Exciting news, everyone: Xaviar Xerexes over at Comixtalk interviewed John and me about Chronillogical! Do you want to learn about how we make the comic? How we run the website? If we have any plans for a print collection?

Well too bad, because you’re gonna find out anyway! Here’s the link!

The tragedy has passed! (Hooray!) Unfortunately, in doing so, it ate up a good deal of valuable comicking time. (Booo!) What does this mean for you, the consumer?

1) Tuesday’s strip will be of the Filler type

2) But Friday’s strip shouldn’t be … unless some other horrible ailment assails us

So, them’s the news from the moon. Stay crispy!

As you might have noticed, a few weeks ago we reached one of our first big milestones: we finished ourtfirst story-arc!

Well, I’m excited to report to you that just today we’ve reached yet another big milestone: technical difficulties! (Actually, I’m not so much excited as I am perturbed and frustrated. But you get the idea.) Yes, according to Mr. John Chouinard himself, his spankin’ new Mac is currently refusing to boot up.

I’m a little unclear on the specifics of the situation, so maybe John will chime in with his own words. At the moment, though, it looks like we’ll have to miss tomorrow’s update. Depending on how quickly this gets resolved, you might also be seeing a filler strip or two coming up. Hopefully it won’t be too big of a problem! We’ll keep you posted.

John adds: Greg speaks the truth! I don’t think the problem is ultra-serious, and I still have a few tricks to try before giving up all hope. (Anyone here know Kenobi’s holo-extension?) What’s certain for now is that Friday’s strip will be unfinished—pencils only, lads! (Chronillogical: Unplugged! Except not at all as satisfying.) What I do not know is how far this problem will spill into the weekend slash week slash month slash Slash. So hopefully this’ll blow over soon, but if not—well, we’ll be sure to say so, at least!

I had read (and very much enjoyed) Kean Soo’s Jellaby in the past, and consequently was pleasantly surprised to run into a collaboration of his. Those hoping to inspire netiquette, or lack thereof, in particularly young youngsters, take note! Looks like we’ve finally seen the day where websurfing proficiency rivals that of the terlet.

You know what I need? Here’s what I need.

I need someone—preferably someone hairy and short, don’t ask me why—to break into my room every morning and bound about, shouting “IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY, YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!” until I run screaming into the street. I could use that.

pundit: A master of puns

“Did you hear about the clergyman who was a jerk to everyone he met?”
“No.”
“He was a real big apsehole.”
“Oh John, you’re such a pundit.”

The first installment of a groundbreaking new series!*

Chris Onstad, creator of Achewood
MEETS
Vincent Connare, creator of popular font Comic Sans

REFERENCE

I wonder how many times Vince has been shown that comic. My guess: a lot of times.

*Statement makes no guarantee of future installments.

I am writing this to you all from the glass-walled business center of the Embassy Suites in downtown San Diego, a place I emphatically should not be. This is not to say that I have anything against San Diego or the Embassy Suites—I don’t—it’s just that I had originally been expecting to be somewhere over Kansas around now. Apparently, JetBlue had some problems with this plan; rather than scrambling to find a connecting flight, I decided to just cool it and take tomorrow’s flight out. I’m in no rush, the hotel room was booked for the extra night anyway, and hey, San Diego’s a pretty nice place.

Anyway: Comic-Con. It happened. It was exciting! It was so exciting, in fact, that I completely forgot to take any pictures! To make up for this, John will recreate the experience for you in astounding, jaw-dropping, colorless and sketchy detail. You already got a taste of this last Thursday, and you can look forward to a little more of it on Tuesday. But to help satiate your surely-excruciating interest, I will attempt to supplement his visual extravaganza with a few humble words of my own.

Pre-Con
I got my first taste of Comic-Con this year before even arriving in San Diego, as both R. Stevens and Jeph Jacques were on my flight! For a couple of dudes whose webcomics I don’t read, I sure do manage to run into them an awful lot. (By “awful lot”, I mean “twice”—the first time being ROFLCon—and by “run into” I mean “awkwardly stare at from a healthy distance”.) If I keep this up, one of them might even start recognizing me as That Tall Creepy Guy Who Keeps Looking at Us. A man can dream, at any rate.

On Wednesday, John, John’s mom, and I went to see Hellboy 2. We agreed that it was a very pretty movie. Then we went to preview night.

Preview night is the night before the convention proper, and they open up the exhibition hall to let attendees roam wide and free. Those who forage successfully are rewarded with exclusive goods and exciting merchandise. The rest either go mad or are devoured whole by inscrutable cosplayers. Happily, I survived, and was rewarded with a set of Final Fantasy plush toys. In fact, I’ve had my eye on those damn plushies for the past two years, so I was downright ecstatic to get my grubby paws on them at long last.

We also went to a Star Trek exhibit at the San Diego Air and Space Museum, where I annoyed John persistently with innumerable dumb questions, found out and promptly forgot what class ship the Enterpirse-C was, and learned from Worf that perhaps today is a good day to die. Good times all around.

Thursday

In the interest of time and space, I’m going to describe the rest of the convention in list format. Anything I fail to mention will be excluded for one of three reasons: (1) it is not interesting, (2) it has been or will be covered by one of John’s comics, or (3) I forgot about it. But if you’d like me to elaborate on anything, you can always just ask.

• Spore: Will Wright gave an excellent and intriguing presentation, and the game looks fantastic. It was a little awkward, however, when he started talking about Nazi slave camps and the people in front of us wouldn’t stop laughing.
• How to Tell a Story: Executive summary: STORIES should have CHARACTERS that DO THINGS.
• Dumbrella: More gawking at R. Stevens, but also a bunch of other webcomic artists (and MC Frontalot, too!) and an officially sanctioned pretext within which to execute my gawking.
• Science of Science Fiction: John went to some Star Trek thing instead of this. What a nerd!

Friday

• Watchmen: I woke up early and waiting in line for 2 hours to get into this panel. The movie looks good, but the panel wasn’t worth the bother.
• Introduction to Webcomics: This was very much like a live edition of Webcomics Weekly (plus Phil Foglio). I recommend the podcast if you don’t already listen to it.
• Penny Arcade: Mike and Jerry have a great rapport; if you ever have the opportunity to see them in person, seize it!
• MST3K 20th Anniversary Reunion: Gah! We missed this! GAH! Missing this panel was by far the biggest disappointment of the convention. Everyone from the show was there. Everyone! Now, if they had hosted this event in a bigger room, maybe we could have gotten in. Instead, the Comic-Con organizers decided to use the largest available space to screen Avatar: The Last Airbender.
• Worst Cartoons Ever: I’ve gone to this show every year for the past three years. I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s some kind of deep-seated self-hate complex? Actually, it’s probably because of Sam Bassett: Hound for Hire, who happens to have a machine gun in his hat.
• Spike and Mike: The Gauntlet: This year’s batch of animation was weaker than in previous years. But it gives me an opportunity to recommend Lone Sausage’s productions, a perennial favorite of the show.

Saturday

• Quick Draw!: Think Whose Line Is It Anyway? meets illustration. Although it’s an annual Comic-Con event, this was the first time John and I went. Fantastic stuff. If you ever attend Comic-Con in the future, definitely go see it. (Sergio Aragonés in particular deserves special mention for his exceptional improvisational talent.)
• Dollhouse: John and I somehow managed to squeak into this one. Joss Whedon is a funny little man and I envy him enormously.
• Mythbusters: To avoid missing the Mythbusters and reliving yesterday’s MST3K disappointment, we camped out in room 6B starting two panels prior. It was necessary. Adam and Jamie were greeted like rock stars, and the energy in the room was as explosive as the show.
• RiffTrax Live: One of the biggest and best surprises of the trip—at the Balboa Theater, we got to see Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy do a live riff on Plan 9 from Outer Space! It definitely helped ease our disappointment over missing the MST3K panel the night before.

Sunday

• Woke Up Late: I slept in until I was woke up with a call from my brother telling me my flight was canceled. Nice!
• Exhibition Hall: My first purchases since preview night: Ice Haven by Daniel Clowes and A Contract with God by Will Eisner.
• Fraggle Rock: I don’t really watch the show, but John does, and I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to see Red Fraggle live, now could I?

And that’s about it. The hospitality of Embassy Suites has enabled me to spend the rest of my Sunday afternoon as I invariably do, wherever in the world I so happen to be: lying somewhere, stuffing my face and watching movies on TV. Beyond grabbing a grilled chicken sandwich at the second-sketchiest Wendy’s in the world and writing this post—this very one that you are reading right now—not much else has happened.

So yeah! That was Comic-Con. Goooooooooooooooooooood times.

Here are a few tidbits that I’ve been meaning to throw up here:

1. Comic-Con is really soon! Like, next week soon. John and I are both going, which means that we won’t have so much time for comicking. We’ll have something for you, but it probably won’t be regular Chronillogical stuff. Never fear—it probably won’t be The Magical Man, either (unless you people want to see more of him…?)
    
2. We like feedback! Really, we do! Comments are open for a reason, so if you have constructive criticism, post away. Plain-vanilla critical criticism would work, too. Heck, I’d even take a violent, raving diatribe if someone cared enough to write one.

   And of course, if you have something positive to say, the ol’ self-esteem balloon could always use a little inflating, too.

3. Nothing! There is no third thing.

Friday’s comic will be a slight diversion from our regular comicking, as I will be trying my untrained hand at illustration. You might call this a “filler strip”; I prefer the phrase “artistic experimentation”.

However you care to refer to it: do not fret. It won’t be a permanent thing. It won’t even be a frequent thing. And rest assured, we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming next Tuesday.