comics for January 27, 2008 – 01/27/2008

Well, my big announcement today is that last Monday I gave notice to my day job and as of February 1, I will be fully self-employed again for the first time in six years. Excited? Yes. Nervous? Hell, yes. But it was time. And the timing seems to be better than when I jumped the ship of my day job back in November. I have my ducks in a row this time, so to speak, and I have gotten calls for freelance without doing any advertising or interviewing yet. This is a good sign. No panic attacks this time either. An even better sign.

Xylia will of course play a part in my survival. Again, I want to thank all of you for your donations, comments, and support throughout the process of starting up this new venture! I also hope those of you who donated in January enjoyed the incentive story. February’s incentive is a digital painting desktop image of the “Purple Lady” herself, Miss X. I think you’ll enjoy it.

On to today’s update. Now it seems that Charlie has more problems than just an over-sexed winged girl. (Not that he seemed to be having a ‘problem’ with that…ahem… ah, the things that will come back to haunt that boy…) May I present Brimaz. Hee hee. Okay, if any of you know me at all, you will know that Brimaz is partly me paying homage to my favorite movie of all time. (insert witch on a bike music here…) On seeing this monkey man and his weapon of choice, the beginning pages of this chapter may start to make sense to you now. But while you may see some things coming, I still think you may be in for a bit of a surprise. Hope so anyway!

Today, I am also very excited to soon present our new bi-Monthly feature: “Canterrain’s Webcomic Reviews”. Every other Monday, my writer pal, Canterrain, will be sharing a new webcomic with all of us, so please tune in for that. We kick off this new feature with one of my personal all time favorites, the delightful Gunnerkrigg Court by Tom Siddell. A big thank you to Kez for all of her work getting this feature set up!! It should be premiering today or within the next few days once we get all of the bugs worked out.

In other news: For those of you who missed the Shout Box discussion, I gave the pronunciations of the character names, which surprised a number of folks. XEE-lia, TY-kee-a, LIV-ee. Oh, and uh… CHAR-lee. Eventually I will be writing up a page of FAQ’s that will contain these as well. I guess I need more questions to be asked frequently or infrequently to get that page going.

And of course, next week thanks to the donations, you will be getting TWO page updates!! One Monday and one Thursday! If we don’t get to $800 by January 31, I will roll the other donations over into next month! Of course, if a bunch of you WANT to donate to get a second week of double updates in February, I am not one to argue! And don’t forget, after this month, the incentive story “The Pianoforte” about little Charlie at the Royal Albert Hall will be unavailable. A couple people have found some more clues in that little story that you might want to read about. Donate before the end of the month so you don’t miss that… ^_^

That’s all, ‘XYLIACS’! (Xyliacs is the term coined by Mevanova! I love it!)

~B