Waffle

So far, the launch of the new Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan archives has gone very well indeed. WillowCMS's built-in log analyser reported almost 7000 pageviews on Wednesday. These came from a smallish pool of unique visitors, but as most regulars still use the ROCR.net domain, that's not a big problem.

There is still a lot to do about the site. Because of the new story launch, I couldn't delay the move any more than I already had, unless I wanted to interrupt publication of the comic, which I wasn't prepared to do. That did mean that the archives went live with several things yet unfinished. I still have to add:
1. New RSS feeds;
2. "About" and other existing additional pages managed through WillowCMS
3. A Table Of Contents.
4. Switching the ROCR.net domain to point to rocr.xepher.net.
...not necessarily in that order. However, I won't be doing all these things immediately because I'm appallingly behind on my other work and have an out-of-town appointment over the weekend. Sorry.

PS: There's one more thing on the list, which is repairing the Four-Way Crossover which has been broken since first Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan and then No Stereotypes moved to Modern Tales. The archiving system of Modern Tales was incompatible with the needs of the crossover. Also, Glych's original version of No Stereotypes got lost in the transition. We're now in a situation where we can fill in the gaps again, so hopefully, the crossover will start making sense again.

For a highly specialised meaning of the word "sense". But still.

That item has been on my to-do list for so long it's got mould growing on it.

I've been working on the two sequels to The Double. Five pages of the Christmas special Christmas at Blocksberg are now lettered and ready to go. They weren't exactly easy to do, but I still got a week's worth of material finished in less than a single working day.

A few weeks ago, I got a CD in the mail from Daniel, with his scans for Alcydia, the long-awaited serial that he and Geir have been working on as a parallel story to the Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan story Guðrún. Here's a glimpse at Daniel's rendition of the Rogues:

If Dave Ronan keeps on making comics like Things I Did As A Kid But Aren't Sure Why, I'm going to have no choice but to blogroll him. It'll all end in tears, I tell ya!

Woo hoo! BBC to screen 'Dr Who for adults' as new spin-off show

The BBC has commissioned the Doctor Who scriptwriter Russell T Davies to make an adult post-watershed spin-off of its most famous sci-fi show.

The new programme will be called Torchwood (an anagram of Doctor Who) and will follow a crack team investigating alien activities and crime in modern-day Britain.

It will feature in its starring role John Barrowman, who played Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and who will play the same character in Torchwood.

Like the latest version of Doctor Who, which the BBC successfully relaunched this year, Torchwood will be based in Cardiff. Davies, who has just begun writing Torchwood, said the new programme would be aimed at adult audiences and would "have its own, unique identity". He said: "Torchwood will be a dark, clever, wild, sexy, British crime/sci-fi paranoid thriller cop show with a sense of humour - the X Files meets This Life," the latter a reference to the groundbreaking Nineties BBC drama about a group of young lawyers in Bristol.

Well well well... launching my new archives and storyline on a Monday opened me up wide to another case of Monday Morning Surprise. There is nothing about webcartooning that I hate and dread more than the Monday Morning Surprise. It's invariably very unpleasant, it invariably needs fixing an hour ago and is often very hard to fix. It invariably fills me with thoughts of packing it in and moving to Tahiti to paint nude women (on nude women). This morning, I got two. The wrong episode was on the front page, and even more embarrassingly after a press release in which I mentioned freeing up the archives, the "Previous episode" from the first page was locked.
I had wisely set a later rollover time for the update (8 o'clock instead of six) but unfortunately couldn't drag myself out of bed until 9 (I'm still sick). Once spotted, the problems were fixed in less than a minute though, which is unusual and gives me hope.

(more...)

I'm posting this press release everywhere:

After three years at the subscription-based portal Modern Tales, the fantasy webcomic Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan is making its archives free to all readers again at a new location. The move coincides with the launch of the next storyline, The Green Knight's Belt, on Monday, October 17.

The Green Knight's Belt is actually the first Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan story, written and drawn almost 15 years ago for print. Fragments of it have been shown on the web in the past few years, but this new serialisation will be the first time the story has been published online in full, with everything re-scanned, re-translated and cleaned up. Over the next year or so, creator Reinder Dijkhuis intends to complete the web publication of the early works.

In The Green Knight's Belt, the original gang of four Rogues hear of the magical powers of the legendary Green Knight's Belt. They brave guards, dragons, puns and other horrors to get to it.

The new archives are hosted at http://rocr.xepher.net. Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan updates on weekdays.

Pass it on. Comment.

Warren Ellis writes that:

Tucked deep inside a massive bill designed to track sex offenders and prevent children from being victimized by sex crimes is language that could put many Hollywood movies in the same category as hard-core, X-rated films.

The provision added to the Children’s Safety Act of 2005 would require any film, TV show or digital image that contains a sex scene to come under the same government filing requirements that adult films must meet.

...

Under the provision inserted into the Children’s Safety Act, the definition of sexual activity is expanded to include simulated sex acts like those that appear in many movies and TV shows.

The provision, written by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., could have ramifications beyond simply requiring someone to ensure that the names and ages of actors who partake in pretend lovemaking as compliance with Section 2257 in effect defines a movie or TV show as a pornographic work under federal law. Industry sources say the provision was included in the bill at the behest of the Justice Department.

Industry officials contend that the way the provision is written, a sex scene could trigger the provision even if the actors were clothed. While the language is designed to capture “lascivious exhibition of the genitals,” other legal decisions have said that “lascivious exhibition” could occur when the genitals are covered.

The bill, with the Section 2257 provision included, already has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and is waiting consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Industry executives worry that the provision, which is retroactive to 1995, will have a chilling effect on filmmakers. Faced with the choice of filing a 2257 certificate or editing out a scene, a filmmaker might decide it’s not worth getting entangled with the federal government and let the scene fall to the cutting-room floor, the executives said…

There is, of course, no reason to suppose that the bill does what it says on the tin. As the Reuters report mentions:

"Guys who are making [child pornography] don't care about reporting requirements," one source said. "When they're caught, they're looking at 30 years in prison. There's no indication they're going to fill out the paperwork."

(via Eric M, who also points out that digital images = webcomics).

I'll just add the blindingly obvious observation that this nonsense was proposed by a Republican, has passed a Republican-dominated House, will easily pass a Republican-dominated Senate and will be upheld by a Supreme Court that the Republican president is now stacking with his Republican cronies. The only hope that the entertainment industry has is that it will turn out to be as big an administrative nightmare for the government as it will be for them.

I have had the privilege to see some pages from the new Asterix album on a private forum. You won't have to look all that hard to get a sample, anyway. It's very hard, considering Asterix's importance to European comics and even to the European publishing industry, to keep that stuff a secret. But I've got a good eyeful of it.

How can I put this? Yes, it is true that attaching Goscinny's mortal remains to a generator right now would solve the world's energy problem in no time. It's as far removed from his original vision for the series as it could possibly get.

In fact, it's so far removed from Goscinny's original vision that I'm actually getting more interested in the book than I've been for a long, long time. Either Uderzo's gone nuts, or he's just made the most daring move in his long career. We'll see in 10 hours, when the shops open tomorrow.

... and that's that, again. The Stone of Contention is done, for the second time. I hope you enjoyed the old work. From the response I got, it looks like you did; what I've been hearing from people was that they didn't mind it was old, that it was new to them.
This is good news, because I've become really keen on completing the archival series. The next storyline to be run is the very first one The Green Knight's Belt from 1991-1992. Most of that is in the bag; I've been delayed from putting the finishing touches on by my recent bout of thankfully mild flu and by work on changes to the way Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan will be presented on the Web. I've dropped a few hints here and there, some of them about as subtle as anvils, but haven't got around to writing a proper announcement/press release for the changes yet. Blame that flu. More on that over the weekend. I hope. There's quite a bit left to do yet, much more than I anticipated.

If what I've got is flu at all, it's the slowest-progressing I've ever had. Day 3 and I've just about got a bit of a dry cough going. It may be a completely unrelated thing. I'd see a doctor except the waiting room would be filled with people who really do have influenza, so if I didn't have it already I'd come back with it.
For a moment, I thought it was the ibuprofen slowing down the disease's progress. Much as I like having only mild symptoms, I don't want this to drag on, so I stopped taking it. My symptoms are still unusually mild; even my head is clear enough to work at the home computer, which I did.
My attempt at quarantaining myself (as an exercise in preparedness in case of an Avian Flu pandemic) was defeated this morning by my 84-year-old neighbour who rang my doorbell and hugged me when she found I was all right. Very sweet of her – I just hope she doesn't catch her death for her troubles.
Unless my symptoms change significantly, I'm going to spend a few hours at the studio today. I'll bring disinfectant tissues just in case.