Blank It

So, Red Eyes, Bad Lies was a harder comic to do than it should have been, but I don’t plan to bitch about drawing the comic on here. I love it, I do. Excuse me that one short, weightless gripe. The real bullet point is that I just hope when life gets heavy and my daughter finally shows up, we’ll be prepared to not let the show suffer one little bit.

Aric is AFK tonight, because apparently three years ago this day, he got married to his most excellent wife. Way to go, A & M. Here’s to many more happy years. Cheers!

The comic is changing in some noticeable ways. One of which is that I post the comic before I go to bed, and when I wake up, there’s a pile of ridiculous commentary that wakes me up better than any cup of sugar-laden coffee. The second is that we’re starting get reviews and interviews from folks, so Aric went ahead and made a Reviews page to let you all in on them. The positive ones, at least. We’re allowed to be picky like that, right?

The Forums have dropped to an uncharacteristic whisper, however, and I think it’s because there’s not a whole lot of fresh blood coming through the doors. Unlike some forums, ours is a great way to chat directly with us about the strip or anything else. Aric tends to lurk, but I’m usually pretty quick to hit back. Plus, some of our forum regulars are pretty well versed in the blankverse (blankiverse?), and everyone knows Aric likes wingbat conspiracy speculation on the goings-on in the strip. So, make your predictions, we’re often surprised how right you guys can be.

In the super-secret-future department, I just got to check out a Blank It feature that’s waiting in the wings, we’ll call it Codename: Brikabrak. I’m very impressed, I can’t wait to unveil it. Ooooh mystery!

Update: Comic is now colored. Thank goodness for sleeping babies!

Why is today’s comic in grayscale? Because I’m actually in a hospital room right now with my wife and brand new baby daughter. Born at 9:09 pm last night after 30 hours of labor. It was a wicked, wild ride.

Anyway, I brought all my comic stuff to the hospital, and while I could technically color the strips, they’re taking a lot longer than usual to make just because a lot of my time is spent on being a new parent. So I figure I’d cut one of my major time sinks for now, since I can always go back and color the strips retroactively. We plan to be home by Wednesday, I can’t say if Thursday’s comic will also be chromatically deficient, but I can say that it’s a temporary condition at best. We’ll be back to full-color action soon enough, with these comics colored when I have the time.

At least I didn’t just not update like a chump sucka. Am I right?

So, they tell you when you have a kid to expect to lose a lot of sleep. I was all set and prepared for that, and have been doing fairly well, thanks to my wife and I double-teaming the baby duty. What they don’t tell you, is that you sometimes forget to do important other things, like go to the bathroom or eat. I think I’ve really messed myself up. I went a day and a half on a pop tart. It was no good.

On another note, do you think Aric or I are noteworthy in the world of webcomics? Well, I doubt it, based on our obscure histories in the genre. But if you feel like giving us a mention, here’s the place to do it. I don’t know what they’re really going for besides a popularity contest, but hey, that’s the internet for ya.

So, Blank It is decidedly not a gamer comic. Or a comic about games. Unless that game is “stand around in an empty void and complain”. Which I think some games closely resemble. But it’s no secret that Aric and I are gamers. Well, I’ve done my fair share of gamer comics in the past, and now I’m back at it again.

If you like my art and hokey jokes about massively multiplayer online video games, go ahead and check out my new strip called Grinders, over at Massively.com. It’ll be updating weekly, every Friday. The first comic can be found here.