Lunch, witchcraft, tech and comics

The usual things, in other words.

Recently

Today’s new Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan comic: “Lunch and witchcraft are political (Opens in a new window)”

And last week's Greyfriar's Isle episode that was available only to paid subscribers is now available to the general public on Planet Nude:

Earlier

I’ve started writing a new Greyfriar’s Isle story that I won’t even start drawing until the middle of next year! In fact, there’s a story that sits between that one and the current one, which I’m also carefully writing. I’ve always gone half-and-half on the issue of planning versus pantsing, but what ends up happening is ‘pantsed’ stories end up much longer than planned ones, so they dominate what I actually produce. Since Greyfriar’s Isle is only contracted for 24 episodes a year and they’re pretty time-consuming to make, I want to rein that in. So I’m planning a story called “Posh” for the beginning of next year, and one with the working title of “Dog Days” for the second half of next year. Here are the first character sketches, showing outfits I want the characters to be in.

I've also started sketching out a retro scene for Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan, leading to a page of The Green Knight's Belt that I should have written at the time (1991) but didn't:

Last week’s items of interest

I was planning to write a mini essay here about my personal memories of the origins of content warnings online - they're not what you'd expect or from whom you'd expect - but it's been a week of low energy for some reason, and I'm barely getting the most necessary work done. That mini-essay is still coming, but maybe next week?

That's also why the link logging section is kind of barren this time. I think I’m just gonna do the link logging like this again: just whatever I think is worth a long read, not restricted to technology.

How to report on neo-Nazis without giving them what they want (Opens in a new window) - Crystal Andrews, Crikey

Media coverage of the anti-immigration marches was a ‘propaganda triumph’ for Australian neo-Nazis, who use media-baiting tactics to spread their message.

If you want a more substantial read than this p'rticuler newsletter, El Sandifer's annual episode of America a Prophecy, a multi-part, multi-angle critique of the September 11, 2011 episode of Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, is online at Eruditorum Press (Opens in a new window) and is a cracking read. I love stunt criticism when it's done well, and El is a champion at it.

Billy DeBeck was born in Chicago in 1890, the son of a newspaperman turned office-worker for the meatpackers Swift & Company. He went to art school, dreaming of becoming a modern day Dutch Master, drew cartoons to make ends meet, and quickly determined that he liked having ends meet and so kept at it. He worked his way up to prominence, starting in a short-lived Chicago entertainment paper called Show World and moving his way through regional papers like the Youngstown Telegram and the Pittsburgh Gazette-Times before finally returning to Chicago to join the Chicago Herald where he launched a strip called Married Life in 1915. This caught the eye of William Randolph Hearst, who, according to legend, bought the Herald purely to acquire the cartoonist.

Next year's episode, I've been told, will appear on El's Patreon (Opens in a new window) in a day or so.

From my Planet Nude colleague Brett Marcella comes this review of the manga Captain Momo's Secret Base.

‘It's Just a Mess:' 23 People Explain How Tariffs Have Suddenly Ruined Their Hobby (Opens in a new window) - Jason Koebler, 404 Media

On my Mastodon account, I asked for positive news on the technology front, the sort that would inspire enthusiasm in me like tech news used to do, 20-odd years ago. The only response I got was South Africa and China set up a quantum communication link: How we did it and why it's historic (Opens in a new window)- Lisa Lock and Andrew Zinin. I've not been in the right frame of mind to attempt to read anything related to quantum communications for comprehension, and also the site puts a lot of obstacles in the way of anyone trying to read the article, but it does sound pretty neat, so I'm sharing it here as a bit of positive news.

Earlier still

Our regular blast from the past is Fascinating (Opens in a new window). You can read an old version of this comic on the Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan website (Opens in a new window), and you can read on from there or binge-read the comic from the beginning (Opens in a new window).

Not a lot of dialog in this one…

And the full page:

See you… next week, I think? I've got some more new comics queued up so I will have something to post about.