...and then I wrote a public blog for June (Patreon)

The last time I did a “general update” type blog was back in January. It’s currently late June. That’s a loooooong time where a loooooot can change in even the best of times, never mind the actual reality we’re in right now. I HAVE done a few blog/update/recap/rant things over on blitzthecomicguy.com, but I’ve gotten a bit lax on those too, assuming anybody even saw them in the first place. So let’s have another quick “state of the comics” recap of what’s happened so far, and what’s to come.

Before anything else, though, I just need to give a HUGE thank you to everybody who’s actually donating money to fund my silly little cartoon nonsense. It’s no secret that the number of people who USED to be Patrons over the years is bigger than the number of people who still are, and I totally understand. Real Life has a lot of bigger responsibilities than paying a few bucks for a couple webcomics. And that’s why I’m so flabbergasted that, for all the people who’ve had to cancel their donations BEFORE now, there hasn't been ANYBODY who’s backed out over the past six months. I figured now, of all times, people would REALLY have better things to spend their money on, yet here ya’ll are. Even if it’s only a few bucks a month, that REALLY helps me out, and I can’t begin to express how much I appreciate it. (And if you’re not currently a patron, I’d appreciate it even MORE if you were!)

With that out of the way, I still occasionally get questions about just what’s going on with the regular comics, so let’s have a super-quick recap: Back at the close of last year, my old hosting site SmackJeeves pulled a site-wide redesign that, um, wasn’t too good. Basically, it went from being a host for websites with comics on them and became a phone app that people could post comics onto. There’s a few dozen reasons why that doesn’t work for me, so I finally put on my big boy pants and bought my own hosting. Unfortunately, this meant porting over a decade’s worth of content, from TWO comics, much of which needed re-editing and cleaning up. Six months later, and I’m still only barely half-way through re-posting the main comics, never mind all the TWC Voting Incentives and Patreon comics and so on. It shouldn’t surprise anybody, then, that the old update schedule had to change a bit.

Far Out There has been on hiatus since the end of the Christmas comics last December. I’ve kept doing other holiday pages, which have averaged out to around one page ever six weeks or so (I think) but regular comics remain on hold so I can focus on re-editing and re-posting the archive of old stuff. Conventional Wisdom, on the other hand, kept chugging ahead with new content at the same time as I re-posted the old stuff. After all, I still had new conventions to go to and write comics about. It’s not like THOSE are gonna stop happening just because I’m rebuilding my website, right? Well… to be fair, it really WASN’T for that specific reason. But yeah, I haven’t been to a convention since Ichibancon back in January, everything that was on the schedule since has been canceled. Thankfully, I guess, I’d already started using that “ConCONcon” April Fool’s joke as generic Conventional Wisdom filler, so I actually HAVE been able to keep doing semi-regular new comics even after the last of the Ichibancon material ran out.

So that’s where we’re at here at the mid-point of 2020. Far Out There is doing a random new holiday page around once a month, Conventional Wisdom is doing a new comic about Generic Fictional Convention around once a week, and both are seeing random blasts of old comics added to the archive whenever I have enough re-edited to be worth posting. Assuming I’ve counted correctly, both comics are past the half-way point by now, so progress IS being made, even if it’s really slow. Top Webcomics Voting Incentives are still on hold, though, and I’m honestly not sure when I’ll even get around to re-posting THOSE on the new site. I’m pretty sure I can get away with re-posting those without as much re-editing, so I THINK those will go up a lot faster, but I can’t in good conscience worry about that while there’s still the rest of the Main Comics to worry about. And, of course, there’s also Patreon… poor, poor Patreon. It feels like every time I say “Okay, NOW I’m gonna get serious about making more exclusive content to REALLY make it worth people’s money!” some new distraction comes along to totally wreck every-dang-thing…

But what about THE FUTURE? I’ve already said pretty much all of this elsewhere, what’s the REST of 2020 gonna look like? When’s the next Conventional Wisdom update about a REAL con? When will regular Far Out There updates come back? And what about Scarecrow’s brain? Well, if the past six months have taught anybody anything, it’s that making plans for the future is utter folly, so I don’t really know. Seeing as how it’s taken me about half the year to make it half-way through the Far Out There archives, I THINK it’s relatively safe to be aiming for everything to be caught up sometime in November. Ideally, this would mean we’d have a new batch of Christmas comics this December, with regular twice-a-week comics finally coming back in January 2021. I know, I know, it’s frustrating to think about new stuff being so far off, but this is a LOT of material I’m having to work through here. There’s already one thousand, one hundred and sixty-seven pages of Far Out There WITHOUT counting all the holiday stuff. Re-editing that kind of takes a while, ya-know? Besides, even the quickest glace at the past few years of blog posts makes it pretty darn clear that I’ve been burned the crap out for a WHILE. Quite frankly, I should have taken a break like this AGES ago, even if it IS a “break” from working on webcomics that involves working on webcomics almost every day. Just stepping away from the grind of having a deadline to meet ever other day has been AMAZING, and simply editing the art on comics where the writing is already done is actually super relaxing. This is probably the most fun I’ve had doing Far Out There stuff in a while! Christmas may be a ways off, but I’m actually gonna be EXCITED to work on new comics for it, and it’s been a while since I could honestly say that.

As for Conventional Wisdom… on the one hand, that’s a bit harder to call. Obviously, I don’t have any control over when mass public gatherings are safe to allow. But on the other hand, I’m realizing the same thing here that I have with Far Out There; I’ve needed a break for a LOOOOOOONG time. Conventional Wisdom may not have had the same update schedule as Far Out There, but it IS much more physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausting to do the convention trips. Again, I’ve said this multiple times already, but I just don’t like going to cons anywhere NEAR as much as I used to. As bad as it is to say, I was actually relieved to year that Animazement and Otakon were canceled this year. Heck, I can’t even imagine why I was THINKING about going back to Otakon, just sitting here thinking about it is making me a little sick to my stomach. Don’t worry, I’m not saying Conventional Wisdom is dead or anything. I mean, the very fact that I WAS considering going back to Otakon after everything I’d said last year is proof that cons will always find a way to drag me back in. Still, I can’t need a break from one comic without needing a break from the other, so even if conventions DO start up again this fall, I’m pretty much resigned to the thought of staying home for the rest of 2020. I MIGHT try to bring Conventional Wisdom back with a bang in 2021 by returning to MAGFest… but that would require actually GETTING TO MAGFEST, and that’s exactly the kind of crap I needed a break from in the first place. Actually, I kind of like the thought of going back to Ichibancon again. There’s something poetic about restarting my con-going at the same spot where it stopped. That's assuming the world actually IS back to normal come January, obviously.  Or, heck, I dunno. Maybe they’ll do that little local one day comic con here in town again and I’ll make the world most anti-climactic return there. Beats me. I’m on vacation, dang it. I don’t have to plan for SQUAT.

In the meantime, we’ve still got ConCONcon comics coming out, and I actually might start experimenting with setting up Conventional Wisdom’s second page for Voting Incentives and Patreon comics and the like. There’s not as much of those to re-post as there is Far Out There stuff… though I AM thinking of gathering up all those Digimon comics I’ve done for tumblr and deviantArt to have in one place along with the regular Conventional Wisdom material. Oh, did I mention that I decided to try and do a new comic about every single episode of the new Digimon Adventure series? It’s… um… been really easy to stay on top what with the production going on hiatus after three episodes. I think new episodes are supposed to resume airing this month, though, so keep an eye out for more of those comics as time/energy/ideas permit. As with everything else right now, I’m trying not to push myself TOO hard on these. Pushing myself too hard is what got me so sour about conventions in the first place.

So, yeah, that’s what the rest of 2020 is looking like at the moment. Lots and lots of re-posting old content, a smattering of new stuff, lots of creative recuperation for yours truly, and HOPEFULLY something resembling normalcy resuming by December. Could something completely unexpected appear out of nowhere in the meantime? Honestly, yeah! I’m already starting to feel some weird creative urges bubbling up in ways they haven’t for a while. When I’ve got the tedium of doing the same thing for a long time but NOT the exhaustion of having to crank out as much new ideas on a deadline, who KNOWS what long-neglected side-projects might suddenly some roaring back without warning? Lord knows I’ve got enough of ‘em laying around. We’ll just have to wait and see!