Starting Monday, August 9th, I’m beginning a new personal project for the site: 100 Comics 100 Days. 
That’s right, I’m going to attempt to post 100 new Spud Comics for 100 days in a row, including Saturdays and Sundays. So from now until November 16, you can expect a new cartoon from me EVERY single day. This is just my way of paying back the folks who have stood by me when things got a little rough around here a couple of months ago.
Thanks for continuing to read and I hope you enjoy the ride!
Alright. Let me tell you what’s going on…
As faithful readers may know there’s been some upheaval around Casa Spud lately. In the last month alone, my family suffered a very personal loss, I’ve taken on a new full time (and time-consuming) job and the site itself was attacked by hackers. This is why it has been whole weeks without a Spud Comic.
What really pisses me off about all of this is last week I attempted the comeback, and promised a non-stop stream of new comics. What I didn’t know however was that the site had been hacked during my absence. Some assholes have been attacking WordPress powered sites hosted by GoDaddy, and mine was one of them. I had to take down everything for several days until GoDaddy and I could straighten everything out.
The situation (for now) is under control. The servers, accounts and databases have all been restructured with extra layers of security. Barring any other emergency, you should now expect to get a new comic on schedule, including some Saturdays.
Okay! Enough excuses! Time to move forward. I hope we can put all this crap behind us and you’ll continue to add Spud Comics to your daily routine.
Well, here it goes. You were probably wondering where Saturday’s comic was. Let me tell you, this weekend was a doozy. In addition to the part-time job I mentioned in the previous blog post, there were also some household emergencies to take care of (broken washing machine, stopped up kitchen drain, fourth grade diorama project for my daughter, in case you’re wondering). For a man who has been laid off from a regular paying job since July 2009, I am busier than I’ve ever been in my life.
Which is what leads me to this next paragraph: I’m afraid I’m going to have to trim Spud Comics back to 5 days a week. With all these additional stresses that take priority, I’ll have to push some things to the backseat. As much as that pains me.
Another hurtful part of this is I just haven’t had the time to visit my old haunts, Twitter, Facebook and the Comments. The absolute best part of drawing a daily comic has been meeting LOTS of great people. Not just fellow cartoonists, but the fans of webcomics themselves. I have no intention of leaving and I don’t want you wonderful people to think I’m ignoring you, and I promise to catch up whenever I find a free moment.
This isn’t all bad though. I started Spud Comics over a year ago as a 5-day-a-week comic. I added the extra day due to popular demand, and believe me, I would do 7 days if I could.
Perhaps when things get back on track and somewhat normal (I’m a father of 3, who am I kidding, right?) then maybe I can go back to knocking this out of the park on a 6-day or 7-day basis. Please know that I can’t thank you enough for all of the support and compliments I’ve gotten from you these past few months. Again, this isn’t the end, and if you can bear with me for awhile, I promise the best is yet to come.
I thought I should let all of you know that I have recently taken on a part time job. And while this does not mean the end of Spud Comics, it does mean that the comics themselves may show up at different times of the day. So don’t freak out when you don’t see a new comic when you visit the site in the morning. It just means I haven’t posted it yet. If you subscribe to the RSS feed or if you’re on the Spud Comics Fan Page on Facebook you’ll get them served to you automatically fresh and piping hot as soon as they’re ready. I’ll try to keep you posted if there’s any further changes.
Just added to the Store: Brain Peelings: A Spud Comics Collection. I have worked really hard on this book since September and now it’s finally available from Lulu Publishing. It’s 128 full color pages of the best Spud Comics from the past year! Just in time for the holidays! Give one to the Scrooge in your life and watch their face contort into a grin.
I’ve added a new 2010 Spud Comics calendar to the Store! This spiral-bound, full color wall calendar features two Spud Comics each month! I will also hand sign each calendar ordered between now and Christmas and include a pencil sketch card of Spudly the Potato. And it only costs $12.00 (plus shipping & handling)! Order now and be ready for the New Year!
7:00 am: Awake. What the hell! This is supposed to be a vacation. The Dallas Webcomics Expo doesn’t start until eleven.
10:55 am: I’m at the door to the ballroom where all the artists are already inside and set up. I am surprised to find I am the only one in line. This can’t be a good sign.
11:00 am: Two more people show up and they open the doors. All eyes are upon us. It’s an awkward feeling. Note to self: Show up fashionably late next time.
11:02 am: Walk up to Joel Watson’s table. Joel does the webcomic Hijinks Ensue. I really only know him through Twitter. Nice enough fellow. I thumb through his book which I eventually buy ($20). I tell him who I am and that I do a comic as well. I hand him a business card which will probably get thrown in the trash. He signs the book and sketches a really great anthropomorphic potato on the inside. Sweet! I thank him and move on.
11:10 am: Probably one of the biggest names here is Scott Kurtz, who is one of the pioneers of webcomics as we know them today with his daily strip PVP. At his table was a comic box marked FREE!. Inside were copies of his Image books. I grab a few and tell him I’m not just here for the free stuff. “Go ahead, take ‘em! That’s what I brought ‘em for!” He was busy talking to someone else so I went to the next table where I met Will Terrell of Super Zeroes. I look through his mini-comic and decide it’s worth $15. That and another $5 gets me a quality sketch of his bulldog character Potato (a theme is building. It’s at this point that I decide I’m gonna collect sketches of or relating to “spuds”). Will asks me a bunch of questions about my comic and I try answering them without sounding like a total amateur. I realize I wish there was a way to describe what I do without using the words “Far Side”. Will and his wife/girlfriend(?) are very friendly and he’s a superb cartoonist. While I’m waiting on the sketch I turn back to Kurtz and tell him I would like to buy a copy of How to Make Webcomics. “Oh, I’ll just give it to you.” I can tell he’s not happy with the way attendance is at the show so far. I explain that I had lost my original copy of the book, to which he says, “Oh, now I’m REALLY giving it to you for free!” He quickly sketches his character Skull on the inside and signs my other free books. Wow! So far I’ve spent $40 and got 8 books and 3 sketches. Nice.
11:30 am: I now walk over to Nate Bramble’s table. He does Hermit Hill. His table is really nice with lots of comic displays and prints. He notices my old Spud Comics T-shirt and say’s he thinks he’s seen the comic before which perks me up. His book is only $10. I pick it up. No sketch.
11:35 am: I notice that Samantha Wikan is at her table. She does the comic Life’s a Witch. She’s also a great Twitter friend and comments on the site from time to time. She recognizes me from the shirt and asks if I’m “Mr. Easterling”. We’re thrilled to see a “familiar” face at the show and I meet her husband who is also very friendly. We talk a little about her book which is published through Lulu, the same place I’m thinking of using for mine. I decide it’s worth $30 (it’s huge AND it’s in color). She’s absolutely beside herself that she’s made her first sale. I’m happy to be of service. I walk around some more not wanting to wear out any welcomes.
12:00 pm: The first panel of the day. “Story & Character Development”. Even though I don’t really have stories or characters I decide to sit in. Beats wearing a groove in the floor looking at the same 37 tables. It’s given by Mike Hankins, Jonathan Caustrita, Hannah Scott, and Scott Kurtz. There’s probably ten people in the audience, including myself. The panel starts out kind of clunky, no one not really knowing what to say. It picks up speed thanks to Kurtz’s witty remarks. Some interesting thoughts on how they write and work. Basically, as expected, they all do it differently.
1:00 pm: I notice a table in front of the main doors where some people have set up some flyers. I lay down a stack of my business cards. Later I see a couple of teenage girls pick one up. Cool! Off to lunch.
2:00 pm: Attendance has picked up considerably. I walk back to Samantha’s table and ask if I could get some pictures of her table. She happily obliges and then asks her husband to take a couple photos of me and her. I ask how it’s going and she says “really well” and I think she means it. It looks like DWEX may be a success after all.
2:10 pm: I sit down at the kids’ table where they have blank sheets of paper telling the children to Make Your Own Comic . At the top is a cartoon flying armadillo holding a pencil. I draw a guy under it getting his eye poked by the pencil.
2:30 pm: I notice that Carlos Castellanos and Hector Cantu of Baldo are at their table. Carlos immediately recognizes the name on my shirt. “Hey, I follow you on Twitter. Are you him?” he asks. It’s great because he’s acting like a fan of me (and this is a guy who’s got a syndicated strip in over 250 newspapers!) His book is also only $10 and he graciously signs it and sketches a potato on the inside. “Hey, can you sketch something in my sketchbook?” he asks. I’m dumbfounded. “Sure,” I say and draw my own spud with a pen I got from Samantha’s table. “See, your potato looks better than mine,” he says. This makes the whole trip worth it.
3:45 pm: I attend another panel: “Marketing, Promotion, Monetizing & Merchandising”. This one is a LOT more crowded. Panelists are Kris Overstreet, Joel Watson and Michael Moreno. We are told not to use services like CafePress and Zazzle for our merchandise. And we are told not to just have the name of our webcomic and character on our t-shirts. I’m sitting in the audience with my CafePress shirt that has the name of my site on it. I feel like a turd.
4:45 pm: I’m getting tired and ready to head back to the room when I spot a trucker’s cap with the characters from Icecubes on it. “Bad, bad Leroy Brown, I presume?” I say to the man wearing the cap. “Spudly!” Leroy says as we shake hands. He brought his six-year-old son with him. We talk about the show and I tell him that it was a ghost town earlier but now it looks like an honest-to-God convention. He suggests that if I’m up for it next year we could share a table. I think it’s a marvelous idea. I ask him if he could sketch something out for me and he happily does a full page drawing of his penguin character with a potato in the corner. My day is complete.
All in all it was very different than I expected. I had hoped to get the Spud Comics name more out there, but I was just happy being a fan and meeting all the wonderful artists. I really do hope they do this again next year. Only then, I’m gonna be the one behind the table.
I will be attending the Dallas Webcomics Expo this Saturday at the Southfork Hotel. I won’t have a table there, but I’ll be hanging out, hoping to meet some of my fellow cartoonists, going to panels and generally having a good time. If you’re in the Dallas area I’d like to urge you to come and witness the beginnings of a renaissance in the comics movement. See some rising stars and some pioneers in this relatively new field of sequential entertainment. While I’m there, I’ll be twittering and blogging about the event. Should be fun!
WebComic Planet has posted all the nominations for all the categories in The Webcomic Reader Choice Awards. Spud Comics is up for Best New Webcomic (I barely made it in as November 2008 was the cutoff). If you enjoy reading these silly things on a somewhat daily basis why not head over there now, sign up and vote for this crazy dream of mine? If you do I will love you for all eternity.
Webcomic Planet is starting the 2009 Webcomic Reader Choice Awards (or the WCRCA) and anyone can submit their nominations for favorite webcomic (in the right category, of course). This year Spud Comics is eligible for the New Comic category, as well as Art and Writing. There’s also an Author Congeniality category if you feel I’ve been especially nice to you. Anyway, I sure would appreciate your support if you were to go over there now and nominate me for something. You will need to sign up at Webcomic Planet. It’s free, so what do you have to lose? Thanks a million!
