War Games - Part 15

While I highly amused myself drawing Aiden getting beat down for a while, all good things must come to an end and, surprisingly, Aiden won kind of!

Sure, in theory Raine could just use her energy power to blast the wall away and get her foot free, but this is Raine we're talking about here, and she almost never relies on her powers unless she absolutely has to.  Why?  Well, that's a complicated answer, and one'd like to tackle in the future.

Did El Pequeño get to the flag? Is Aiden's apparent sister Time Lass the last thing that stands between Aiden and victory?  "War Games" continues on Thursday!

Thanks for reading!

War Games - Part 14

It feels good to know I can still draw stuff like this.  I may have finally worked through the damage caricaturing did to my art style.

Thanks for your patience, and I hope you're enjoying watching our protagonist getting thoroughly beaten to a pulp!  Next week I should be posting these as normal, at least for a bit (at the end of the month I've got a thing coming up; I'll keep you posted).

War Games - Part 13

And here it is!  Sorry about the tardiness.  I'm super-happy with the way it turned out, though.  I wanted some dynamic combat shots, but because I'm rusty as hell in that area, I dipped into my collection of Udon Street Fighter comics for some inspiration.  The story in those is as limp as one might expect from a comic based off of a fighting video game, but the art is top-notch, and the combat... oh, the combat...

Aaaand because I'm a day behind on things, I'm not expecting to get all of Thursday's drawn in one go.  It's likely I'll be working on it some tomorrow and finishing it on Thursday, so I'll be posting it later than usual again.

Tune in Thursday night to get a glimpse into Raine's somewhat twisted mind, and very likely more of Aiden getting his ass kicked!

War Games - Part 12

While I did manage to get this one done in time, I realize it is going to be even more difficult than I initially imagined to work on the comic while my kid's on summer break.  It's not her fault; no, she was an absolute trooper yesterday while I totally neglected her.  It's my own guilt, and my responsibility to her as a parent to not let her occupy herself with the television for hours on end while daddy stares at the computer screen.  I'm going to make it up to her today.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to continue the comic after this chapter ends, but I am sure, now, that once it wraps up in a few weeks, I'll be taking a hiatus at least until summer break is over.

During that time, as I mentioned before, I'll be compiling the next book, and possibly putting together some new merch.

Next week: Aiden vs. Raine!

War Games - Part 11

I wanted to talk about this one (and some other things) at length, but I was up way too late working on this last night and I've got way too much going on today to spend time blogging.

Truth be told, my deadlines are going to get a little hairy after today.  My daughter graduated from kindergarten today, which means that it's now summer break, which means my quiet days of working on the comic in peace are gone for a while.  Still, I'll endeavor to get this chapter wrapped up before I take a break, I just want to warn you that I may be posting a strip very late in the day sometimes, or at the worst, a day late.

War Games - Part 4

This shit took me forever.  Sorry I'm posting later in the day than usual.  Man... I never thought I'd need a break from drawing comics!  

Looking forward to this weekend.  Happy Mother's Day to all you mom's out there!

Starting next week: action, and lots of it!

Ignition

Apparently, Chapter 4 is all about everybody being angry with everybody else.  Aiden's angry with his mom, Time Lass ,Breakdown and Raine are all angry with Aiden, and Mr. Walters still despises SuperDude.  There are some rivalries a-brewing.  

Raine and Justice are polar opposites, and their rivalry is mirrored by the rivalry still felt by the Dark Avenger (Mr. Walters) toward SuperDude, Justice's father.  Coincidentally, Mr. Walters has already taken a keen interest in Raine.

Justice may go out of her way to behave nothing like her father, but that doesn't change the fact she was born the most powerful girl in the world and can't help but be perfect in almost every way.  Raine has had to work hard to be what she's become.  Despite having a dipshit for a father, Justice has had it pretty easy.  Raine... has not.

Exasperation

I have returned from my Pilgrimage.  Thanks for your patience while I took the week off!  I hope today's strip finds you well.  I haven't featured Amazona, the women's P.E. teacher, too heavily, so I thought it was due time to give her a moment to shine.

We had an amazing time in the Smokys (which is apparently how it's spelled).  If you want to see some pics, I put some up on my Tweeter.  I loved everything about the area we stayed in, but it was just slightly not awesome enough to justify my running off into the mountains, never to be seen or heard from again.  Mainly, I think my knees would eventually get destroyed from all those inclines and declines.  But that was it, though; literally the only thing about the region that didn't put me in "immediate relocation mode" was the fear of knee-pain. I'm becoming a formidable hiker, but I prefer my hikes to be a little more horizontal.  That, and I'd like to grow the majority of my own food one day, and doing so in that part of the Smokys would be next to impossible.

Everything else, though?  Was amazing.  It was wonderful getting to spend so much time with my wife and kid and my parents, and the area was even more beautiful than I allowed myself to imagine.  Those mountains were alive in every conceivable way.  Those forests and creeks and rivers are exactly what I need in my life.  The trip back "home" was not an easy one.

Apocrita Man

I've come to realize there's a certain freedom to be found in creating a webcomic that very few people read; I can get away with stuff like this.

I'm taking the week off next week.  My family and I are going up to the Smokeys (yay for tax returns!).  If I can't live as a recluse in the forests and mountains, I can at least pretend to be one for a while.

Thanks for reading, and please remember to share the comic with your unsuspecting friends on NetFace, Twooter, TheGoogle+, and most recently, Pinterest (whatever the hell that is).  I'd link to those, but there are buttons right below this post that will do just that.

Enmity

Poor Justice.  She's so nice, and she got stuck rooming with Raine.  Justice tries not to be perfect, she really does.

There are scant few things I like about DC comics (I'm pretty sure I've made that clear in the past), but one thing I appreciate is the relationship between Batman and Superman.  There's a deep respect there, but there's also a clashing of personalities and ideologies.  In my comic, it's like that with Mr. Walters and SuperDude, but without all that "respect for one another" getting in the way.  But with Raine being groomed by Walters, and Justice being the daughter of SuperDude, I just had to make these two roommates.  I'm looking forward to building their friendship / rivalry as time goes on.

Of course, Justice intends to be as little like her father as she possibly can.  And that "rivalry" bit may only exist in Raine's eyes.

So, hey, are you a new reader?  You can follow the comic on Twitter and Google+, or you can subscribe via e-mail or RSS on the bottom of the site.  Thanks for reading, everybody!

Last but certainly not least, I'll be taking a week or so off for the holidays.  The kid'll be on vacation from school, and the wife's got some time off, so we were thinking of heading out to see some sights.  I may get the chance to crank one of these out for New Years.  We'll see.  I'll keep you posted.  So, hey, Merry Christmas and stuff!

Aftermath - Part 1

I hope you've enjoyed the Technosyde storyline.  It's not quite over yet; there'll be a few strips dealing with the aftermath of the recent events.  And, of course, that won't be the last we see of Technosyde.  I've toyed around with the idea of having a different villain for every story arc.  Chapters 1 and 2 kind of comprise the first story arc, so at the very least we should be seeing more of Technosyde in Chapter 4.

As for this Chapter?  There's only seven strips left.  I've got the big finale planned, and the next couple strips after this one, but there's a few in the middle there that I, well... I guess I had better write them!  I'd wanted to leave some room to play with in case the Technosyde stuff ran longer than I anticipated; I didn't want to have to rush it like I ended up having to do with the E.P.I.C. stuff.

I'm sure that won't be a problem, though.  There's still so much I want to do with all of these characters.  Anybody you'd like to see in particular?

Trepidation

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.  I won't be doing a strip for Thursday.  I'm still planning to do a Walter's File for Saturday, though.

I was lucky to have been able to finish this one as it is.  My daughter is home from school for the whole week.  Fortunately she was reasonably accommodating yesterday to her Dad sitting at the computer for the entire day, but I won't be pushing my luck on that one.

Now that Aiden knows of his curse, he's become as fearful of dying as any mortal.  After all, what good is it being immortal if you have to start from scratch each time you die?  It seems the brazen, misplaced-confidence Aiden has gone the way of the dodo...

Put a Hurtin'

This one took just about every waking moment I had available yesterday.  I'm happy with how it turned out, though.  

I'd love to stay and chat, but I got shit to do.  No Walters File this Saturday... I have family staying for a couple days.

I'll do my damndest to get strips out next week on time, but it ain't gonna be easy; my kid's got the entire week off of school for Fall Break (which, apparently, is a thing), so I'm not going to have the free time.  Really, my productivity depends on her temperament and level of ambition.  Plus Thanksgiving and everything.  I'll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading!  Bonus points for sharing!

Pleading

My wife made me aware that Super U. just had it's two-year anniversary.  And by "just" I mean 12 days ago.  Oops!  I had intended to make a big announcement and stuff, but it slipped my mind.

So, yeah.  Super U. is two years old this month!  104 strips isn't a staggering amount of material for two years worth of work, but I like to look at how far the strip has come since then.  

Observe:

In that time I've managed to do almost everything I've set out to do.  I've got the website looking sharper (I would still like to improve navigation, but I'm pretty restricted using Blogspot), I have merchandise for sale (including an actual book), I'm social media'ing, advertising, I have business cards, and I've gone bi-weekly (tri-weekly if you count the Walters Files).

There's still a lot more to be accomplished, but that's not entirely up to me; it's also up to you.  I need your help spreading the Super U. love.  Help me to make this thing successful.

As an addendum, people have asked my why I'm on Blogspot and not Wordpress or the like.  The fact of the matter is I was, and am still, technically, but nobody was going to that site.  Everyone was going here.  So I'm banking pretty heavily on this whole one-Google thing, more specifically the connectedness of Google, Google+, Blogspot, YouTube and so on.  I don't particularly like it, but I'm trying to reap any sort of benefit I can from it.  I'm attempting to work within the system Google put in place.

It's not out of the question that I may potentially one day move all of this material over to a more professional location, but for now, here's as good as anywhere.

If you have any suggestions, feedback, etc... I'd love to hear it.  

Technosyde Enters

(Make sure to read the comic before the blog.)

If this comic were never to get off the ground, at the minimum years from now I can say that I was able to draw a robot getting intimate with a weedwacker.

Things are going to get even uglier from here, but I promise you that's the last of the mechanophilia.  At least for a little while.

Believe it or not, this begins the chain of events that lead to the end of Chapter 3.  It's weird to think that I'm so close to that point already.  Posting comics bi-weekly instead of sporadically has been a major contributing factor to that, sure, but still...

For those of you interested in knowing, there are 39 strips per chapter.  I went with that number because it allows me, when making a book, to put three strips on a page (a book being two chapters).

I'm getting ahead of myself a bit, but I wanted to let you know that I plan on the "hiatus" between Chapters 3 and 4 being pretty short.  I won't be doing the YouTube movies anymore, so really I'll just need a short amount of time to get some ideas down on paper, and re-evaluate the merchandise and marketing and all that fun stuff.  After Chapter 4, the hiatus will be longer, because I plan on making a new book.  Once I have two of those under my belt, we'll just have to see how things go from there.  Conventions may be the next logical step.

To Revel

I had to fight my way through this one, and I think it shows.  I came down with a bad cold the night before last, and all I wanted to do all day yesterday was curl up in a ball and sleep like the dead for a day or two.  I made a lot of stupid mistakes, most especially I had almost fully drawn Hydro standing behind Mr. Smith in the middle panel lighting up a bong, but I somehow managed to delete it and not realize this until I was well beyond the point where I could get him back.

Also, I just realized the irony of a character named Hydro smoking a bong. That wasn't even intentional.

Anyway, this comic is the first of... I don't know, ten strips?  Let's call it ten.  There'll be action.  There'll be drama.  There'll be inappropriate use of gardening equipment.

Re-Reallocation

This Thursday, on Halloween, Super U. is hitting its 100th strip.  I think that's pretty cool.  To celebrate the event, I'm offering up a strip that's a brief interlude; maybe a portent of things to come. 

As of last Friday, I deactivated my Facebook page.  I assume this means that the Super U. fan page on Facebook is also gone (I don't know, but if it's still there, somebody let me know, okay?  I told Jason the page was all his now, if it still exists).  I left the "like button" here on the site, and, of course, if you're interested in promoting the comic on Facebook yourself, you merely need to share the link; there's even a button to do that right below every post.

I've been actively promoting the comic on Facebook for almost two years, and it has really gotten me absolutely nowhere.  I've had more success half-ass promoting it with Google+ and Twitter than I ever have from Facebook.  The reason for this is pretty clear: my stuff was never able to branch out beyond people I personally know and reach a wider audience.

That's not the real reason I'm ditching Facebook, though.  The real reason is much more personal.  Without even considering the negative effects I think social media can have on the way we interact as a society, I just grew sick and tired of Facebook etiquette, especially, especially the fishing.

Person I know:  Oh, doom and gloom.  Agony.  I'm never going to recover from this awful tragedy that just happened.

Me:  What's wrong?  What happened?

Person I know:  ...

My imagination is far too active to be able to handle this sort of thing, especially when it's coming from someone I care about.  I fill in the blanks.  The worst part is, I think people who do this are well-aware that they're baiting others, and purposefully don't indulge them with the rest of the information simply because they enjoy others worrying about them helplessly.  They're not interested in anything but your unquestioning sympathy.  They just want your sad face emoji comment.  That's not social interaction, that's sociopathic.

One time, because of the vagueness of somebody's unthoughtful statement, I was even convinced a relative had died, and had to call all over the place at like 1:00 in the morning to get the answer, setting off a chain of events that... well, you can probably imagine.  It was not pretty.  In the end the person who had died was someone I never even met, and certainly not related.

Then of course, there's the thing every week where I get my numbers back from Facebook, and they'd be like, "This week your stuff reached 142 people!  2 of them liked it."

It goes even further beyond that, but I'm leaving it there.  I'm done talking about Facebook.  If you're interested in following the comic in some other fashion, remember I'm still posting updates on Google+ and Twitter.  I highly recommend either of those over Facebook, by the way.

D-nied

Raine looks so weird when she's not pissed.

So, my wife and I cancelled our cellphones yesterday as Stage One of my plan to drop off the face of the Earth.  In the very near future, when I have time, I'm giving Facebook the axe.  What's more, we haven't had any television in the house besides Netflix and video games for something like 6 years. 

It may be a bad move ditching Facebook, when I'm trying desperately to promote my comic, but in all the years I've used it, it has helped me very little.  The thing with Facebook is it's difficult to reach outside people you actually, personally know, which really defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do.  Stuff like webcomics doesn't flourish on Facebook; meaningless, humorous things that occupy no more than 10 seconds of your time do.

 I'm not telling you this because I want you to think I'm cool.  I'm not a hipster, dammit.  If anything, I'm some kind of proto-hipster.  I'm saying this because I firmly believe that cellphones, television and social media are nothing less than destroying our society, eliminating actual human interaction entirely.  I realize this is ironic, coming from an antisocial person, but just because I don't want to interact with people doesn't mean I don't understand the importance of human interaction.

Truth be told, I probably would interact with people if they were people I liked.  I imagine I would get along rather well in a place like Portland or Seattle.  But my wife isn't keen on the idea of gray skies all the time, and I can't fault her for that.  That kind of thing has to have a hell of an effect on your psyche.  What's more, my parents want to move closer to my sister and I, and I would pretty much be throwing a wrench in their plans if I did that.  Anyway, I'd like to see more of my family, not less of them.

So, isolation it is, and I'm limited to the American southeast.  Yay.  Honestly though, southern people aside, there's a lot of beauty to be found down here.  I've got a good feeling about somewhere outside the Asheville, NC area, close to the mountains.  I think it may have just about everything I'm looking for (besides cheap land).

Pliable

I think I can pretty much declare at this point that I'm around 85% back to my original comic style.  It's taken a long time to undo the damage that caricaturing did to my work, not to say I didn't learn a lot from it.  I was fortunate to work with other caricaturists that strongly-emphasized cartooning over exaggeration, and my cartooning skills improved quite a bit because of it.  For example, I knocked out that Spaz pic there in the third panel in no time at all.  Don't get me wrong: I love cartoons, and I think caricatures are pretty cool, too.  And like I said before, initially when I began Super U. I think I was trying to emulate the style of other webcomics.  I certainly don't knock cartooning and caricaturing.  They both take an incredible amount of practice and skill to do right.  But recently, I found a picture I did of Raine a few years ago, and I got a little upset, because I knew I couldn't draw it that well anymore.  I will get there again, and soon.

The last strip, this one and probably the next few all deal with the wrap-up / fallout after Justice's capture, Rex Ruthless' demise and Aiden's death and subsequent ressurection.  This little action-run has been fun, but it can't be punches to the face all the time.  Don't worry, I will endeavor to continue delivering the funny, even if I'm only using humor to disguise my true intentions of making you find yourself compelled to learn more about these characters.

Hey, that gives me a cool idea!  I'm going to put a poll up on the bottom of the site for you to vote for some of your characters.  Who do you want to see more of?

As always, thanks for your support, and please keep sharing Super U. with your friends!  I've made it easier to follow me on Facebook and Twitter with the new buttons there on the top, and to share things you like on your social media of choice.  Tune in for next week's blog as I think I might discuss how freaking amazing Grand Theft Auto 5 is.

The Curse

Enlargimate

It was a real, um, experience creating this one.  Illustrator crashed on me about six times, the first time making me lose about half of my work on the first panel.  I really only have myself to blame for that one, for not hitting that Ctrl+S sooner and more frequently, but I could have sworn that I did.  For some reason it got really angry with me when I tried to manipulate Rex's boots after they were completely rendered.  I could move them in any direction, but if I tried to scale them or alter them in any way... immediate crash.  Weird.

Don't worry, I won't go on a tangent about how paper and pencils don't "crash."  But I thought about it.

I don't want to talk too much about this strip, because I don't want to give anything away on accident, but if you've been following the comic, none of what transpires above should come as a surprise... well, except for perhaps Raine's new behavior toward Aiden. I remarked to my wife that it's kind of funny that the last few times I've drawn Raine, she hasn't been angry.  I almost forgot how to draw her not angry.

I'm determined not to make the amnesiac angle too cliche'.  Generally, when someone writes a story or whatever and uses the amnesia angle, it feels really uninspired.  I don't want my stuff to come off like that.  I've got some pretty cool ideas on how I'm going to play with it.