So this is an announcement a lot of you have suspected and probably dreaded for a long time. It has two parts so listen up. 😛
First, I want to thank everyone who has come to this site over the years. We started waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in 2001 as a site hosting TechTV comic strips and we’ve meandered through the years as various things until we settled down as the home of all of my @insanity creations. Comics, Poetry, old Pro Wrestling reports, everything I’ve ever done collected here for the world to see.
We’ve had a lot of great support from a list of characters too long to write out here. You know who you are, you’ve been wonderful and I cannot be happier to call you my friends. To all of the dozen or so of you who are reading that I don’t know personally, well, thank you too. I’m glad someone is out there being entertained by what we put on here. I know there aren’t a lot of you, but knowing that someone’s out there reading makes all the money invested, the endless nights and the near madness making deadlines (hey, at one point I was doing this stuff weekly!) worth it. I, again, can’t thank you all enough for your support.
If you’ve been following my blog over the past year, you know that my life’s changed a great deal. My dad’s now in the care of the Veteran’s Administration and dementia has taken his mind. Unless a miracle happens, he’ll never be home again. It’s not quite dying, but yeah, the guy who was my dad all these years is pretty much gone. It’s a big change for the entire family and coping has been a day to day thing.
I hadn’t intended to take so much time off between issues, but between work and everything else going on, I just haven’t had new comics in me. There just hasn’t been time to breathe.
Most of you know what’s going to happen next. I’m going to get nostalgic and declare that I’m rewriting the old strips and the old TechTV stuff and it’s going to be better then ever. I’ve made that pledge, what? Once? Twice? Before. I know I’ve attempted it twice and I get bored with myself and end up abandoning the idea after issue two. I can only write the “selling underpants on eBay” line so many times before it gets old for me as well as you.
At the same time, it drives me crazy that most of my original work cannot be modified. The original files are long gone and the comics that are up are the comics you’re going to get. I don’t have the software or the old MAC any more, so it’s not like I can go back and even increase the size of the captures for better viewing. The files are gone for The Media Elite, Universe and Starshine Downs. There’s no going back to them and really, that’s going to bug me forever.
So the big announcements.
Part One:
As of June 1, 2012 the following comics will be forever retired: One Day at TechTV, The Media Elite, Jim Finch’s Universe, Starshine Downs, @insanity and the current volume of Amazing Incredible. If you’re reading them now PLEASE GET DONE WITH THEM QUICKLY because you’re running out of time. Once they’re down, they’ll be down forever. Not coming back, I’m not changing my mind. Period. They’ll be locked away on hard drives and thumb drives, but they’ll never be public again.
Part Two:
On June 1, 2012 (or somewhere around there) the first issue of Volume 1 of Amazing Incredible will go live. I have five volumes planned to replace most everything I’ve ever done. I’ll be releasing each issue as I can get them out, don’t ask me for a time table, I can’t promise anything. But there will be issues up to replace each of the current issues. The issues will be created with a master set of characters and I’ll be correcting continuity errors as I go along to make the whole thing make sense. Yes, the issues are based on the stories I’ve retired however, this time around they’ll be in their own continuity and wiped clean of anything that can possibly get me sued or fired from my job. For those folks who have donated their faces, I’m only using the faces of people I trust for the master characters (or have heard from in the last year that we’re still cool), so if you’ve changed your mind about things, you better tell me now before I get going.
I also owe one “Evil” James Luciani the opportunity to publicly flog me as I didn’t keep a very public promise that no one remembers, but hey, I haven’t seen him in almost two years so I bet I can push that off for a bit (if he even remembers).
So comics coming down June 1. New comic going up June 1ish.
The past is the past, I’m moving forward from about 85 steps back.
And now we do what we’ve been doing from the start.
One I figure out WHAT that is, I’ll get back to you.
Jim