An art instructor once told his class, “everyone has 10,000 bad drawings inside them, and you have to get them out in order to get to the good ones”.
It’s a great concept when you get frustrated. Not that I’ve had any frustrations, mind you. Nope. Nada. Everything always goes easily when I’m at the ol’ art desk. I just need more time AT the ol’ art desk. Having about an hour a day to complete a strip is just so, so….really frustrating.
We’ve added Mei-Zhen to our continually growing cast lineup. Personally, we can’t think of anyone more enthusiastic about that then Mei-Zhen, although Spyder would be a close second. More coming! - Q
We’ve added a few designs to our clothing line, the first few of many designs coming. ‘Leaf Pile’ and ‘Bad Hair Day’ are now available. The original designs for the mugs and shirts here were never meant to be offered for long - they were all part of an initial push by me to get SOMETHING for each section of our website. Now, as time becomes available, they’re all going to be replaced. The first design no longer offered is Spyder’s solo image - don’t worry, she’s on ‘Bad Hair Day’ and will appear on much more. But her initial t-shirt design is, in effect, ‘retired’ , never to be seen again.
And exactly one t-shirt was ordered with that design. So whoever has it, for whatever it’s worth, you’ve got the rarest piece of ‘Colonel and Company’ merchandise out there. How cool is that? Anyway, enjoy!
One of the ever slightly-out-of-reach goals at this strip is getting more than a day’s lead on the next deadline. It’s yet to happen, but I suspect the fact that I only have about an hour a day to compose these strips is the culprit, and not any lack of effort on my part.
Last week and still lingering I was hit by a cold/flu mutation that kept me pretty much incapacitated. Slogging myself out of bed to create the next strip, coupled with vast quantities of OJ and cold medicine, left much to be desired. Eagle-eyed observers might have noticed a couple of oddities and omissions from the last week’s strips, to be quickly fixed as soon I realized how important it is to triple check anything done while in a fuzzy stupor. With the exception of one or two things we’ll quickly wipe from the page and profess to know nothing about, the strip continues merrily along.
Today marks the addition of one of our cast members you’ve met briefly before. Others are coming, so keep reading. Thankfully the cast has been exceptionally forgiving on my recent condition. But that’s only because I gave up the remote while I was laid up.
Eventually every respectible comic strip creator must make that track to the syndication offices, offerings in hand to those all knowing editorial offices across America. Or something along those lines.
As I begin pulling together our best 40 or so strips, I’d love to hear from you if any particular strip is worthy to make the cut. You can post here, or email me directy over on the ‘Author’ page. So don’t be bashful!
‘Opus’, drawn by Berke Breathed (of Bloom County fame), will officially end on November 2nd.
I do not exaggerate when I say if I hadn’t been introduced to ‘Bloom County’, you wouldn’t be reading anything drawn by me. It’s my pursuit of the joy Berke infused into his characters- Opus, Milo, Binkley and all the rest which keeps my hand drawing and this comic evolving. Giving that same joy Berke’s characters gave me is the goal. So a tip of the hat today to Mr. Breathed and his wonderful comics. This rootbeer’s for him.
Now back to the chaos. - Q
Today marks “The Colonel and Company”’s 100th Strip!
Hard to believe. We started this at the beginning of April, and that was only two strips a week. Getting this website working took a lot of trial and errors, and we’ve stumbled mightily through the whole process.
So much more is in store for the strip. New characters, better art….heck, maybe even we’ll go to Saturdays….but we’d better not get ahead of ourselves. For today, raise a glass and join us in our 100th strip toast. Here’s looking toward the future.
It’s a small thing, but belies good news for our readers. Give up? I’ve taken down the ‘Mon-Wed-Friday’ banner.
Officially we’ve moved to 5-day weeks now. More fun, more often, and we get the added stress of making our deadlines daily. All for you. Don’t think for a moment we’d have any other motivation, like, say, marketing purposes. Nope! Never. We at “The Colonel and Company” will continue to strive, now 5 days a week, to present a strip of singular humor and remarkably readability. Personally, I’m thrilled. Or way too caffienated. - Q
A small change, but if you’re interested there’s some new art on the cast pages. Just click ‘The Cast’ button at the bottom of any page to get there!
One of the most frustrating things about launching a comic strip is getting readers to your site. After taking all the “must do” steps for any new website (like registering with the search engines, targeting obvious news groups and sites, etc.), you have some further choices. The first is to pay for advertising. It can be effective, but I haven’t been convinced that it’s possible to reach above the internet chatter without a very large and continuing cash investment. And that’s not a winning strategy unless you have money to burn.
In the last couple of weeks I’ve seen the readership jump up with the increased daily schedule. Now that we’ve gone back to thrice a week, it’s gone down. Not below starting levels, mind you, but tracking pretty closely to the amount of strips we’ve done per week. Which leads me to two obvious conclusions.
The first, is that we need to go back to at least a Mon-Fri schedule (the most I feel comfortable in being able to consistantly provide). The second, is that without syndication, it’s neigh impossible to reach a larger audience.
So while the cast limbers up, I’ll try to burn through all the art we have to finish for the website and new merchandise. With my day job taking Saturdays now, it’s going to be a bit challenging. Ulysses has promised to brew more tea. At least I’ll be caffienated for most of my waking hours. Getting the art out will free me up to go on the Mon-Fri schedule.
And as we close in on our first 100 strips (can you believe it?), I’ll start looking at packaging the best 35-40 strips or so for submissions to all the syndicated outlets. (Your suggestions are always welcome!)
So that’s the plan. More “The Colonel and Company”, more often and more caffienated! No rest for the weary, damn the tomatoes and all handstands on desks. Er, or something like that. More to come. - Q
