End of the Year Report

Hey guys. For another year, you've helped me cover my bills and utilities and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. I know I don't update very often here, but before we get into that, I need to inform any of you wondering where the comic is if you've kept up with me over at reddit.

I strongly disagree with how the Azur Lane subreddit is being ran. One of the things i learned a long time ago during the Something Awful Forum's nascent years is that those who can produce entertaining, fun, amusing content will do so. Those who are not willing to put the work into any such skills but still want adoration and respect, well, invariably they worm their way into an authoritative mod/admin position. And also invariable is their unfitness for such a position.

The moderators at the AL subreddit have a very capricious approach to what they consider "low effort" posts. When I asked them about what qualifies as "low-effort" -- their "standard" when it comes to what posts they'll prune or retain -- instead of giving me any tangible answer, they simply accused me of stirring up drama along with more insulting responses. They even gave me the John Morris routine about how they have "real jobs" (I seriously doubt this) as if I'm supposed to be grateful for their highly arbitrary approach to moderation. They even called their response to me "customer service".

I'm not kidding. They actually said this.

For those of you who don't know, reddit is social media. And when access to social media is free, the platform isn't the product.

You are. Along with all your data and everything you post.

Needless to say, I've left reddit. I will no longer post Akagi² there. Henceforth, I will start posting each following comic here, along with my regular posting at X/Twitter.

Speaking of X, I've posted the entire exchange between me and the AL subreddit tinpots there for your reading pleasure. I was very polite during the entire exchange while they acted like, well, reddit mods. You should find it relatively quickly in my media tab.

Moving on.

For those of you uploading my comics to Danbooru and Mangadex, I appreciate it. Did you know that Akagi² the #20 top rated 4-koma at Mangadex, only a few spots below Azumanga Daioh? Crazy.

Carrier Con. For the past two years I've tried to secure a table at that venue to sell hardcopies of Akagi². And the past two years they have simply ignored me until it was far too late for me to actually plan a trip and have said comic printed up. The first big problem is that their Artist Alley registration is incumbent upon filling out tax forms and the like because this is California we're talking about. Their registration and tax forms they require are limited to California residents only. I'm not a California resident. I've asked them about this several times over the preceding years and have received no response.

I have no idea why this is the case, but I will no longer be pursuing any such venture at Carrier Con. It would have been a lot of fun to hang out on a historical carrier with you guys, but so it goes.

That's not to say there won't be hardcopies of Akagi² available, because there will be. Here's the WIP of the cover.

There's also going to be some temporary shifts in the style of narrative of Akagi². It's going to remain the 4-koma you know and love but some parts of the narrative are going to require a bit of a more serious approach that a 4-panel setup doesn't handle as well. Don't worry, Akagi² isn't going to stop being 4-koma and turn into something else (like Funky Winkerbean turning from a funny comic into a suicidal mess in the mid-90s. IYKYK.)
It's pretty common knowledge that I'm a huge fan of Bloom County and Akagi² is largely based on the cadence and style of Breathed's Pulitzer-prize winning comic. But I'm also a huge fan of EC Comics, too. You know, Tales From The Crypt, Two-Fisted Tales and the like. EC Comics were and still are the finest comic books ever produced. Ever. You're seen this approach being applied here. Trust me, you'll love it.

You might be wondering why my output isn't as fast as it should be, though. Surely it shouldn't take me a few weeks to put out each page of Akagi². Well, for those of you who don't know, I'm also a software engineer. And I've had to fall away from that career due to a skin cancer diagnosis that sidetracked me for the past few years. I currently live next door to the finest VA hospital in America, but it's also not the best place for a software engineer to find work. So, to keep my skills up, I've taken it upon myself to start producing games.

Here's an example digitally hand-painted asset for one such project that will likely end up on the PC. For those of you who follow me on X, you'll notice that I have a sick fetish for Showa-era Japan and its more obscure (and abandoned!) venues.

That little box of detergent underneath the sink in that kitchen area? Authentic.

But that's neither here nor now. Right now my big project is porting Pac-Man to the PC-Engine/Turbografx-16. And you know what?

IT'S ALMOST DONE.

Woohoo here it is running on an actual Turbografx!

Let me tell you, nothing will clean the cobwebs from being a lapsed programmer mindset quite like trying to get ANYTHING to run on a platform with a 7.16MHz 8-bit CPU and only 8 kilobytes of RAM. What's more, my port of Pac-Man is already more complete than every official home port produced during the 1980s. For instance, in the arcade original of Pac-Man, the ghosts will "look ahead", meaning, when they come up to an intersection, they will telegraph their intended direction before making the turn. Not even Namco's in-house NES port of Pac-Man managed to include this.

Did I mention it runs at 60fps, too? Cuz it does.

I'd like to get a Hu-Card published of this port eventually. If any of you happen to be PC-Engine/Turbografx-16 owners with a Turbo Everdrive and want to beta test this port when it comes available, please notify me.

Or if any of you want to hire a crusty old C/C# grognard, same.

What's after Pac-Man? I dunno. Will I stick with the PC-Engine platform or start developing for Windows? Maybe I can do both. We'll see.

Again, thanks for your patronage. It's been an awful year for everyone and that you'd fund my work in this difficult economy means everything to me.

Have a Merry Christmas and a great New Year.