ECCC is coming up!

And I'm going for the first time ever to sell my comics in Artist Alley!

It's kind of nerve-wracking! Their Artist Alley application was super intimidating (like, "where have you published" and "how many years have you worked in the comics industry, name your last 3 imprints"), but somehow I got in? Anyway, I'm taking 3 days off of work and abandoning Hoosband with Miss Rutabaga to drive up, which means ... I'm actually bothering to update my website and post my comics online. ^^;;;;

So I finally posted American Son, which you can now find on AO3 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35305507 . It's about Wong Kim Ark! But only tangentially. (I've actually really enjoyed doing this. I think the next one I want to do is Tape v Hurley because I need some actual women in this series)


Anyway, I've run into a conundrum -- China Comics and Tisquantum used to be online, but I forgot to update the php on the wordpress and now both are kind of dead. I'm too lazy to go through and fix the wordpress issue, and both of those have been around for long enough that I'm kind of ::shrug:: about them. My thought was that I'd post a few representative pages for China Comics and then link to the PDF download / physical book purchase. And for Tisquantum, I'll probably post it on AO3 and then link it?

I'm conflicted about posting my original comics on AO3 because, well, pros are that AO3 has the built-in comment and email subscription features that I like, and it has a hint of that fandom interactivity that I love. Cons are that, well, it's AO3. The interface is really not-great if you aren't an AO3 user, and there's no way to reskin AO3 to match my comics website (because that's not what AO3 is designed to be). Plus, there's the no-monetize rule, which makes sense for fandom legal reasons but this is original work.

So for Tisquantum, which is pretty much abandoned (the me who drew it is no longer this me), I think I'm fine posting it on AO3 and on my website wholesale. China Comics, on the other hand, I want to encourage people to buy the PDF for, so ... should I not post it on AO3? Or should I post a few pages and then ... link to my website?

Is it just me, or is Flux actually... decent?

Hoosband and I have not been big fans of Chibnall Doctor Who -- he generally has an interesting premise, and characters that look great on paper (diverse historical characters!), but then... the character beats feel off (like that Ada Lovelace episode, or when the Master is in WWII, or the fact that there's all these Yas-centric episodes but I still don't feel like I know her at all), and the story resolution is messy, sometimes even undercutting the very themes that were set up in the premise (like the Amazon episode -- is technology supposed to be good or bad in that one?)

Anyway, we didn't go into Chibnall's last season with high hopes -- it's a 6 episode story arc, and we were like "oh no, he's going to set up an interesting premise, then the characters aren't going to be developed, and then he's going to botch Act 3." But so far, 4 episodes in, it's been... not bad? Like, sure, the whole Time is fighting Space thing is kinda bollocks, and the Ravagers look really dumb and don't really have any motivation or characterization besides "evil", and the Division is the most boring Top Secret Agency ever, but! Vinder and Bel have a character arc! The episodes are tense and generally cohesive! The Weeping Angels episode didn't seem to come out of nowhere, and, excepting the last 30 seconds or so, made a lot of plot sense. Sure, Dan is pretty boring, but Yas seems to be getting some character development! Peggy and the Professor were pretty decently fleshed out! I'd been wondering how people gets absorbed into Passenger, and they showed us! There are a lot of balls in the air, but it feels resolvable in the next 2 episodes.

Of course, Chibnall might drop said balls in the third act, but for once, I'm actually holding out hope!