Back of the Envelope

Yes, it's on time for once. Now that I've got the rough draft of Eyes in the Shadow finished, I can get back to regular blogging. Of course, there's still a lot of revising to do. Anyway, on with the webcomics.

Sluggy Freelance — Pete's decided to take some time off in order to rest his hand, so there are only a couple of comics this week. Still, some nice character interaction, even if it's really sad that Torg failed to invite Zoe to their celebratory get-together at the zombie themed restaurant. What's going on there? I know Torg's still upset over the death of Alt-Zoe, but it's really hurting his relationship with regular Zoe. He should just come clean. Other than that, it's sketches for filler.

Day by Day — Damon gets upset with the president of Pepsico, which also owns stock in the company he works at, so he quits. At least until Jan's father manages to convince Pepsico to divest its stock and Damon to return.

Scary Go Round — So Riley's a multiple-abductee. Of aliens, that is. She aims to prove it to Tim, but Shelly ends up being taken instead.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — So Mike was testing his roommates to see if they could stop him. It turns out that his deal with Satan was to play host to him for ten minutes. Needless to say, neither Roger nor Dave are happy about it. Dave, at least, has no intention of making any kind of deal with Satan, even if he threatens Blue. I think Dave has the right idea. Satan's threats are no more believable than his promises. Making a deal's a mistake no matter what Satan threatens or promises.

General Protection Fault — Sharon's birth mother turns out to be on the FBI's most wanted list. After some hacking, Sharon tracks her down, only to be foiled by a little deception. I'm pretty sure that's Trudy's mom, making Trudy and Sharon sisters, but I haven't gone back through the archives to make sure.

Schlock Mercenary — Pranger double-crosses Kevyn, only it turns out it's a triple-cross, and Pranger was only trying to lure Phica into a falses sense of security so he could be captured. And now everything goes crazy. What fun! If we're lucky, both Tagon and past-Kevyn will survive.

So I'm a day and a half late again. I'd make this a Monday regular, except that the Webcomic Update's one of the few things I post on the weekend, and it makes more sense to keep on the Sunday to Saturday arc, which is what most of the webcomics follow, albeit irregularly.

Sluggy Freelance — Uh oh. Pete Abrams, the artist of Sluggy Freelance, has busted his hand. This week he managed to continue producing the comic with his off-hand, but the artwork looks like it was produced by somebody's off-hand. Probably a four year old's. I'm exaggerating a little. Some parts actually don't look bad, but it's still not up to Sluggy quality. Hopefully he'll find a solution soon. On topic, we advance events by a month, and Torg and Gwynn are out to get jobs. Torg working a nine-to-five job? That's just wrong. The question thing is, why is Torg sticking around anyway? I thought he was going on a quest, probably to find either Oasis or Bun-bun.

Day by Day — Let's see, who gets the rough side of Chris's tongue this time. There's Reid, Kerry, Newsweek, Dan Rather, and Keith Olbermann. Especially Newsweek. As they printed an untrue story that resulted in deaths, I think they're getting off lightly.

Scary Go Round — The living folks aren't the only ones with new jobs. Natalie the dead French girl has gotten a job as a Grim Reaper.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Pete's not the only webcomic artist unwell. Maritza's been under the weather all week, doubtless due to her pregnancy, and she's only produced two comics, in which we see that Margaret's as self-involved as ever (hint: it's not all about you!) and Mike's acting evil.

General Protection Fault — We meet Sharon's adoptive parents, and she discovers the name of her birth mother.

Schlock Mercenary — While past-Kevyn's dealing with Pranger and a ticked off Tagon, future-Schlock has stowed away on Pranger's ship. He's already causing trouble, but I hope it's good trouble--helping Tagon and Kevyn--rather than what happened the last time he stowed away and messed up Kevyn's time travel, which was bad trouble.

All right, this is two days late. Sorry about that, but at least it isn't a week late, as I've been known to do before.

Sluggy Freelance — Riff's baby-sitting gig isn't going as planned so he calls in Torg. This may not be the best idea he ever had. They try to get her to sleep by driving her around, and manage to get arrested.

Day by Day — Up for mocking are pie-throwing liberals, Fabio, Arianna Huffington, Senator Voinovich, Gingrich's and Hillary's Healthcare plan, and President Bush's nicknaming abilities.

Scary Go Round — Tim's elected mayor. He's having trouble settling into the new job, and Shelley's having trouble finding a new job. Oh, and we see that Riley's kookier than we realized. Well, she's gotta be to live in a place like Tackleford.

College Roomies from Hell!!! — Well, the Roomies have the first meeting of "Nobody's Organization for the Eradication of Satan." I think that name's a little bit overambitious, but we finally get some quality sharing of Satan's activities and maybe a bit of insight to go along with all the inter-Roomie bickering. Unfortunately, Mike's still not planning on sharing everything with everybody, and it looks like Dave and Roger are in for a post-meeting revelation.

General Protection Fault — And they're back in the real world. Ki doesn't quite remember seeing the Gamester, but she manages to convince Nick to leave the Mutex alone for a while. It won't be easy for him to stop tinkering, but it is for the best.

Schlock Mercenary — Past-Kevyn's off to save Tagon. Unfortunately, he has to let Pranger call the shots, and that's problematic as Pranger's pretty untrusting and not properly respectful of protecting the lives of Kevyn and his friends.

Sluggy Freelance — Zoe manages to keep the cloners from finding Aylee before they clone a race of man-eating shapeshifting aliens. That's probably a good thing. Meanwhile, Torg and Gwynn are having trouble living with Min, and even Riff earns her wrath by the end. It's a good thing that Mr. Middleman's finally come up with a job for Riff to keep him out of trouble. Or maybe to get him into it.

Day by Day — Air America, Karl Rove, Bob Fertik, Ward Churchill, and baby boomers are the topics du jour, although there's some fun Sam and Zed interactions as well.

Scary Go Round — Mayor and Quorn each get a giant balloon in their likenesses, and Quorn's nearly destroys an animal sanctuary before Tim saves the day. Now, what do you think the odds are of Tim winning an election he had dropped out of?

College Roomies from Hell!!! — And we're back! What do you know? Dave has finally told Margaret about Chester. It's about time, too. She didn't take it too well, although it didn't go as bad as it could have. And now Mike's gathered all the Roomies together, probably to discuss their Satan problem, but there's still some bad blood among them.

General Protection Fault — Yay, the team beats Warmonger thanks to Sharon's newly discovered superpower. Now Nick plans to get them all home, but the Speck hitches a ride with the Gamester.

Schlock Mercenary — While past-Kevyn's planning to save Tagon, future-Kevyn intends to save the galaxy. Petey's gathered together every last military force in the galaxy, half of whom wants to destroy the other half, but they have a bigger problem--whoever's planning to destroy the whole Milky Way.