Polar Vortexts | January in Review

How'd January treat everone? Are you tired of the Polar Vortex (vortices?) yet?

Half of me thinks this is the stupidest joke ever -- the other half of me thinks that's is stupid enough that it's real funny. So, I'm half-sure it's funny, but confident that it's really stupid. And you can DownVote it here, because, let's face it, that's what needs to be done.

Spring Chickens
One of the biggest developments this month has been having Spring Chickens debut in print at the University of Windsor's student paper, The Lance. It's a publication I have some history with, but I've actually never met anyone who's working there now - - so it's not nearly as nepitistic as it might sound.

I'm real happy with how it's working out, too -- I'm getting a spot in the middle pages in full colour (if you work in print media, you know what a premium being on the colour pages is!). No feedback from it quite yet, but ... that's about par for the course (nobody ever seemed to write in about a story or content when I used to work there, unless they were specifically, individually mentioned in the paper and hated it).

If you want to see Spring Chickens in the paper, you have to load its digital edition (there's currently no feature on their website) by clicking the "Issues" section (Vol. 86), and selecting the latest editions (way at the bottom) and flipping over to around Page 9 (where I've been featured).

So that's a big development - - there's a lack of synchronisity between what's being published in the Lance and what's up on this site, though. While I'm going to be featured for the remaining 13 editions of the paper, I've delivered about 13 comics to them already to choose from. Some have been published for months, others are yet to be published until March 2014. The latest edition is for a post that's not scheduled to run until late February (but it's funny, so you should check it out). It's like looking into the future!

Online

One of my favourite jokes of the month in January is Winter Solstice -- there was a balance between foreground and background, colour, and the tone that just worked. It wasn't too nasty, in terms of the punchline (nobody had to die or anything) and it was a joke delivered in a single panel (which is my preference when it comes to gags).

I'm glad the Internet agreed, making it one of the most popular strips on the site. You can check it out here, if you'd like. A neat side-note is ... I tried to make the two focal characters look like George Costanza and Jerry Seinfeld - -whether I succeeded is irrelevant, really, but ... that's what I was thinking when I drew them.

Business Man @ HomeI've found that when I get a big "hit" with a joke, that the majority of traffic is redirected from Reddit, which is great! However, the joke doesn't really get any momentum unless people look at it, obviously. I've discovered that the more-appealing names of jokes listed on Reddit are the ones that get the most views.

Reddit's favourite Business Man this month was "Watching the Clock," which I felt captured the "spirit" of how some people feel about their jobs, however, I can admit, when I'm with my son, often the day seems to fly by.

My favourite strip this month was the Terminator tribute, T-800. I've been describing my boy the way Reese describes the Terminator to Sarah Connors for the past year, and it only seemed fitting to get this expressed in comic form.

For the record, Daydreamer makes me laugh a lot, too (even if nobody looked at it ).

King St. Capers
Pursuant to my observation about the most "intriguing" comic title generating the most traffic from Reddit (I'm an Einstein for observing this, right!?) the big two were "Magic 8 Ball" and "Drinking Game" although, personally, I felt the best-written joke was Dating a Model:

And most exciting for King St., a major development and new story arc emerged when Mr. Minestrone was required to shut down his barbershop in Barbershop Down (is it ok to reference "Blackhawk Down" like this? It's not disrespectful, right?).  How will this affect the street dynamics? How will characters react? What will Mr. Minestrone do with himself? The answers are coming in February.


Tomb of the Undead 

Check it OUT! Tomb of the Undead is still finished, but that means it's there in its entirety for you to check out! Please, have a gander if you're interested in a longer story arc and stuff like that.

Page 1 is here, and I believe the navigation is pretty straightforward. I hope you get a chance to puruse through it.

Social Media

Twitter has been growing quickly in the past month - - jumping from the hard-fought 300 mark to 369 which is more followers earned in a single month for me, ever. I'm impressed. 

Thanks for following and thanks for reading, too!
I also created a new site-navigation tool - - if you have any feedback on it, let me know. If there are ever any first-time visitors to the site and they're looking for content that's similar to what they're reading, I hope it helps direct them to the appropriate directory to continue forward. It's the best I can do on a Blogger platform, as far as I can tell. 


Follow on Twitter or Facebook!