GPF News Archive

Hey, gang. Gah... I once again apologize profusely for the lack of news updates lately. My new job, as mentioned in the last news post, has kept me ridiculously busy. I haven't had the chance do hardly anything lately, and that includes barely keeping up with the comic. (I've got more on that, but I'll get to that in a minute.) I'll keep the apologies and the excuses to a minimum, however, and we'll just right into the actual news.

Crisis Averted: I hope you guys enjoyed the recent "Crisis in Infinite MUTEXes" story. I know I enjoyed working on it, and it was a big creative stretch to get out of the usual GPF mold and try a few new things. I'm certainly glad the more detailed artwork is over; my thumb on my drawing hand is only now getting back to normal (and keep in mind that my buffer is somewhere around six weeks at the moment).

I'd like to express my deepest thanks to Meaghan Quinn for stepping in and helping me with the difficult job of coloring the super hero portion of the comics. I think Meaghan did an incredible job, and I was always thrilled to see her interpretation on the colors. Of course, I'm sure a few smart alecks out there will point out that most of the last week of super hero comics aren't in color yet, and I would like to apologize for that. Unfortunately, Meaghan has had a lot of computer problems lately, and the added workload of finishing my strips on top of her own comics certainly hasn't helped. I told her not to worry if she got behind, that I had "emergency" copies of just the line art uploaded and that we'd back-fill the color strips as needed. You guys still got the comics, sans color, so there weren't any missing updates, and as soon as Megs gets me the final copies I'll update the comics on the site. Of course, the strips will be in color by the time they reach one of the books.

Now, speaking of color....

GPF Dailies go back to Gray Scale June 26th: Yeah, you read that right. As I stated back in January's State of the Comic address, if my job situation changed and my day job started taking too much time, I may be forced to cut back somewhat on the improvements I've added to GPF over the years. Well, that time has come. My current day job is eating up a ton of time, to the point that I've had a lot of trouble keeping up with the comic these past few weeks. So starting June 26th, the daily strips (Monday through Saturday) will be going back to gray scale, much like back in Year Five. I'm not cutting the Sundays yet, but if cutbacks have to continue, they'll be the next to go. At this point, I'm not sure how long this change will last, so I can't say if I'll recolor the strips later for print. If it doesn't last long, I might recolor them when I have time; otherwise, they may just stay in gray scale. I hate making this cutback, especially since I have some really big stories coming up (including Trent and Fred's trial), but those are the breaks.

Of course, this almost guarantees someone is going to e-mail me about the change in June because they never saw this news post, but hey, at least I try. It'll be their embarrassment when I point them here, not mine. ;)

Big Con Season Begins: As you've probably already noticed, the countdowns to Comic-Con and Dragon*Con are up on the main page. This year, we're making plans to hit both of these big cons to try and give folks on both coasts of North America a chance to see me in person. Comic-Con is July 14-17 in San Diego, CA, while Dragon*Con is September 2-5 in Atlanta, GA. The pre-con reports are up, as are the discussion threads in the forum. If you're planning to go to either of these conventions, make sure to swing by our pre-con reports and check them periodically for updates on where I'll be and what I'll be up to. You'll be hearing a lot more about them as the time approaches.

The E-Mail Drought Continues: Finally, I'm still way behind on my e-mail. I've tried to catch up on a few, but I'm horribly behind on the mail concerning "Providence". At this point, it might be better if I tried to do a mass response here in the news, like I did back during "Surreptitious Machinations". I'd still prefer to respond to each e-mail individually, but that may not be practical. Unfortunately, until I get a lull in my day job, odds are I won't be responding to much e-mail for a while. As always, I read every single message not filtered by my spam filter (and occasionally I double-check those, just in case), so rest assured that your e-mail has been read.