Update Log
11/16 - Keep Your Head Up
No update today, just wanted to give you all an update on what's been going on.
After taking some time to myself, I finally got another job. Retail, of course, because that's all I can get around here, and it put its fist through me. This one is overall less stressful than the last one, at least. I've spent most of my time in the back processing the truck instead of dealing with entitled customers and answering every call to register because nobody else will. I've also worked mornings almost every day, which I do like better because it's like, alright, work's over, the rest of the day is yours. It's not going in in the morning some days, then the afternoon other days, working all day, then coming home to eat, shit, sleep, then doing the same thing the next day. But it's still fucking retail.
One unexpected bright spot of the place I'm currently working is they sell some art supplies. It's not a huge selection, mainly alcohol markers and brush-tipped markers. But it's also close to an actual art store, which I sometimes pop into after work and look around. So my current place of work kinda got me back into art. A bit.
Then in October, the cats' flea medication failed or something and I spent almost the entire month dealing with a nasty flea infestation. Whenever I'd sit down at my work station I'd have to clean up a layer of flea shit and eggs first and that'd kill my motivation to do whatever I sat down to do. I think I've gotten it under control, but I still have to regularly vacuum and flea comb the cats. I did pick up some diatomaceous earth but am saving it for the nuclear option. I tested it on some fleas I combed off one of the cats and put in a jar and it fucks them up really good, but I don't want to expose the animals to that stuff unless nothing else works.
Obviously I've got Quickies to do, I kinda want to do a short essay elaborating on what I said towards the end of my "the player being the villain of Deltarune makes no goddamned sense" venting about Game Theory's effect on media literacy, and obviously there's the final chapter of the Spamton comic. It's looking to be ten pages, and I think if I'm going to have any hope of completing it I'm going to have to split it into two five-page chapters. I'd like to have it done for Christmas but... I don't know. I'm probably going to have to do another one-page filler comic to get back into the swing of things.
- CK
09/29 - Poor Unfortunate Souls
With the year two-thirds of the way over, I guess it's time to finally get cracking on the Review Quickies starting with January, February, and March. Which are heavy on Grant Morrison books just when you thought I was taking a break from him for a while (I cut The British Invasion and Supergods because I'm not sure how to approach nonfiction).
I also added a few bits and bobs about 52 to the Deltarune/Grant Morrison project, but it's all within other sections and isn't anything major.
- CK
08/30 - Voltage and Radiation
Despite my original doubts on how much there was going to be to say about Zenith it turned to be a very juicy plum. And because I need some time away from the subject before I even try to wrap my head around The Invisibles and The Filth, this will be the last major update to the Deltarune/Grant Morrison project for a good while. With that in mind, I cleaned up the introduction, expanded the section on tarot cards, and added some closing thoughts with theories and some rage I need to sort out.
Page 3 getting another big update depends entirely on if Chapters 3 and 4 release this year. If they do The Invisibles and The Filth are going on a new page with the new Deltarune content, but if the next release is so far out I regain enough mental energy to tackle those last two books beforehand, I'll just add them to Page 3.
- CK
08/10 - Violence Breeds Violence
The penultimate chapter of the Great Deal Route is here, But in the End. Just one more to go, but it's going to be the longest of the second batch of comics.
And in a first for the series, I went back and edited a few panels from What If He's On Our Side? and The Dreamtime where I had placed the front plate of Spamton NEO's belt wrong. There are also some spots where I had a brain fart and drew the penguin pattern in the latter comic wrong, but I'll wait until the series is done before I take the time to figure out which ones are wrong and fix them.
- CK
07/10 - Dreamtime 2: Electric Boogaloo
Because The Invisible made my brain hurt whenever I tried to read it, I ran into a bit of a snag on the Deltarune/Grant Morrison project. Well, the next part is finally here: Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, along with a couple more instances of recurring imagery and some more Odds and Ends.
Also, I did an interview for a fan site, FTLFW recently. They didn't email me when it went up, I only found it when I poked around the site a little while later. Check it out if you've ever wanted to know a behind the scenes tidbit about Mario Busters I don't think I've ever told anyone else before.
- CK
07/01 - The Implicate Order
As much as I wanted to tackle The Invisibles next in the Deltarune/Grant Morrison project, I can't read it for very long before having to stop to push my brains back up through my nostrils. Ideally, philosophy should garnish a story, like a dash of A1 sauce on a steak. The Invisibles is so heavy on Morrison's philosophy that it overpowers the story and reading it is like drinking A1 straight from the bottle. I did eventually figure out what to tackle next, but it'll be a bit before I can get the writeup together.
In the meantime, let's see if we can finish that Spamton comic before Chapters 3 and 4 drop. There are only three chapters remaining, maybe four but for the sake of time one can be relegated to the Filler Comics and returned to later. However, the last chapter is going to be at least eight pages, maybe more, which means I need to hustle if I don't want to take eight months to complete it.
So here's the next comic, The Dreamtime, which actually benefited from me taking so long because it meant I could incorporate the philosophy I picked up from Grant Morrison's comics into it.
- CK
04/27 - The Joker and the Devil
The Invisibles is proving to be as dense as I feared it was going to be, so it's going to be a while before I can finish it and piece together what the hell I'm reading. Instead, we're taking a look at Batman: R.I.P. next, and adding some more tidbits to the Odds and Ends over in Son of the Knight of the Fox - Part 3.
- CK
04/17 - Something Had Gone Out in Her Eyes
So, let's get the news out of the way: I had to quit my job for health reasons. I had developed IBS or something very similar to it from eating burgers for every other meal. My left foot and knee were in constant pain from walking around on tile all day, and when I got up in the morning I could barely walk. And despite spending most of my waking hours walking around I lost no weight at all last year, no doubt from all the sugary drinks I was slamming down to keep myself going. I swear if I stayed there much longer, I was going to develop type 2 diabetes.
It was also taking a toll on my mental health because my life had basically become, well, this. Obviously I'm going to have to jump into something else before long (no doubt another retail job, because despite having a degree in Computer Informations it seems to either be retail or unemployment for me), but for now I have a few weeks of reprieve.
Let's start by finishing 2023 off with the last batch of quickies: November, December, and The Year in Review.
- CK
04/01 - Let the Feast of Fools Begin!
Easter and April Fool's are back-to-back so here's not one, not two, but three things in one day. I wasn't planning this, I was chipping away at a few different things and just happened to finish them up around the same time. Why release them all now instead of staggering them out? Well, to employ the philosophy of Dadaism, because fuck you.
First up, we finally have the next entry of the Great Deal Route: Pull the Strings. I've mentioned my job eating into both my free time and my attention span, but there's another reason these comics are taking me so long to do. As much as I want to finish the story, I can't work on these comics for very long before the knowledge that the entire point of Deltarune is that the player is the true villain of the game and even pacifist players are bastards in the game's eye gets too much and I throw down my stylus in anger.
Which leads us to the next thing I've got fresh out of the oven, the beginnings of the third page for the Grant Morrison/Deltarune project. Unlike the last two where I spent months on a single page and released everything in one swoop, this page will be updated as I go along. We're kicking off with Final Crisis.
And finally, the long-overdue September and October 2023 quickies which still ties into this because October goes inyo Crisis on Infinite Earths and Doom Patrol.
- CK
02/14 - Use Batman As An Ash Tray!
This isn't the update I was planning to have ready for today, but I guess it's fitting with it being the day of hearts and all. Son of the Knight of the Fox - Part 2, in which I go further down the rabbit hole and analyze in obsessive detail how Deltarune is the video game version of Grant Morrison's entire philosophy.
- CK
01/31 - It Means "No Worries"
Even though the next part of the Great Deal Route is only three pages, with my schedule that feels absolutely daunting. I've had the thumbnails done since October, but then the Christmas season happened. So I thought I'd try to ease back into things with a one-page filler comic with a simple background: What If He's On Our Side?
- CK
12/19 - Now They Just Call Me Asshole
May, June, July, and August quickies are up.
Wow, okay, why did it take me almost three months for that? The big one is my job. On top of just the time going into it, it's shot my attention span. Add to that my single July quickie being something I wasn't that passionate about one way or the other, and you've got a bad case of Quickie writer's block.
As for what time and mental energy I've been able to scrape together, well, about halfway through Doom Patrol I realized I had to do a followup on that Animal Man/Deltraune essay. I've been plugging away on that and reading more Morrison and Morrison-adjacent books. Dunno when that will be finished, hopefully March at the absolute latest and I'll have some other goodies for you in the meantime.
- CK
09/28 - Then From Out of the Knight
September is almost over and there's been no update to the Deltarune official site, though a newsletter went out on the 15th that said Chapter 3 is playable but in dire need of polishing. And even when Chapter 3 is completed, Fox doesn't appear to be releasing any more of the game until Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are all ready to go. So I think it's safe to say that, despite whatever dodgy source I read earlier this year, there won't be any Deltarune releases this year. After I've spent months teasing you with something big.
Well fuck it, here it is: Son of the Knight of the Fox in which I analyze in obsessive detail how Deltarune is the video game version of Grant Morrison's Animal Man and constantly get distracted by Berserk.
Why release this now instead of holding onto it until Chapter 3, 4, and 5 release? First of all, I've been working on this since March and at this point, I want to move on. And no matter how many times I tell myself "Okay, set it aside until the next batch of chapters releases, go do something else" I keep obsessively going back and tweaking it. I don't want to be picking at it for one, two, or who knows how many more years.
Second, well, look at the scroll bar. This thing is already a beast from analyzing two chapters. AND there's shit I wanted to talk about but decided to hold off on for a followup. I can't imagine how exhausting it would be to cover five.
And for anyone wondering, the header for this update is a reference to Zorro.
- CK
08/31 - Fwario
Finally got a new comic done, The Fox is Coincidence. By my calculations, Spamton spent nearly four months in that shower.
With September around the corner, we'll hopefully be getting release news on Chapter 3 and an ETA on when I can drop the thing I've been working on most of the year.
- CK
06/29 - Duck This
Doing some catchup with the quickies: 2022 in Review, and for 2023 we have January, February, March, and April. These might be sloppy and rushed, but I'm tired of working on them and am dealing with another sick cat, and want them out of my way.
And a word about the Greatest Deal comic: it's going on hiatus for at least a month. Surprisingly, it's not because of the "living in a humid area in a house with no air conditioning" thing I've talked about in the past. We actually got an A/C system installed earlier this year, so that shouldn't be a problem anymore. No, I just need to set it aside and not even think about it for a while to recharge my creative batteries. I got the next part mostly sketched out, but realized some parts were really screwed up and needed a lot of refinement, but whenever I went to work on it I'd just just stare blankly at it, eventually get frustrated, start watching YouTube videos, and get nothing done.
Including this one there are five more parts I want to do, two more that would be nice to do but are also skippable, and some fillers that would be fun to draw but I doubt I'm going to have the time. I got to thinking that the main part after this one and some of the others might even benefit from coming out after Chapter 3, after we learn about Mike and presumably what his connection to Spamton is.
Also with that big essay I keep fiddling with and even though I'm not publishing it until Chapter 3 or the 3/4/5 triple pack comes out and I get to pick through the new chunk of the game, I feel like my brain is screaming "Will you do something not related to Deltarune for a bit?" I'd also like to be artistically refreshed for when it comes time to do my Berserk shitpost, so I'm taking some advice from Brookes Eggleston and putting it away for a month.
- CK
05/07 - Spring Cleaning
Far too late for Easter and too early for Mother's Day, but here you go: Cleanup.
- CK
03/21 - A Spring in Your Step
I wanted to give our lucky boy a present on St. Patty's Day but it turned up a little late: Checking In. It's not the total bummer the last comic was.
One reason this took so long is, you know, life. The other is there's another big Deltarune related project I've been working on since January, and when I caught wind that, while there's no exact release date, Chapter 3 is coming in 2023 I wanted to focus on it just in case the release turns out to be April or something. Aside from some screenshots it's as done as I can get it for now, although I keep finding more oddities to add to it. So whenever the release date is announced I can focus on having my Deltarune/Berserk shitpost ready for the release, then incorporate Chapter 3 into [THE BIG ONE] and get it out the door while the hype is hot.
- CK
02/14 - Feelings Day
For Valentine's Day we got a downer in the Greatest Deal AU: A Free Meal. By my calculations, the group has spent three months in that fucking alleyway.
Sorry for how long that took, but I wasn't able to really focus on it until I got those quickies out of the pipeline, and then I came down with a stomach problem for a week. I like how it took me two months to do a 22-page comic, but now it takes me two months to do one page.
- CK
01/31 - A Million Monkeys at a Million Typewriters
Got an avalanche of quickies for you all: August, September, October, November, and December.
- CK