Debt On

Sup, y’all. Hope you’ve been enjoying the guest comics as much as I have, it’s been so much fun to see other people’s interpretations of my characters. My thanks again to all the great guest artists that helped me out the past couple weeks. I’m going to stay on hiatus for just a couple more weeks while I perfect the script for the upcoming storylines and get a comic buffer built up. Meanwhile, I’ve got some cool sketchbook pages and other material to feature in my absence, so keep checkin back.

In recent news of life imitating art I just lost my bartending job for reasons I may never understand, which either means that I’ll have lots of time to work on new comics or I’ll be too busy beating pavement and drowning my sorrows in a steady diet of rye whisky and malt liquor to produce anything decent. Only time will tell.

So if you have any need of a cartoonist, writer, bartender, waiter, or just a guy with a strong back in the SF Bay Area, look no further. Also, you could help me get paid for writing comics, either directly through the donation button to the right, by buying ads through Project Wonderful or Blogads, by clicking the Google ads running along the side of the blog, or by just helping me get the traffic up on the site. Tell your friends, recommend the comic on other blogs and forums, any little bit helps. If you can help me get this site going bigger and better than ever, I promise I’ll respond by producing better comics and more of em.

Cheers. Wish me luck.

Hey y’all. Just got back from a late-night flight back to California. Just wanted to drop in to thank Calan Ree of Gingerdead and Friends for drawing today’s comic.

Today’s comic was written by Chris Cooney, a GAW pirate, freelance philosopher and former President of Simon’s Rock College. He has no web site.

Also, apologies to Fesworks for not getting his comic up when I said I would on Friday. I set everything up on autopilot and that slipped by me somehow, and I barely had access to a computer on my vacation. That will go up on Wednesday.

And Friday’s strip is drawn by my friend Vita, an animation student and representative of the New Russian Federation. She collects chronometers and wombats.

So I’ll be on vacation for about the next two weeks. In the meantime I’ll make every update with a guest comic, but since I won’t be at a computer to blog them as they go, here’s the remaining lineup for these two weeks:

To kick things off to the left you’ll see a sweet drawing that Mike Jensen did for the links page at Lonely Fetus, an awesome comic strip worthy of your attention.

The comic for January 1 is by none other than Matt Sandbrook of Chip Shop Adventures! I still crack up every time I look at this. Thanks, Matt! Everybody should go check out Chip Shop Adventures, especially if you have a bloodlust.

The comic for January 3 is by EvilCouch of The World’s Worst WebComic. Couch would say I have terrible taste for saying this, but the comic hardly lives up to its name.

The comic for January 5 is by Handoko of The World of Acoimade. Han’s a great artist and contrary to what the dialogue implies he’s not illiterate, just billingual.

Kicking off week 2 the January 8 comic is by Wendy Wood of Gilbert and the Grim Rabbit, a very cute and wickedly funny webcomic.

The comic for January 10 is a collaboration. The written comic is by Jason Dunstan of Ardra, while the art is courtesy of Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

And the comic for January 12 is by Fesworks of A Pessimistic Sense of Inadequacy. Go check out Fesworks now.

My deepest gratitude goes out to all these awesome guest artists for granting me this badly needed vacation. :)

Sorry about the late comic today, Christmas set me back a bit. But the good news for me is that guest comics will start on January 1 while I take a little break from cartooning. Actually I’m not taking a break so much as working up a buffer and tweaking the website. But keep up cuz there’s some really great comics in this batch. I’m still not sure how long the break is going to last, but I do need more guest comics! So any artists interested please get in touch!

In other news I’ve recently joined the political webcomic collective Spinzone Comics. One of the best things about that is you can chat about my comics with me and others in my very own Debt On forum. Other comics in the collective include Line Item Vito, Monkey Law, Idiot Box, Fighting Words, Death of the Party and Cosmic Awareness.

Today I added comic 250 to the archives. That’s roughly 150 since I rebooted the comic in May, and 100 that I did two years ago. Onward to 300!!!

Things to do if you like Debt On:

I’ve been participating in the Webcomic Battle. Click here to go to the game and remember to vote Debt On!!!

Also, be my friend on ComicSpace. It’s like myspace, but for comics. Greeeat. Just what I needed. (The layout is much more pleasing than myspace. That’s the good news.)

Alright, back on track. Things have been hectic these past couple weeks, but they should cool off until the holidays, which are of course rapidly approaching. But at least I have some time for working on comics and such now.

First off, if you want an extra dose of my cartooning, I’m the guest artist on Ardra this week, so check that out! Wish I coulda colored it for him, though.

About that. I really want to get back to coloring the strips, but I’ve wanted to put extra work into the lineart lately, and really develop the visuals of the restaurant and the new characters I’m introducing. Sid’s jobs up until now have been very brief endeavors, but this one is going to last quite a while longer. We’re still only in the very beginning stages of this storyline. Not to worry, though. I haven’t forgotten about the other characters and as I’ve been doing already, other storylines will weave in and out as this one goes on.

Also, come January, I’m going to be taking a brief hiatus. But there will be some pretty exciting guest comics to keep you all entertained, and there’s plenty more Debt On to come afterwards. And if you’re an artist and would like to draw me a cool guest comic to feature on the site, I’d be thrilled to read it. Email me and we’ll talk.

Peace!

While cruising a couple comics forums this morning I found out that Phillippe “Sketch” St. Gerard of The World of Cottonfluff Hollow posted a review of Debt On for the new blog for Sapo Entertainment:

Debt On does not need a monstrous cast or any situations any more bizarre than those thoughtfully provided by real life to succeed. The situations that they find themselves in make the plight of the characters (to say nothing of ourselves) seem all the more sobering, when you stop to think about it.

Of course, there is the occasional curve thrown by the cast, or even sometimes to the cast that serve the dual purpose of lightening the mood as well as further illustrating the fact that changes are necessary, if not immediately in sight.

My thanks to Sketch for the shout out.

Hey a big thanks to Mike over at Crooks and Liars for featuring me on his blog roundup for today! For those who don’t know, Crooks and Liars is an excellent and extremely popular political blog specializing in video clips, cool music videos, and general lefty politics. If you haven’t seen it before, surf on over.

Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. Attentive readers will notice I occasionally run late on the coloring, leaving it until the next afternoon, especially on Mondays. This week I really have to work ahead as the next storyline requires some planning, especially visually. And damn it, coloring is boring!

I’m incrementally pushing further ahead, and I’m expecting a little time off soon, so we’ll see how much time I can manage to work on comics. As I said in a recent cartoon, it ain’t easy. And the lack of color isn’t permanent by any means — before long I’d like to go back and color the ones I’m missing now to make the archives more complete.

Also, I’m getting work done on the site again! Like some behind-the-scenes stuff on the blog, and on the links page!