T Campbell's Blog

Test post.

Geez. Almost missed restoring this image. An extra special thank-you to Muttley/Alan Dicey.

Okay, new topics.

I have two incredibly exciting items, EITHER of which would justify girlish squeals, and several smaller "things worth mentioning." The exciting ones, though, involve you, the readers-- so let's get to them first. One is an opportunity for artists, and the other is an invite for anyone who likes webcomics. First up...

Tokyopop is talking with me about a Pop Star series.

You. Heard me.




However, Amy Mebberson can't commit to the 180-page size of Tokyopop's volumes, for the same reason that she put her own online comic on ice. So T-Pop and I are looking for a replacement, someone who can handle screwball comedy, superdeformity and all-in-fun music culture satire.

I can't give too much information about the money, but I'll say this: it's not DC or Marvel money, but it's better than you may have heard. It's good enough for ME.

Send me an e-mail if you're interested. Tina's waiting. Next up...

Antarctic Press has signed me to develop "The History of Online Comics" as a completed, revised and expanded book. The History of Webcomics will be just under 200 pages and go on sale December 2005.

Yeah. I am now taking any and all suggestions about what this book should cover. Basic rules of common sense apply: if you sent me the suggestion you can't sue me for using it-- or for not using it. I have plenty of ideas of my own, but I want this to be a group project. For now, feel free to e-mail me or post suggestions in the blog comments-- I expect to have a forum for discussion about this soon.

First thing: editor Paul Kilpatrick and I are looking at artists to draw chapter headings. Gabe is a gimme if we can get him, and so is Pete Abrams and Scott McCloud-- after that, things get a bit cloudier, decision-wise. So, suggestions welcome.

And other business:

The "sidebar story" I mentioned earlier will be airing on faans.com this summer. Its name is "The Iron Easel." Let the speculation commence.

Rip & Teri's concluding storyline, "Eagles' Endgames," officially begins tomorrow. Being a weekly, though, this one will last for a while.

Penny & Aggie's first issue just went to print.

Meanwhile, The Comics Podcast has its full, 2-part 24-Hour Comics Day podcast up.

I just turned in a new (long-overdue) piece for Comixpedia.

And I got the ghostwriting job.

Working on the last of the CD-ROMs now.

Good days. Good days. With luck, this will make up for those blog posts that go, "Wrote today, and then I wrote some more."

With Eric Burns' usual class.

I have news (boy do I have news) about what's coming up after Fans. But I'm literally too tired to announce it all right now. Check back later in the day.

When I was a kid, I decided 13 was my lucky number.

Fans is ending with its 130th chapter.

"The Ways The World Ends" is 130 pages (depending on how you count double-lengthers).

Rip & Teri just ran its 130th strip.

Buh-zarre.

In the frenzy to finish Fans and make sure I have plenty of work once Fans is finished, a couple things have slipped by me till now.

The worst is, there are a handful of CD-ROM orders that have been really, really badly delayed. I can point some blame on circumstances-- the unexpected move coupled with the server crash-- but that only covers so much. The CD-ROMs are going in the mail tomorrow, and I'm changing my policy from "allow six to eight weeks for delivery" to "it goes in the mail the week that you order or I commit ritual seppuku." Just so you know.

Hadn't realized the subsidiary pages also got wiped. Just restored those-- except for some fansart pieces that neither Muttley nor I could recover (I don't think, anyway). If you contributed a piece in the past, you may want to check that page out.

Speaking of fansart, there are a couple of pieces I forgot to load up when I got 'em, and since then I've been holding them in reserve for a special occasion. Guess this is it. They'll be part of the "end credits" in an hour.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Ha!

It wasn't a dream.

No, wait, it was a dream.

But it happened anyway.

Fans began in 1997 as a set of seven character outlines (Guth was supposed to be a main cast member from the beginning, and Will's name was supposed to be "John Q." Boy, that name would have sucked.) The project symbolized what I wanted to do with my life after college, while paying tribute to my own college days and private fancies.

It taught me more than I can say about writing and comics. At the best and worst times of my life, Fans was always there. It's linked to many of the key memories from my life--

• Slumped in a messy Savannah apartment and shaking my head in despair at the Faans comic's poor sales figures and a bad case of heartbreak.
• Coming up with key scenes for "Tests" while taking one of my extended family's many beach vacations.
• Getting the e-mail from Maritza that went, "Your character looks like my character. We should do a crossover!"
• Conventions and store signings from Orlando to San Diego.
• Talking plots out with Greg while pacing rhythmically in and out of his room, or up and down the hills of College Park, Maryland.
• The call from Manley that hired me on as editor of Graphic Smash.

I'll miss it. There's already a kinda-sorta "sidebar" to the series that will run on faans.com this summer, and plenty of chances for me to revisit its characters someday. But it will never be the same... it never is.

I'm better than I was when I started. I can see lots of things I would improve if I could do it all over from scratch. But whatever else happens, I am humbled to know that I did what JMS did with Babylon 5-- came within 5% of realizing my dream project, just the way I had dreamed it.

Not a lot of people can say that. I am lucky.

I will keep doing my best to be deserving of that luck.

No way I can do justice to all the back-and-forth going on about Fans right now. So, a few things:

1) Lots of people have written something like, "I'm not sure about this twist, but that doesn't mean you unilaterally suck." I appreciate the kind gesture. But...

2) Criticizing Fans does not make you a traitor and in league with the terrorists. You guys who are less than satisfied SHOULD be speaking your mind about the work, not verbally tiptoeing around it like it's an ugly baby picture. That is the best way for not only me but for webcomics in general to improve. I'm a big boy. I can take it. :-) The previous post was meant as the "window into my world" promised by the blog subhead, not a sympathy plea.

3) The criticism that's carrying the most weight with me right now is "This is too sudden/casual from Rikk." I do worry about that. I know that he did wrestle with this choice (and so did Ally, but less so). Previous drafts showed more of that, but at the cost of the drama or the "real-time characterization." I have at least one Fans-related story on tap, and there's no law that says there'll never be another, so we might get to that someday.

4) On endings. A surprising (to me at least) number of people don't like the fact that everyone ends up more or less happy. So far as I know, nobody was clamoring for "Everybody Dies Horribly Friday," but they argue perhaps one character should have had a bad life to counterbalance the others'.

One reader reminded me that not all endings have to be happy, and that's certainly true. "The Most Dangerous Game" ended with something like a double suicide, "Times of War" ended with PTSD and "The Cruelest Month's" main plot ended in total failure. But Fans isn't a tragedy. It all but demands a happy series ending-- otherwise all its humanistic messages lose their force upon rereading. The characters, no real experts at being contented, actively resisted every happy variation on the end but this one.

(And they ganged up on me, too. Rikk: "If they're not happy, I won't be happy." Ally: "If they're not happy, I won't be happy." Rumy: "If they're not happy, I won't be happy." Ally: "I'll leave, then you two can be happy." Rumy: "That won't make me happy!" Me: "What would make you happy?" Rumy: "For them to be together." Rikk: "What are you talking about? We're together NOW and you're not happy." Rumy: "For them to be... but for me to have... I... I want both." Me: "Fine! Done! Happy?")

And yeah, the ending they settled on is the one which will probably take the most work from them in the years to come. They're a little masochistic like that.

Whew! That's all I got. I'm goin' back to bed...

The end of a series is usually a pretty "safe" time to be a writer. You are permitted, aye, encouraged to revisit old themes, tropes and characters for which you have a nostalgic affection, and let the momentum of your previous work carry you like a surfer's wave into the beaches of artistic accomplishment and critical praise.

Or you can try what's happening in the last week of Fans, and piss everyone off.

Well, not "everyone." The silent majority remains, shockingly, silent. And the vocal minority is somewhat divided. But I'm getting more complaints about this than anything since at least the first CRFH-Fans crossover, which I still like, and maybe since the most complained-about thing Fans ever did, Rumy's comically unprovoked assault and battery of Hyperman, which I now don't.

The comparisons are apt. I have no way of knowing if I'll look back in three years and think "yeah, great move there," or "WOW, I sucked." I don't know what readers will think, either. As I recall, The Dark Knight Returns got a few complaints when it came out, too.

No choice now but to soldier ahead, though. People are calling the resolution of the Rikk-Rumy-Ally triangle a "cop-out," but it'd be an even bigger cop-out to rework an ending that feels right to me, just to please them. I've learned a lot from my readers over the years, but sometimes you have to follow your heart.

Besides, Greg would kill me.

...yeah. Not yet. I'll tell you about that soon.

24-Hour Comics Day was pretty exciting. We'll have a two-part "Meanwhile" up about it fairly soon. Probably the highlight in terms of human interest came when a slight, distraught twentysomething woman barged in and asked to use my cell phone to call an ambulance for her boyfriend, who'd just done a barrel roll in his minivan and might have punctured a lung.

Later, we wondered exactly how HE had gotten in touch with HER-- without calling "Emergency" himself. Well, *I* wondered. Dave and the others were a bit more worldly and quickly concluded "DUI." So we might have been willfully sleep-deprived, but he was going to wake up in the hospital and then likely go to jail.

We also noticed that two out of the three 24-hour comics artists (all guys) seemed to have beautiful redheaded significant others. A small statistical sample to be sure, but it makes you think, eh?

Fans is 98% restored at any rate. I have to work on "Take Two," the animated GIFs and the "Departures" title GIF, but we're clooooosing in.

And only four days before the end of the series.

Once I'm done with this, it's over to other Graphic Smashers like Acid Keg and Life's a Croc.

For most of the next 24 hours or so, I'll be at Richmond Comix, covering and possibly participating in the 24 Hour Comics event with Dave Belmore. Come on by Saturday if you're in town. And if you're not, well, send us your audio.

"The Ways The World Ends" is completely restored (edit: with the exception of Guth's song, which will return Sunday). It's also gonna be free for everyone to read until May 8. Just in case you missed anything.

Today ends my brief sojourn into the world of tax-preparer website design. The copy and basic design aren't mine, I just spruced 'em up a little.

This month has also taught me something important. I really, really need a tax preparer.

Two birds, one stone.

Lots more memories shared, from Sandy boxing with Uncle Jack to his habit of telling the girls that it was snowing-- EVERY April 1st.

I don't think I can convey how much love and laughter was in that house for the last few days. We knew that Aunt Sue and Suzanne and Ali needed to remember the good times and we all came together to make that happen.

Got a long drive tomorrow morning, so I'm hitting the sack. Ninight.

Written by T Campbell with Meg Campbell, Laura Whedon and Jack Graham. To be read at the memorial service Wednesday in Atlanta.

--------------------------

Alexander Hawkins “Sandy” Graham III loves golf, basketball, football, baseball, real estate, the University of North Carolina, and all his family. But especially golf. We say “loves” because his passing cannot alter his affections. They resonate as clearly today as they did during his life.

Growing up in North Carolina, Sandy caused quite a stir among the ladies of Durham with his rugged good looks and affable, self-deprecating charm, two traits he’d retain all his life. After dating one Susan Budd and a Susan Hill, he finally found the Sue Graham he was looking for in Suzanne Bittner. Another Sue Graham, little Suzanne, followed some years later. Four years after that, Suzanne’s little sister was permitted to break the pattern and take the name “Ali.”

Sandy spent some of his best years at the University of North Carolina, with the legendary Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. It gave him four lifelong friends, Bob Colyer, Loyal Wilson, Lester Martin and Trammell Newton. How many among us can count four close friends that we have known for forty years?

Sandy was a man who made his favorites known. All his friends and family knew his favorite chair (a comfortable burgundy leather armchair in the TV room), his favorite channel (The Golf Channel, of course) and his favorite shirt (a droopy muscle shirt which was nobody else’s favorite but his).

His sisters, Meg Campbell and Laura Whedon, have a few words I’d like to read to you. Meg says:

“As a little brother, Sandy was most unsatisfactory. His independence was frustrating; I wanted an obedient sibling-servant who would do as he was told.

“That was never Sandy! Even then, he displayed a sturdy self-confidence that resisted outside influence. He would not be shaped or molded by anyone else. We were usually on opposing sides of any issue. Once, to illustrate his feelings, he bit me on the leg. After he learned to read, he stole my diary from under the bed and read it aloud to his friend Fritz.

“But that was then. As time passed and we grew up, Sandy and I were amazed to find ourselves on the same page about nearly everything. We certainly agreed on how wonderful his wife Sue was and later on how very special his two beautiful daughters Suzanne and Ali were. We agreed that family was a treasure and we cherished ours. And in these last years, we agreed that life is precious and worth fighting for, even when the struggle is hard and the deck is stacked.

“I revised my early opinion long ago. I have been so fortunate to have Sandy and his girls, all three of them, in my life. In all ways he was far more than satisfactory. He was a dearly loved and most excellent brother.”

Laura says:

“Sandy was nine years old when I was born. When called upon to care for me, he would feed me cookies to keep me happy. That’s why I always had a soft spot for him. Through the years I would be excited to see my older brother when he came home on vacations from Woodberry to Carolina. He had other things on his mind besides Little Sis, but always had kind words, maybe sometimes even teasing words, for me. I loved having a big brother but our lives were in different places at different times. But then he married Sue and I married Arthur only a year and a half later. We both had two girls. Our oldest children were born 6 days apart. Suddenly we had a lot in common. I loved getting to know Sandy all over again, not only as a brother but as a husband to Sue, a father to his children, and a friend to me.”

Everyone who knew Sandy has a favorite Sandy story. One of the best in recent memory involved his younger brother Jack. Jack fell victim to a vicious attack from Sandy on the golf course. During the Member Guest Golf Tournament at Hope Valley Country Club, while innocently completing his golf scorecard, Jack was in the way of an errant tee shot from his brother and got a line drive in his upper back. Although Sandy exhibited some signs of remorse, the situation was not lost on the crowd, which couldn’t believe the extent to which sibling rivalry can be pushed. Jack got over the shock long enough to provide these comments…

“Sandy was the big brother everyone wished they had, someone to look up to and someone who always left big shoes to fill wherever I went. In Carr Junior High, in Woodberry Forest, and in UNC and the SAE house, I made my own trails, but found that easier because of the paths Sandy had beaten, the good impressions he’d made on everyone I met. In our adult years, Sandy and I had even more in common. We each had two wonderful daughters, careers in real estate, and a practical but humorous outlook on life. One day we’ll tee off together again, and I’ll still tell him to balance his weight and not try to outdrive Tiger.”

And all his family remembers the story that ran in the paper, from Sandy’s wayward youth.

As all small children inevitably must, little Sandy had pushed his father’s patience as far as it could go. The specific offense is not important. What is important is that his father took him aside and spoke sharply and at some length. As the berating continued, Sandy began to cry. His father began apologizing, allowing that perhaps he might have gone too far, but Sandy was inconsolable. Finally, his resources exhausted, his father asked him, “I’m sorry I’ve upset you, son, but please, why are you crying?”

“Because,” little Sandy bawled, “you’re wasting my time!”

Sandy did not waste time. After he was first diagnosed, he made the ensuing years three of the best years of his life, taking trips to Tuscany, Southern France and England, and playing 111 rounds of golf.

His 112th round began this Sunday. He is just now reaching hole nine on Cloud Nine, graciously extending the Archangel Gabriel a handicap. We will miss his good nature, but his life, well lived, is an inspiration to us all in our time on this Earth.

My uncle passed this morning.

I'm down in Atlanta now, 400 miles from the tools I'd need to fulfill my original plan for the day.

I'm sorry, guys. Next weekend, unless...

(Do not tempt.)

Next weekend. Or sooner.

Meanwhile, the Comics Podcast is actively soliciting audio from anyone who will be involved in 24-Hour Comics Day on April 23, 2005.

We're particularly interested in the voices of the artists themselves, but hosts of the event, friends, family, fans and anyone who feels they're a particpant are all welcome. Tape yourself with a digital voice recorder and share the experience with the millions of deprived souls who can't share the sleep deprivation with you!

E-mail us your audio!

I can't begin to tell you how frustrating this last week's been in terms of getting the Graphic Smash Fans archive up and running.

On the one hand, I'm thrilled that Graphic Smash gets to go first. That's thanks to you, the readers, who have written Joey more frequently than the readers of any other sites.

However, through no fault of Joey's, something has always gotten in the way, be it his efforts to restore the site, Comcast, my own overstrict security settings, or The Tax Professional, where I've been earning a little extra cash with my days. As I write this, the new and vastly improved Graphic Smash control panel throws an error when I try to log in, and apparently my overzealous security system is to blame. ("Better safe and sorry," is ZoneAlarm's motto.)

I only have an hour or two more to work this before I head off to ODU Anime Fest 2005. Good buncha guys-- great buncha guys-- but likely the smallest convention I'll ever guest in. Greg Eatroff is one of the organizers, so there you go. I expect a good time will be had by all twelve of us.

So. I'm scheduling the Fans rebirth for Sunday afternoon, along with all the GS edits for the week. I'll coordinate it with Joey, give myself a backup computer and backup Internet connection to work on, and see how that does.

If you've missed a strip or two, hang on till then. The restored "Ways the World Ends" (about 120 pages so far) will be free next week only, as an apology from me to you for all the server-related trouble.

Unless, you know, we get hit with an electromagnetic pulse on Sunday like the one in Dark Knight Returns.

Then it will be the following week.

...after the last entry, and in fact they've done so. New temp job, new and better apartment setup. More about those later.

My apologies to those who've been missing Meanwhile. Long story short, Dave's had Martian death flu. I am now heading to his place to do a taping. He assures me it's been properly sterilized. Having said that, if you never hear from me again, you'll know why. :-) We are also going to start a backlog to keep from missing a Monday again.

The post-crash Fans issues have gone on long enough and longer. I was waiting on some help that would have turned the work of hours into seconds, but it's not fair to make you guys wait any longer, and I feel I've got to be a better role model to the other Graphic Smashers. By late tomorrow evening, either the archives will be all fixed or I'll be laid up with Martian death flu. Or possibly both.

(And yes, I'm aware of what my compulsion to make jokes about an imaginary fatal illness is saying about my current state of mind. But this is the personal blog. My dendrites are in the nude for you, here.)

Also done today: Pop Star, the series proposal. Cross your fingers...

Check the Graphic Smash page for the latest Fans this week.

I've been counting down weeks for the last few months, in a combination of anxiety and excitement as Fans nears its conclusion. Now I have another reason to count weeks, but it's an unhappier one.

My Uncle Sandy is dying of lymphoma.

After the diagnosis, he got up and took a shower. He's relatively normal right now, his fever kept in check by medication, but they say weeks are about the right measurement for how much time he's got left.

Weeks. Weaks.

It's not fair.

He has two daughters and a loving wife.

It's not fair.

When I think of Sandy, I always think back to the days when I had trouble telling him apart from Uncle Jack. At seven, I had the clumsiness with names and faces that would plague me to the present. Sandy was losing his hair and said to me with a smile, "I'm the bald one." That gentle, self-deprecating humor, the quiet confidence behind it, that just says "Sandy" to me. (About ten years later, I would have needed a new scheme to tell Jack and Sandy apart, but by this time they'd both made their impressions.)

I'll try the Graham home tomorrow, see if I can get through.

Sandy has lived a good life, on balance. He has had a model marriage and two amazing daughters, one in college and one in high school. He has had a good solid career and earned a beautiful house in uptown Atlanta. He has gotten to pursue many different interests, and enjoyed countless beach vacations with me and the rest of the extended family. I don't know the full extent of his suffering since his first diagnosis two years ago-- but no matter what, his is a life to be proud of.

And this way we get to say goodbye in person, while he can understand us, which makes it slightly, slightly easier for us to cope. And he gets to say his goodbyes instead of leaving the world suddenly, regretting things unsaid. I think he would prefer that.

But it's still not fair.

Rip & Teri is fully up and running again.

The Fans archives are still having problems. I'm waiting on something I thought would take 48 hours at most, and instead is on its fourth day.

Story of my life lately. The Jersey job got back to me with the one answer I didn't want to hear-- "we need another week to decide." Unfortunately, I don't have another week to move out of Leesburg, so the question becomes whether the Falls Church move will be extremely temporary or semi-permanent. The terms of my lease there give me a week to move back out if need be, after which I'm locked in for six months. I want this decided, I need to move ahead.

Fortunately, the ghostwriting job looks solid and another book deal almost as solid, so I should be able to eat in any case.

The next 24 hours of my life will be dominated largely by boxing everything I own up and moving it either to a storage shed or to Falls Church. After that I may have spotty Web access for a while, but I'll make sure the new eps of Fans come in and the old ones get up to speed (*sighhhhh*) as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience...

So tired.

Graphic Smash is back up, and predictably eight gijillion problems came up with everybody's archives. I wasted a lot of energy looking at things that cartoonists complained about, only to get halfway through a solution and hear "never mind, I fixed it," or hear Joey say, "okay, I fixed it."

300 emails today.

This, plus finding a good storage facility to take my stuff while I move to Falls Church/New Jersey. I finally collapsed for a few hours into a sea of carbohydrates and Babylon Five.

So yes, I know Fans' archives are far from perfect and Rip & Teri's need to be brought back up to speed. But hey, new strip today!

I'll correct archives further inna mrning... g'night.

Readers have been letting me know they miss Fans, and believe me, Joey and I are doing our best to bring all the Graphic Smash strips back online. By this time tomorrow, most likely.

Met J. Andrew World, an enterprising young filmmaker, tonight. I expect you'll hear more about him soon...

I'm going to miss it after all. Look at that view.

I spent today putting out Graphic Smash fires, visiting Brent P. Newhall one more time, and preparing to move without being sure where I'm moving to. It allllll depends on the Jersey job: they say yes, I'm up north; they say no, I'm stayin' in Virginny. Weesa see.

This job was waiting in my inbox this morning. I once said to myself I'd take almost any job related to comics, but there's a reason I included the "almost."

Graphic Smash slowly, slowly returns to normal. Fans will probably return by Wednesday.

Once upon a time I would have killed my ass to get Fans episodes online every M-F, no matter what. But I have other things on my plate now. Ferinstance:

• All the Graphic Smashers, not just me, needed new FTP accounts.
• Still didn't get "Uptown Girl" done. It'll only take eight more hours, though, at most.
• Did outline "Eagles' Endgames," the big Rip and Teri finale, which'll go about another year.
• The interview went well, which means I could move to Jersey very shortly.
• Marvel and DC were mostly a bust: my contacts couldn't be reached and I didn't have time to do much more than look around. But I hatched some ideas about how to approach them in the future.
• E-mail is becoming a major part of my day. I answer about 30 messages a day on average, and when something like a server outage hits, boy howdy.
• Got a new podcast out the door: the big Sin City review.
• And, oh yeah... Pop Star made it.

Thanks so much to everyone who voted for me and Amy.