I have made an executive decision.  To streamline the process, I am going to take 9 bucks for each order of the comic book.   That is inclusive of  domestic shipping and everything, and allows me to make a little money without soaking you guys too bad.  Note that international shipping will be extra, but I’ll have to work that out on a case-by-case basis.  These first ones to you, o loyal Zonaphiles, will be signed by JE Draft, and include a wee bonus just for reading online so long and being just so super-speyshul!

Note that, at this time, it is still a pre-order, since I haven’t got my grubby lil hands on the suckers, yet.  Still, the printers have everything and assure me that the order will come in on time, which should be sometime in the next two weeks or so.

Or so.

So, all of you just make sure that you have included whatever shipping address you want it delivered to, and as soon as I get them I will mail then off to yez, provided I don’t run out, first. (wouldn’t that be great) And even in that case, I just have to put in another order.   I think I will also make them available, after this, at Indy Planet, which will make it even easier.

Naturally, if you’re gonna be at San Diego Comicon, you can also pick one up from me at the Soulgeek table.

Warm regards,

JED

For the delay on this, my thank you to the generous folk who contributed way back when I first got my passive-aggressive cat P-Chan, my apologies.  But I have just uploaded the last four pages of the little story, and you may read it now.   You may want to start at the beginning again, since it’s taken so frigging long just to finish twelve lousy pages you’ve probably forgotten the story! But if you have eidetic memory and want to start just at page eight where we left off, go here.

Soon, I’ll be putting it in the Freebies section permanently.  For now, enjoy, and once again, thank you all!

Well, now that the files are set for the publisher to download and, hopefully, approve and publish, I had time to put up a calendar.  Enjoy it for half a month.  I decided, also, to do away with the different resolutions and trust that you lot know how to resize a graphic using free or other software, and so I decided to finally have two different aspects, instead.   Both are high resolution, and hopefully you can enjoy them.  Being deep in the first chapters of Zona, I made this graphic as an extra page for the book, and you who visit the site can also enjoy it as a calendar.

Enjoy.

Don’t worry, there will be an update tomorrow.  The delay is because of this:

By tomorrow night, it should all be at the publisher, but I am being tired tonight, and will do the new page tomorrow for you Saturday.

And why, you may ask?

Well, because I am buckling down for the last few bits of the book, and I need to get it in by Wednesday if I expect to have it ready for Comicon!  So, no update until Friday, but if you’re nice to me I will put up one of the new, reworked pages tomorrow so you all can get an idea of what it’s like.   There will also be a new short story of Zona in the years before she met Mentl, so I hope that those of you who actually purchase the paper product will not feel you were ripped off.

Also, I was inspired to make a sketch of Maldik’s father so you can compare them.  Vote and you get to see it!

Cheers! I will now go render like a demon!

Well, I just returned from a four-day visit to Maryland to be with dear friends I had not seen in almost a year,  and so I beg your patience to wait an extra day for the update.  I promise it should maybe be worth the wait, I hope.    Tomorrow evening, for sure!

I am old, I am old, old, old.

Heh.

I suspect that it is the years that have worn away my edginess (if I ever had any) to find the soft and squishy center.

Or perhaps it is that there is a truly a generation of people who have come to maturity (of a sort) with a completely unregulated and unmoderated outlet for their Id, and rudeness and audacious ignorance are admired and rewarded over civility and educated discourse because they think that’s the way it should be?  Is it outrageous censorship just to ask people to be polite when it’s appropriate?  Should I admire someone who comes into my house and shits on my carpet just because he’s breaking a taboo?  Are there no taboos that must not be broken, not by artists or thoughtful people, but by people just looking for an excuse to act like assholes?    Maybe I’m really just get tired of trolls and trolling masquerading as irony or worthy humor.  Of people so cowardly and limp-dicked that they have nothing better to do than to anonymously slam anything and everything just for whatever atavistic thrill they must get out of it.

There’s a bunch of sites, some funny most not, that blast a bunch of manufactured rage against what, to me, are the wrong targets.  Especially against minorities, those with disabilities, or even, yes, web comic artists.  I read some really savage and mindless stuff out there, and it’s as though I somehow wandered into a drunken frat party for redneck morons, even on supposedly mainstream news and social networking sites.

I think of the comics  - the truly great, rude comics - who have always been funny.  Guys like Carlin, Foxx, Leary, Pryor, Murphy, Chris Rock - funny guys who cuss and are clever, and talk about things that are absurd in daily life or else attack hypocrisy and petty or grand injustices with biting satire.  Those guys always, in my opinion, piss off the right people: The smug, the cruel, the selfish, the powerful - the maliciously stupid, or the willfully ignorant.

I never saw them attack truly benign or harmless people or institutions, except to sometimes point up some silly or arbitrary thing that was just, well, funny.  When Maher attacks religion, it’s because he sees something genuinely destructive in the institution or the practice of it.  Agree or disagree, he’s at least got a point.  When Carlin made his seven dirty words list, he was talking about the arbitrary nature of language and communication.  He was breaking social taboos because he was making you think about why they’re there in the first place.  When Pryor uses the N word (which I, after a lifetime of social conditioning, still can’t bring myself to type) he was using it in a truly ironic way, and also in the context of his own experience and culture.  And these guys were so funny that even the people they pissed off couldn’t deny that they were funny.  And they started conversations and arguments, not just flame wars.

Yes, sometimes the socially acceptable behavior is a bit oppressive.  Sometimes people get offended too easily, and we go too far to avoid it.  But words do have an impact, even in this cynical world where we can consider articulate speech to be little more than a smooth lie.    True eloquence can communicate great ideas or profound concepts or motivate a generation to progress or to great deeds.  Conversely, a racial or religious slur that isn’t in context can ruin more than someone’s day.   Common decency shouldn’t be derided as being “politically correct,” especially if all you’re doing is acting out because you’re angry or ignorant and want to make someone else look stupid.

Anyway, that’s a bit of rambling, because it’s been in my head for a few days.

Also, naturally, I want to mention that you all are an extraordinary bunch, and it is always a pleasure to read your comments and conversations.  I do insist that we keep things civil here, and I am very appreciative of your willingness to do that.

Obviously, this strip and countless others owes a great debt to the master.    No fantasy artist or writer of the last three generations is without some inspiration and influence by Mr. Frazetta. He’ll be missed, but his body of work lives on.

Just discovered some new (to me) web comics that are just dripping in Awesome Sauce:

Bad Machinery

It’s English public school with a dash of fantasy and weirdness. Excellent writing and superb art.

Lemuria

If you like your barbarian warrior women jumbo-sized and the satire just as thick.

Edmund Finney’s Quest To Find The Meaning Of Life

In a class all by itself.  Laconic, surreal, hilarious.

Space Trawler

A little like Last Starfighter, a little like My Favorite Martian, a little like … uh … just see for yourself.

Sailor Twain

Life on a river boat.  A spooky, smoky, fantasy of nineteenth century America.

Almost forgot  STRING THEORY

Whoa. Serious sci-fi psycho-thriller-pastiche-dramady can’t-really-label-it strip.  Must read.  Frigging brilliant.

Okay, adding a couple more:

DIGGER

A wombat gets lost. And then falls in with the god Ganesh. And there’s ninjas and vampire vegetables.   And it’s amazingly good, I am not kidding.

LACKADAISY

Exquisitely written and drawn historical fantasy about Prohibition Era gangsters.  Oh, and they’re anthro cats.   Has to be seen to be believed.

We will be starting to update twice a week again. This week.

The new page was supposed to be up today.

Do you see any new page here? No? Well, you should see something by tonight. Do you want to hear excuses? No?

Well, let’s just say that Vista is a purulent pox on the computing world, and somewhere there are developers out there whose souls are marked for at least a century of purgatory, spent debugging the Cobol version of Poser 8.

Arrrgh.