Blitz the Comic Guy

Okay, it’s been a few weeks since the site migrations started, and the progress has been… slow.  I still don’t even have all of 2008’s material re-posted, and that’s the one year with the LEAST stuff to move around.  At the current rate, it’d probably take me most of 2020 to finally get the new sites all caught up, and that’s just not a viable plan.  Obviously, a huge part of the problem is that this move was sprung on me right in the middle of what was already the busiest part of the year anyway.  I’m working on the biggest batch of Far Out There comics all year, and there’s a Conventional Wisdom update to finish, PLUS all the Real Life I’ve got going on at the same time as all the art stuff.  It’s becoming clear that, if I want these sites to be complete and functional in any reasonable amount of time, I’ll have to focus on site work a LOT more than I have been so far.  For that to happen, I’m going to have to make exactly the sort of decision I hate making.

Far Out There’s current Christmas series will continue on as planned for the rest of the month, but after that wraps up, regular updates will be on hiatus until the site’s in better shape.  Far Out There pages are probably the most time-consuming things I do, and there’s just not enough hours in the day to consistently work on that AND the mountain of website chores that need to be taken care of right now.  I at least want to get the full library of main comics onto the site, and have the basic structure of the site itself finalized before regular updates resume.  And I need to stress that right way: FAR OUT THERE IS NOT ENDING OR ANYTHING, this is just a temporary pause to let me focus more on setting these websites up.  Also, comic production won’t COMPLETELY stop, I’m still going to try and have new holiday comics going up on SmackJeeves and the various Social Medias to keep things somewhat active during the pause.  So there should still be something coming out for New Years and Valentines and whatever else happens before the hiatus ends.  I’m HOPING that, if I burn the midnight oil on this enough, I can have everything ported over and updated by the end of February, so hopefully those are the only ones that’ll come up (also, I totally flaked on doing any sort of Far Out There birthday comic in 2019, so I’ll do another one of those Feb 13th)  Again, I really hate to just stop doing something for any length of time, but for a narrative-driven comic like Far Out There, not having the full comic library on the site is a pretty insurmountable obstacle to work around.  There’s a LOT of stuff that can’t move forward until that’s resolved, so I’m gonna have to make that priority number one.

Also… man, I hate to talk about this even more, but, well, I’ve been drawing Far Out There non-stop for nearly TWELVE YEARS now.  Over all that time, I’ve collective had, what, three week’s worth of break?  I’m tired, guys.  I need a bit of a vacation, ESPECIALLY after how stressful this month has turned out to be.  And as tedious as this site stuff is, it’s also weirdly relaxing sometimes.  Reading back over old comics and coming up with new comments is a lot of fun (most of the time) and I’m enough of a dork that I actually LIKE tagging things.  This whole process would honestly be a great vacation for me, if I wasn’t constantly scrambling to squeeze it in between so many other things.  So, hopefully, taking a break from the regular update schedule for a little while will not only get the sites properly set up sooner, but also get ME back in shape.  Again, there’ll still be the odd holiday page coming out during all this, and I do still plan to be working on new regular pages on the side, just without the looming deadline hanging over my head.  Hopefully, by the time regular updates DO start back up, I’ll actually have a page buffer built back up!

Finally, for you fans of my OTHER comic, Conventional Wisdom will not be affected by this break.  That comic’s structure is such that I think I can get away with posting new pages AND restoring past comic sets behind them simultaneously.  If anything, hopefully Conventional Wisdom will also benefit from me not having my attention split in so many directions for a little while.  It’s no secret that I haven’t been focusing on CW as much as I should have over the past year.  Especially with my recent shift away from traveling to big cons this year, CW has sort of become the secondary project.  And as much as Far Out There is “my baby” and all, Conventional Wisdom is still a MUCH easier comic to get new readers into, so I really do need to get more serious about finishing updates quickly and advertising more aggressively.  Hopefully, Far Out There taking a little break will also allow for that to happen as we go into the new year.

Finally, as work on the new sites begin to speed up, I’d like to STRONGLY encourage anyone who can to check for new updates and comment wherever possible.  Aside from the morale boost of seeing actual feedback on stuff I do, it’d really help the site-building process to hear from as many sets of eyes as possible.  There’s already been multiple problems with appearance on different browsers and comments being falsely flagged as spam and just general page functionality that I’ll have a much easier time tracking down and addressing if there’s regular activity to point it out.  And even if you’ve already read all these comics before, you never know when there’ll be some new Author’s Comment from THE FUTURE that you’ve never read!  There’s still new content of SOME sort happening all over the place!