So I’ll admit it took me far too long to buy into that whole “podcast” thing. I probably knew they existed, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me that I could find something of interest amongst all those random shows, most of which probably were of rather amateur quality. So it wasn’t until I got my first iPod over a year ago that I bothered to look into the phenomenon, quickly ending up with a bunch of gaming-, music- and comics-related podcasts through the then newly installed iTunes. Most of the ones I subscribe to, while they’re excellent shows, I usually have no rush to listen to the new episodes, and I can even skip an episode or two without feeling I’m missing out.

But there’s one show in particular that makes me jump for joy every time a new episode is released, and probably drop everything else to check it out immediately. The show in question, as you might’ve guessed from the headline, is Webcomics Weekly (which, incidentally, is NOT posted weekly – more like Webcomics Monthly), where the four excellent webcomics creators Dave Kellett (Sheldon), Kris Straub (Starslip, Fchords, chainsawsuit), Brad Guigar (Evil Inc, Courting Disaster, Phables) and Scott Kurtz (PvP Online, Ding!) talk shop and share general tips and tricks of the webcomicing and cartooning trade. Also, the crew are also responsible for the Webcomics.com site, as well as teaming up for the brilliant How to Make Webcomics book — which inspired me to make this website in the first place!

But best of all, not only is the show very informative, but these guys are absolutely hilarious and obviously just having a blast recording these things. While a typical one hour show might tackle a couple listener questions, the conversation is also very likely to go on some completely unrelated tangent and into highly amusing ratholes, which of course makes it all the more entertaining. So yeah, a new episode was released yesterday, where they have Jim Demonakos of Emerald City ComicCon on as a special guest, and even if one can’t relate all that much to American comic convention talk, it was another stellar episode well worth checking out.

In fact, I’d recommend the show to comic readers as well as creators, I can guarantee that you’ll be literally rolling on the floor laughing within minutes even if you don’t necessarily follow every aspect of every subject. (I certainly don’t!). One of my definite favourite episodes, and one of the first I checked out, is the one called “Where Ideas Come From” (#13), where the guys dwell into brainstorming and writing techniques, something I’d wager pretty much everyone regardless of their profession or hobby could find useful. Oh, and it also helps that the episode is just about the funniest of them all. Enjoy!

So this past week has been quite the eventful one for optipess.com, as I’ve been getting literally thousands upon thousands of new visitors. Most of them have been from StumbleUpon.com, so huge thanks goes out to whoever gave my stuff thumbs up there. The sudden growth took me completely by surprise, but it has certainly been exciting to glance over the server stats of the past few days.

Things are kind of settling down at the moment, but if you’re reading this it probably means you decided to stick around, which in turn definitely means you’re pretty awesome. Thanks for converting from visitor to reader!

Also, in other site news, I’ve gone ahead and upped the size of all the comics from 2009 so far with a few pixels. Maybe not that noticeable on the later ones that were pretty big anyway, but now they’re nevertheless all at the maximum size this site template allows. I’ll get around to resize the 2008 strips as well, but it will probably take a little while longer since my folder structure of original strips on my computer is a complete and utter mess.

Furthermore, and I really added this silently a few days ago, but you can now follow me on Twitter, where I’ll probably be bitching and moaning about some current unfortunate event, or just talk about comics related stuff in general. I was planning to make a Facebook group as well eventually, but awesome reader James B. beat me to it. So yeah, click here to join the Optipess Facebook group! It’s pretty bare-bones at the moment, but I’ll look into expanding it with more content soon. Oh, and if you’re one of those people with hundreds of friends on Facebook, be sure to bug them all with annoying invites!

Finally, last but not least, I noticed that my strip The Microwaveman has been chosen as the webcomicz.com “Strip of the Week” by webmaster Cristopher Schultz. Very cool — thanks alot, Chris!

Alright, so last week I mentioned that I’d be changing the posting schedule of new comics. Basically this means that from this week on I’m cutting back to two comics per week, posted on mondays and fridays. There are a few reasons for this, but obviously the biggest one is, as each newer strip gets more and more stupidly ambitious, finding time to produce three of these per week is unfortunately not quite doable for me at the moment.

And, as I’ve also mentioned in passing before, my strip is in print as well here in Norway in the Kollektivet Magazine, where the newest strips will appear first and with an exclusivity period of about a month. Now, I don’t HAVE to wait to post these strips, but after all it is a paying gig, and I feel it should take precedence. It’s a little bit frustrating though, as I’ve got plenty of both new and older strips laying around that will have to wait at least a few weeks before I post them. I also have some really old strips that quite frankly are somewhat embarrassing, which means I’d rather not be posting them at all, but we’ll see.

Of course, it sucks to doing this right now as I’ve been getting an upswing in traffic these past couple weeks, but as the understanding and awesome reader you probably are, I’m sure you’ll agree that focusing on quality over quantity definitely is the wisest choice.

Since I won’t be posting comics on Wednesdays from now on, at least for a while (see the previous entry), I figured I should blog more in general, and/or occasionally dig up some other artwork I’ve done. First out is a t-shirt design I did for my friend [real name withheld!] aka Condatis and his metal band Svartpest. Now, I wouldn’t know the first thing about designing one of those “traditional” metal logos, so we decided to take the image in a slightly different direction — and admittedly it is kinda tongue-in-cheek from our end, but I still think it ended up being pretty cool.

Also, as I’m not particularly well versed in various metal subgenres (the metal I usually listen to is more of the drawn-out, sludgy and droney kind), I’ll let Condatis do the proper introduction of the band, with the artwork I did following below:

Svartpest! From Fosnavaag, Norway, this band has been headbanging since 1999 and despite sore necks still do so. Raw, cold and brutal metal only the Norwegian Vikings have the knowhow to make and perform! Svartpest made their grim debut with the album “Ved Den Drabelige Inngang Til Helvete”, released on Baphomet / Red Stream in 2003. Svartpest departed however with Baphomet just when the new album “Mjödfest” was about to be released, due to “technical problems”. Featuring Freadiablo (Necrophagia, Gorelord, Grimfist) on guitar and bass, Condatis aka Likskrik (Fuck Frikyrkja, Dominate, Regin) on vocals, and Fug (Necrophagia, Trønderswingers) on drums. Svartpest is now looking for a new label, so if anyone out there likes (or hates just enough) to sign us, feel free to contact the band!

An amusing bit of trivia: The idea for this comic was conceived while making this image (when my mind wandered off to think of rats and mice in general). And yeah, new comic will be posted on Friday!

…But the Damage is Irreversible (shortened to AiLBtDiI from now on) by artist David Hellman and writer Dale Beran feels somewhat like a forgotten secret among webcomics these days, but still, it’s one of my definite favorites, featuring exquisite art and fantastic writing. It has sadly been on hiatus for the past few years, with no signs of it returning any time soon, but the archive is full of brilliant gems that encourages frequent re-reading anyway. Actually, AiLBtDiI is one the comics I go to whenever I feel my own creative inspiration dwindling, as the comic is wonderfully imaginative, often thought-provoking and even strangely moving at times, and succeeds in sparking the readers imagination in ways comics rarely do. The random stories being told ranges from completely bizarre tangents, to heartfelt profound realism all the while being, more often than not, hilariously funny.

Also, if you want more of David Hellmans art, and let’s face it – why wouldn’t you, check out the fantastic downloadable Xbox360 (and soon PC) game Braid, featuring gorgeous art by Hellman. His watercolor backgrounds and fluid style really suits the gameplay of the time-manipulating platformer which received a ton of great reviews when it was released last year. But still, as great as the gameplay is, I feel it wouldn’t be half as successful if it wasn’t for the art, not to mention the fantastic implementation of the music as well. And in some way the game feels like a continuation of Hellman and Berans webcomic, as the premise and atmosphere of the game in some odd ways wouldn’t feel out of place as an installment of ALiLBtDiI.

So yeah, that’s two recommendations I guess, and both the webcomic and the game are literally jaw-droppingly good. No seriously, I can guarantee you will be picking up the pieces of your jaw at least at one point when reading the comic or when figuring out the puzzles of the game. Enjoy!

As I cleverly teased along with the most recent strip, I apparently had found some “hidden” goodies in the Photoshop file while preparing it for upload. Quite frankly I had completely forgotten about this since this strip is a few months old, but evidently I decided to redo the last panel for some reason. This happens to me sometimes; I almost finish a comic, zoom out a bit in Photoshop, and suddenly it’s apparent that an alternate take would work better. Very frustrating of course, but it’s all for the best – if I can muster up the willpower to do the necessary changes, that is.

Anyway, here’s the first version of the last panel, which works OK as well I guess, but I felt a lot of the elements didn’t quite work. (Note that the coloring isn’t completely finished, and that I with this version probably meant to remove the “Yaaayy!” speech balloon from the third panel.)

So, is it better/worse, or just equally as unfunny? Let me know what you think.