and wound up just attending in my Enterprise uniform... winning First Place (Men's), to my surprise!

I'm really bummed about missing Rising Star this year. It sounds like they're gonna have some fun! But we've dropped $700 on car repairs this month, and holiday gift-giving's on the way, so we have to watch the budget like a hawk. (Here's hoping I don't have to replace that PCI card.)

Questionable Content - one of my favorite webcomics, and worth reading through from the beginning - is selling a t-shirt which proclaims, "She Blinded Me With Library Science!" which keeps bringing to mind a certain Yeager crew member.

I did in fact begin NaNoWriMo this week. I have no expectation of finishing in time - the demands on my time are manifest right now - but I'm starting it anyway. This is the closest my head has been in years to having a complete plot and interesting characters lined up, and I'm not giving up now. I may even get around to reposting my WARS stories to elfie, just for my own inspiration.

Taverncast - a WoW podcast - did a Halloween episode called "War of the Murlocs" this year. Despite the fact that I listened to it during the day at work, am closely familiar with the old Orson Welles broadcast, and caught many of the in-jokes, they still managed to creep me out a tiny bit. Maybe it's my overactive imagination: judge for yourself at war-of-the-murlocs.mp3 if you like. I'll be having fish for dinner tonight as my own strike back against the slimy rampagers.

Current Mood: hungry

I'm very addicted to podcasts now: working through the backlog of the cool ones I've found is really helping me get through my work day.

It's all the fault of the Fragile Gravity podcast at http://unseenllc.com/feed/glidepath.xml - of course I'd want to hear what

kittykatya and

impink were up to.

Then, as I realized that one show per week or so wasn't going to feed my addiction properly, I stumbled upon World of Warcast - a fun, casual hour of lvl 40s and 50s talking and goofing off about Blizzard's little life-sucker.

A link from an astronomy website drew me to Slacker Astronomy, where you don't have to be a hardcore space geek, but you do have to have a goofy sense of humor.

And now, well, I'm hooked. The iTunes music store offers hundreds of free podcasts, ranging from language lessons in Japanese to video podcasts of French Maids explaining XML coding. You don't have to have iTunes or even an MP3 player - there's lots of software which'll let you subscribe and listen from your desktop machine.

So that's the morning post; I need to finish loading Steve Jackson Games' new Fnordcast onto the iPod and leave for work...

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: Neutrons play Hide and Quake - Slacker Astronomy - Slacker Astronomy

What, you want content? Sorry, I gotta leave for work in a few.

What you get is a webcomic link: Bumblebee and Jazz go to see Pixar's Cars.

Current Mood: rushed

It has always been a good thing for my spare time that World of Warcraft won't install on my laptop. (Actually, I did make it install one time, but only got one video frame every 4 seconds or so, so off it went again.) Unfortunately, Monday night a friend's casual reference reminded me that the laptop's specs were well up to another piece of software, and last night, I put Starcraft on it. Maybe now I can finish the darn Terran campaign and play the other two-thirds of the game.

Blizzard does not own me. But I think it's trying to acquire controlling interest.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if Alan Moore and the Wachowskis have manufactured this little tiff they are having just to make sure V for Vendetta retains a brighter blip on the geek radar. As someone recently pointed out, any author who has sold thousands of copies of professional fanfic (I refer to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) doesn't have much of a leg to stand on when bitching about other creative folks modifying their characters and storylines.

You know, a book is not a movie is not a comic is not a TV show. They all have different rules and must make adaptations if they are to flourish in a changed environment. "Spamalot" is hardly a scene-for-scene copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, for example. If SciFi ever makes that rumored miniseries of "Ringworld", they'll have to change quite a bit to keep a good novel from being very dull television. (Knowing SciFi, they probably won't - they'll follow the advice of some uber-fan who wants a line-by-line copy.) I wish fans were better at judging material on its own merits, instead of what they wanted the material to be. (I also wish more fans understood the difference between "This is poor quality" and "I personally don't like this much.")

Speaking of which, some website recently applauded the Enterprise-D as one of the most iconic spaceships in visual science fiction, making the note that "not a lot of thought was put into the original television Enterprise." I hope the ghost of Matt Jeffries hunts this person down and explains a thing or three to him.

Current Mood: sick

Friday, 9/2

It was kinda weird to wake up at a Con hotel before the Con's started. Despite an attempt to mark the interesting early-morning panels in the 100-some-page program booklet, I got a slow start on Friday, and blew them off. Instead, I wandered over to the Marriott to see if the dealers' room had opened.

Accidentally, I sat down to rest exactly where the WizKids envoys were meeting. One knew me, and the others reacted well when I dropped

raininva's name. As a freshly-renewed Envoy myself, I was offered the opportunity to help out, but declined, as I needed a "vacation" con over a "working" one.

The Exhibitors' Hall held larger dealers, such as game companies and prop dealers, and the Dealers' room had the smaller stores and such. There was plenty in both I'd have bought with an unlimited budget; several times during the weekend, I had to ask myself, "If you take that gaming book home, will you ever actually use it?"

I wandered back into the lobby, and started to feel a real case of costume envy. There were so many incredible outfits there; I really wish I'd had time to pack more of my stuff. Not that much of it would be competition, but it might have been fun to show off anyway. I won't bother trying to list everything I saw, as that would be boring. It started to get a little depressing, honestly - I could have worn anything I own and not looked out-of-place - and there I stood in jeans and t-shirt. I felt like an arch-conservative.

I went back upstairs for a badly needed nap, as the laps of the hotels in the warmth of Atlanta (and 30,000 fans) were beginning to get to me. Rain called to let me know she was on the final leg of her flight in, so I wandered down to the Food Court joining the Hyatt and Marriott: a tunnel leads to the local metro station, where she'd have been coming in. I misremembered her arrival time, though, and her plane was delayed and the flight's luggage held up, resulting in me spending about 2.5 - 3 hours in that food court. I saw lots more great costumes, though, and recognized the trademark t-shirt and flame-boots of Jennie Breeden, author and artist of webcomic The Devil's Panties. She needed directions to the Hyatt, and I talked briefly to her while taking her there. Very nice lady. I'm sure she thinks I was a borderline stalker.

Rain finally made it to the Con, and we went to the WizKids Envoy Appreciation dinner. Good food, and we learned to play WizKids' first CCG, High Stakes Drifter. As well, Rain got to see something very very very cool at the Dinner which readers of her journal should get to hear about soon.

Tired. Slightly overheated. Rain went to the room WizKids had arranged for her, and I headed back up to mine. Fell into bed and blanked out.

Current Mood: tired

Oh, I forgot to mention today's Narbonic webcomic, in which Arnie the superintelligent gerbil has been accidentally locked in a human form, at least for now. Apparently, some of his other hyperintelligent lab animal friends on the Internet don't believe him, and are accusing him of being a "thumbie". No doubt there are thumbie-themed cons, animals who construct bareskinsuits, and thumbie porn :)

I think "Kevin and Kell" did that joke once too. Still funny, though.

Current Mood: amused

Further Assimilations

We Will Add Your Observations To Our Own

Unsigned comics

Brief updates

Brief updates

Christmas / Time

A little more crowded

Back to the World of Two Moons

Stay Cool

Tunic +1 to Confusion Charms

But can she run Linux?

TCon Saturday - The Crud Strikes Back

Primate Engineering

Sluggy Doctor

Weekend on Mars

Brain in the high-tech gutter

Trick or Treat!

Radio over Wires

This is all I have today

Making adaptations

Dragon*Con 2005 report, pt. 2

3:00 Panel on Tail- and Ear-binding

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