GPF News Archive

Greetings, all. I know I've been pretty quiet lately (which I suppose isn't entirely new, but bear with me here), and unfortunately it's been for a very good reason. Since so much has been going on, I thought I ought to take a few minutes to make a formal State of the Comic address to inform you of some big (but hopefully temporary) changes I'm about to implement.

For those of you who don't keep up with the blog (where I usually restrict my personal non-GPF related news to), I mentioned in a recent post that I've started a new job in my old home state of West Virginia. Yes, I mentioned this in June 12th's News post, but it's important that I mention it again. That's because this change is beginning to affect more than just my access to mail.

Effective today, GPF will be moving from the seven-day-a-week update schedule that it's held for almost five years to a much more maintainable three-day-a-week schedule. This is a major cutback, I know, and it doesn't come without some difficult soul searching on my part. GPF's marathon update schedule is legendary among the webcomic community, as we've never missed a single update day in eight years, including nearly five years of updating every single day of the week. Even during the two brief periods where I actually stepped away from updates to rebuild my buffer, we made sure to keep you guys entertained with guest art and comics from some of the best artists online. So I'm aware of the implications... painfully so. That said, I'm also proud of my accomplishment, as I know the number of webcartoonists who could boast of such a record could be easily be counted on the available digits most of us have, without resorting to taking off your shoes.

That said, here's the reasons for the change: At the time of this writing, I am currently embroiled in not one but five major life-changing events, all happening at once. Most of you are aware of the impending arrival of our baby, which is only a scant couple months away. I've already mentioned the new job, which is fortunately going well and I'm settling into nicely (although I'm having to learn an entirely new way of doing things). But we're also selling a house, buying a new house, and packing up and moving everything we own, all hopefully before the baby gets here. Needless to say, all of these events are pretty time-consuming alone, and combined they monopolize every waking moment I have. I have been working on comics while I can, but my production schedule has been severely curtailed and my equally-legendary buffer has been diminished significantly.

This week, I'll be updating on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, just to catch everyone on Sunday and Monday so you guys can get in here and read this. Next week, I'll switch to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a typical three-days-a-week update days in the webcomic world. This schedule will remain in effect until such time that I believe I can pick production back up to its previous levels. That means it could be temporary, as in after we're settled in the new house, or it could be semi-permanent if the youngling begins chewing too much on my T-square. At this point, I can't really estimate when (or if) things will return to normal, but your patience and understanding will be greatly appreciated.

Now, because I know some of you out there are extremely persnickety (and don't deny that you are ;) let me add a few additional notes. Because of the nature of To Thine Own Self..., Year Eight may end up lasting longer than I originally intended, which may as a result make Year Nine shorter. I will continue to write this story as originally planned, as a 50-week seven-day-per-week story arc. This is more as a matter of completeness than anything else, to keep things as consistent as possible so when (or if) the story finally makes it to book form, it will flow as intended. This may mean that color "Sunday" strips may end up appearing anytime during the week, as I'll continue the "color double-sized 'Sunday' strip and six gray scale 'dailies'" sequence as I've always used. Another caveat will be that the dates on the bottom right corner of the strip images may not match the actual update date for a while. This will be because I've renamed filenames to change the update date, but I'm too busy to actually edit the image to change the printed date. If that bothers you... get over it. ;)

Again, I appreciate your patience during all this. The mail problems I mentioned in the last News post are still in effect, so you may continue to expect a long wait for a response. (And while I appreciate the offers and suggestions some of you have made to help me alleviate that issue, I'm currently content to wait until I've got a new ISP set up closer to my new home.) I usually get a chance to make it to the forum at least once per day, however, so if you really need a response quickly and don't mind everyone else seeing it, that might be your best chance of reaching me. (The forum also has private messaging, but I may not get a chance to respond as quickly there either.)

Some previous notes worth repeating: Don't forget that if you find yourself scratching your head over the current events in the comic itself, make sure to check out the News post from November 6th, which includes a bunch of notes and back references that should help clear up some of the confusion. Also, if you want to help out with our Oh No Robot transcriptions, look up the January 9th News post and the related Oh No Robot forum thread for tips, tricks, and rules of thumb (and possibly other digits). Also also, additional notes for the Official Unofficial GPF Wiki can be fond in this forum thread.