Thanks for reading.

6/2/09

Sometimes, like yesterday, an AKOTAS-2 gag is really about the characters whose names appear on the cast page; and sometimes, like today, it's fanfiction with the names globally replaced. A coupla other topics, neither of which seem to have alone motivated a newspost. 1. All the reactions I've received on the cliffhanger before the sabbatical have been encouraging, perhaps best summed up by the first sentence of one of them, "You magnificent son of a bitch." Another referred to Merlin's death as unforeshadowed, which bemused me when Merlin first foretold it in July 2004; though I admitted I'd been talking it up less in the last couple of years than I did in the first couple of years, in hopes of getting this reaction when it came. Before I perceived the need and means of the sabbatical, I had planned to run the salute to Henry Blake's death just before the storyline depicting Merlin's losses in the baseline and space arcs when Nimue comes of age in 2011; when I decided on the sabbatical, I realized that making a cliffhanger of it better suited my purposes in doing it in the first place. Yes, I did it this way largely to see whether I could; whether I'm having success at bringing these characters into people's daily lives as Captain Kirk and Little Nell and Snoopy have been brought, that the loss of one might be affecting. AKOTAS may not have the audience of millions that I feel the characters deserve, but it's encouraging that I'm successful enough with those whose attention I have that some small percentage is moved enough to say so. But all the reactions have come by email, or by comments on the weekly compendium post in my LiveJournal. Doesn't anyone remember the discussion forum any more? 2. As 2001-2004 readers of triangle cartoons may have already deduced, one of the reasons I chose the format for AKOTAS-2 that I did is to permit me, on bad days, to crib one of those older cartoons for AKOTAS-2 (hopefully at least one whose gag I haven't already re-used; I must trust my spreadsheet on that) with only minor alterations required to the art. I've done it twice in two weeks so far (and one of those actually required pretty substantial art alterations). I feel badly when I do it, but I try not to. One, the purpose of a sabbatical, after all, is to be not burdened with your normal everyday concerns for awhile in aid of restoration and recuperation. And two, at least I'm not doing punchlineless fillers yet (those will probably start when I run out of pre-AKOTAS triangle cartoons that can be converted).

Webcomics I read mornings: Kevin & Kell, For Better Or For Worse, Tux & Bunny, Sluggy Freelance, Irregular Comic

Webcomics I read M-W-F mornings: General Protection Fault, Nukees, Newshounds, Girl Genius, Ctrl+Alt+Del

Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa mornings: El Goonish Shive, AppleGeeks, Achewood, Striptease, Punch an' Pie, Digger

Webcomics I read middays: Calvin & Hobbes, Least I Could Do, User Friendly, LuAnn, Pearls Before Swine, American Elf, Devil's Panties, Narbonic, Schlock Mercenary

Webcomics I read weekday evenings: Questionable Content, Starslip Crisis, Count Your Sheep, Dandy & Company, Dinosaur Comics, Girls With Slingshots, Shortpacked, Wapsi Square, Help Desk, Real Life, PvP

Webcomics I read M-W-F evenings: Fans, Two Lumps, Goats, Order of the Stick, College Roommates from Hell!!!, Penny Arcade

Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa evenings: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, Get Out of My Head, Darths & Droids, Megatokyo, Buck Godot Zap Gun For Hire

Webcomics I read bedtimes: B.C., Something Positive, Station V3, Sinfest, Little Dee, Skin Horse, Sheldon, Peanuts

Webcomics I read Sundays: Breakfast of the Gods, Something Happens, Three Panel Soul, No Room for Magic, Li'l Mell, Zortic, The Non-Adventures of Wonderella, xkcd

Webcomics I hope will start updating again: Boxjam's Doodle, The Angriest Rice Cooker In The World, My Name is Might Have Been, Butternut Squash, Sketchies, 13 Seconds, Anywhere But Here, Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break, Kismetropolis, The Magnificent Adventures of Hieronymus Bosch, esquire, The Green Avenger, I Draw Comics, Reasoned Cognition, Perry Bible Fellowship, The Whovian Observer, Gossamer Commons

See also The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, Talk About Comics, The Living Comic, Online Comics Day, The Belfry Comics Index, The Webcomic List, Mister Bloo, Nth Degree, 100% Originality Theatre, Brian Roney's Webcomic Reviews, Girls Read Comics (And They're Pissed), Fleen, Mr. Myth, Comixtalk and Websnark.

Arthuriana sources I use or recommend:
Arthurian Legend
Arthuriana - the Journal of Arthurian Studies; the website of the quarterly journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society.
The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.
Camelot In Four Colors: A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics
Mystical-WWW - The Arthurian A2Z knowledge Bank which has encyclopedically-arranged entries on the characters of the Arthurian legends.
Early British Kingdoms - Arthurian Bios.
Historia Ecclesiastica.
Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table, Volume 1 and Volume 2.