Debt On

Well, not really. I’ve long known my drawing style wasn’t quite up to par, and sometimes I looked at a strip and thought that something just wasn’t working. So, I hope you’ll all permit me to experiment a little. You’ll notice with these, instead of using my usual flash-bang shading and font routine, I’m hand lettering the strips and drawing the boxes, and using some very simple color separations. I do hope it’s still legible. :)

I just want to try some new things out, and see how they float. If you enjoy the strip, I’d really like to know what your favorite style of the strip has been, whether in full blown out fonts and colors, simple black and white, or with hand drawn lettering. Email me here. I may try to get a comments thing set up on the blog or something.. but they always get spammed!

So, having drawn this strip in the same style for over 200 strips now, (see below) I thought I would mix it up a little bit. Starting this weekend, all the comics on this site will be in full color. BUT in order to make such a momentous change, something else is going to have to go. Also starting on Monday, I will only be updating the strip three times a week, on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays.

I realize that many of you have undoubtedly become accostomed to your daily fix of Debt On. But know that on the whole the new strips will be bigger than a single daily, and look prettier. I think this is a good opportunity as we’re kind of moving into phase 2 of the strip, (or was that phase 3?) and the comics will be more comfortable in this format.

So stay tuned! Much more to come! And do feel free to email me your reactions.

That’s how many comics are in the archive, as of today. That’s 100 comics since the May 29 relaunch. For anyone relatively new to the site, here’s a quick rundown of the major storylines:

Old Skool
Can’t Pay the Water Bill
Bounty for President
Malthus the Squirrel
Republican National Convention
War on Weather
Malthus and Bounty

Fresh:
Graduation
Keg Party
Student Loans and Lying on Resume
Mall-Mart
Hording Oil
Too Much TV
Root Canal

Oh, and sorry for the quiet blog lately. I screwed up the software a little bit so that it’s functional but hard to use. Go me. I so don’t have time to fix this. Comics are going just dandy, though.

So last week and this one, I’ve been in vacation in New York. I forgot how freakin HUGE this city is compared to San Francisco and Oakland.

But I won’t leave you with nothing to read, no! Instead Sid and Bounty are just going to watch a lot of TV for the rest of the week. And this way my being away from the drawing board for over two weeks won’t affect the comic.

In fact, I’ve already gotten started on the next storyline, and those strips will go up before I get back, starting this Sunday.

That’s right, we take no breaks here at Debt On Comics!

Oh, and by the way, while I’m putting out entertaining comics every day I’m also working a full-time day job (or night job rather) as a waiter, and while I’m taking this much-needed vacation to visit friends and family (it’s been over a year since I’ve seen my parents) I’m not exactly sure how I’m making the rent next month. So if you were ever gonna use that donation button to the right then use it now! :)

Scott out!

I swear I didn’t know this: it turns out that cashier is the top disappearing job according to Forbes magazine. They say that anybody handling cash is going to be out of a job in favor of a soulless machine.

I say that we shouldn’t take that. So all you register jockeys, clerks and tellers get together and beat those machines! Show ’em how well you can do it, John Henry Style.

So you’ll see on the left that Bounty’s myspace page has been heating up lately. He’s building support for his 2007 Presidential Campaign, (nobody’s told him yet the election’s in 2008) so if you got a myspace, holla!

To close, here is a picture of me and my city.

Hell no that’s not my city. You think I can afford to live in San Francisco??? Click some ads, donate for crissakes! Vote below!

VOTE DEBT ON HERE!!!

For anybody that’s paying attention, today’s strip marks 50 since I relaunched the strip on May 29. In a few days, there’ll be 150 comics in the archive.

Uh.. yeah.. so I won Webcomics in Print’s send in your picture wearing a webcomic t-shirt contest. They apparently liked that I gave the only shirt I made to a friend to apologize for basing the character Bounty on him. He probably deserves more than a t-shirt…

And a big welcome to all the new readers: June has been by far the best month ever in two years of running this site. I won’t put a pathetically low number on it, so let’s just say that I’m glad you’re all here.

And were you inclined to help out with the site a little, there’s a few ways you could do so. A very easy way is to vote for Debt On at theWebcomicList or here: or here

Also there are a few text ads running down the side of the blog and clicking those may someday help me. (The ads aren’t bad, really. I’ve been checking things out and found myself clicking my own ads because I thought they were interesting. Seriously. Check it out.)

If you really like the strip, a better way to help out would be to make a Paypal donation via the button that looks like this:

Otherwise, I may have to get more ads. Yuck. Cartooning is an enormous sinkhole for money.

Also, I urge everyone to check out my ever-expanding links page. Recent additions include the awesome comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal and new political video blog Crooks and Liars which seems to have a taste for the random freaking incredible live performance by the likes of Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye. Not to be missed.

Hey just a reminder that these are brand new comics you’re looking at on the site as of Monday. Daily comics will continue here indefinitely.

I’ve endeavored to make the new strips as easy to follow as possible. They are conceptually the same as the old ones but this is a relaunch in every sense of the word: I will reintroduce the major characters and situations, and little reference will be made to events of previous strips. After all, this is a comic strip so continuity is of little real concern. ;)

Still, if you want to get caught up on who the major characters are I’ve made this little guide in the Who’s Who section of the site.

Finally, if you have an RSS reader and you want to keep caught up on the comics the RSS feed will leave a hotlink to the latest comic in your reader every day.

And I know lots of you have mailing lists and blogs and whatever, so c’mon! Show me some love out there!

Oh and they’ll let just about anybody on mySpace these days.

Mr. Jobs:

I am an aspiring cartoonist and freelance graphic designer of limited means, but I needed a computer capable of doing serious graphics work. I’d heard wonderful things about the stability and performance of Apple computers for this kind of work, so I sought out a used 1.8 Ghz G5 iMac with a 20″ display and 2 GB memory upgrade.

For some time the computer worked wonderfully and I was very happy with my purchase. My art and productivity improved considerably and I started gaining traction in my career.

But shortly thereafter I had a problem with the motherboard and power supply covered under an extended warranty. I took it to the Apple Store in Emeryville, CA for repairs. My computer has never worked properly since.

The service I received at the Apple store was terrible. Another problem apparently “cropped up” during the repair, and large numbers were discussed for repairs. I was told I had a problem either with my software or hard drive.

I know my way around a computer, and when I have questions my brother (an engineer at IBM that worked on the PowerPC processor) helps me, so I tried the repairs myself.

Something is very, very wrong with this computer, and frankly I can’t rule out that the repairs were somehow faulty. At the very least, the techs there completely misdiagnosed my problem as I have mostly ruled out any failure by the hard drive or software.

I am not sure what steps I will take from here, but barring any unforeseen circumstances my business with Apple is finished. I sadly regret ever buying this computer, though very pretty and initially excellent for the kind of work I do, my excitement has turned to enormous disappointment. This product has been chronically unreliable and has cost me weeks of productivity.

I am very sorry that this has been my experience with Apple, as I was extremely excited about switching from Windows. There are more details about my problems and the solutions I have tried thus far at this forum post.

I will be sure to tell my friends and colleagues in the graphics industry my experiences, and urge them to reconsider purchasing an Apple computer. As a conscientious businessman, I thought you should be made aware of these kinds of problems so that you may improve your products in the future. But unfortunately, I won’t be there with you for a very long time. Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Scott J. Morris