UA:Comic Blog

Blog #63

Tuesday 11 September 2012

Turns out that lunches and rest breaks make for really constructive drawing time. Paonia Pawns has a full month buffer in the queue for the first time since the fall of 2010, including two upcoming bonus updates. UA:Comic is also slowly gaining a buffer.

In addition to tomorrow's regular Wednesday update, there will also be a bonus update this Saturday (15 September). Why? Well, I wanted Paonia Pawns to be able to celebrate its 8th anniversary with strip # 1700, and it was 4 strips shy based on its update schedule. Since I was getting some good drawing time in, I decided to do bonus Saturday updates (PP's original update day) in September. There are five September Saturdays this year, so I decided to give UA:Comic the extra bonus.

On top of all that, I've re-read the entire archive and I'm working on some major updates: 8 strips with typos will be corrected, 20+ new cast images will be added, and a massive update to the Chublei (encyclopedia) is already underway.

I really thought that blog posts would outnumber strips here at UA:Comic, especially given the slow update schedule. Now that I'm building a buffer, perhaps I'll be more inclided to drop more thought bombs on you.

Filed under: uac

Blog #62

Tuesday 10 July 2012

Easier, but still not easy when one has zero support and active blocking of any home-time to draw. Grr, argh.

Desite that, there are two rays of light for me. One, tomorrow's update is already in the queue. And, two, had I stuck to the one-update-a-week (like I should have), I would be six strips behind where I actually am.

Now if I can just find that elusive eighth day of the week, I might be able to catch back up.

To those of you reading this, I can only apologize. As I've mentioned in the past Paonia Pawns takes priority if my schedule is screwed. And it's been screwed a lot lately.

I do have the next couple of scripts written and an outline of the major upcoming action, so maybe I'll be able to keep the wheels form falling off (again) for a couple of months.

P.S. Personally, I hate posts like this, and I'm not trying to make excuses. I put this online and I have no real excuse for not sticking to the update schedule. But without this post, you'd have no idea what was going on. So, there you go. Sorry.

Filed under: uac

Blog #61

Tuesday 20 March 2012

Moving to Wednesday starting tomorrow. Last minute updates seem easier during the week than on weekends.

Filed under: uac

Blog #60

Friday 10 February 2012

2:35am

Bunch of small site updates. Fixed a few Copyright statements that still said 2011. Made an overdue change to the mobile version of the index page. Added Marik to random-icon list, joining T'Chorel and Nup.

Why am I doing this in the middle of the night? Acid reflux. Laying back down right now is pretty much out. And it's less than an hour before the alarm's going off to "start" my day. Writing or drawing either comic right now wouldn't work, but site updates are do-able while only half-awake.

Filed under: uac

Blog #59

Friday 10 February 2012

2:25am

OK. It's beginning to feel like I'm back on track. I'm having to use lunch hours, breaks, morning commutes on the bus, and late-night "What the hell was I trying to draw" sessions, and still no buffer to speak of, but Paonia Pawns is still updating on-time and UA is back on a once a week schedule. Small steps. But at least we're moving.

Filed under: uac

Blog #58

Wednesday 04 January 2012

UA:Comic will return with a new strip on Saturday. And the Saturday after that. And so on. I'm hoping that I won't have to fight any major battles to get this strip back to a consistant update schedule, but I'll do it if it comes to that.

Question: Why did many of the old blog posts disappear?
Answer: I probably shouldn't have re-read them. Having concluded that certain ones really sucked, I deleted them.

Filed under: uac

Blog #57

Sunday 11 September 2011

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #56

Monday 15 August 2011

Watched an episode of Warehouse 13 on the DVR tonight. (I love the DVR. I don't even have to know what day of the week it is anymore.) Best line of the night:
        The League of Evil British Writers strikes again.

Heading off to Renovation** with my brother in the morning. If you're going to be there, look for me under the badge name Mek.

Renovation - the 69th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Reno, NV this year, 17-21 August.

Filed under: life

Blog #55

Thursday 07 July 2011

I managed to get through most of the day without remembering it was 7-7. But then I had to type the date on a report I had just finished running, and it all came crashing back down on me. She's been dead for 14 years and yet certain dates still bring it all flooding back, and it feels like someone has ripped out my still-beating heart and stomped out it while simultaneously sucking all the air our of the room.

People tell me it's supposed to get easier with time. If today were an ordinary Thursday, maybe I'd even agree with them. But on certain days, like today, it hurts as deeply and as much and as intensely as the day I got the worst phone call of my life.

How do you get over something that will never be over?

Filed under: life

Blog #54

Wednesday 29 June 2011

A note about today's strip: Marik is nearly 17 and Alesan is 16 and a couple of month, however, the calendar on Teroko does not match the calendar on Earth. While Marik and Alesan are treated like minor on their world, their earth-equivilant ages (and physical/emotional maturity) is that of people in their early 20s.

Marik: 17 * 500 / 365.25 roughly equals 23 years, 3 months.

Alesan: 16.3 * 500 / 365.25 roughly equals 22 years, 4 moths.

So while their society (and they themselves) sees them as children who haven't even reached college-age yet, they do have the maturity to make the kinds of decisions that they're making.

Filed under: uac

Blog #53

Friday 17 June 2011

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #52

Friday 17 June 2011

NOTE: IF YOU'VE BEEN LIVING UNDER A ROCK AND HAVE NOT SEEN THE SERIES FINALES OF 'BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER', 'ANGEL', OR 'STARGATE UNIVERSE' BE WARNED THAT THERE ARE SPOLIERS AHEAD.

Friday's non-update on FreakAngels (combined with a tweet pointing me to Joss Whedon's top 10 writing tips) spurred a second blog idea...

ON ENDINGS...

FreakAngels is down to a mere 6 updates -- just 36 pages -- before its done. Having been a fan of Warren Ellis for quite some time, I'm sure that the ending with blow mw away (again). The 'Old Bastard' (as he calls himself) has a firm grasp on how to end a story.

This ties in to Joss Whedon's #1 tip for writing: FINISH IT! Joss has often said that unfinished stories (especially in the form of TV shows that ended with cliffhangers) is a major pet peeve of his.

Josh knows how to end a story as well. Buffy's 5th season finale could have easily been a series finally. (I've often wished that Sarah Michele Gellar had stuck to her guns and left the show at that point. While the rest of the cast continued to deliver excellent performances week in and week out for the remaining two years, SMG just phoned hers in with all the emotional depth of a comatose turtle.) And the 7th season/series finale was even more powerful (despite SMG's please-get-me-out-of-here dead-eyes performance).

Josh's ending of Angel, while some see it as a cliffhanger, achieved exactly what Josh said he set out to do in that episode: the fight against evil is never-ending, but the important thing is to keep fighting. I saw this episode again not too long ago and the ending is still one of my top all-time favorites:
        ANGEL: Personally, I want to slay the dragon. Let's get to work.
Great stuff, that.

And then there are endings that weren't supposed to be endings. Stargate Universe: Eli standing on the observation deck looking out at the FTL vortex with a Mona-Lisa-smile on his face; Destiny sails on through the FTL vortex disappearing from sight.
SERIOUSLY!?!? That's where you're going to leave us?
I understand that SyFy (What the fuck's up with that name?) and MGM made financial decisions that they needed to make in tough economic times. But still...
SERIOUSLY!?!?!

And it's the difference between satisfying endings (exemplefied by Buffy and Angel) and gut-wrenchingly unsatisfying ones (demonstrated most recently by SGU) that motivated me to have an ending in maind for Paonia Pawns before the first strip went online. I don't know all the details, but I have the broad strokes and the foreshadowing of the final crisis has been building for a while. There's still a ways to go (probably early 2013) but the ending is there and hopefully will leave my readers happy.

Two footnotes. (1) There are more stories of the PP universe beyond the end of the main story I set out to tell, but the main story is intended to stand alone as a complete work no matter which of the sequels and spin-offs I ever tell (or don't tell). (2) UA also has a definitive ending. There's a tremendously long way to go and I hope that I live long enough to get there (but at least I finally got off my ass and started telling it).

Filed under: tv

Blog #51

Friday 17 June 2011

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #50

Wednesday 25 May 2011

It seems appropriate that my 50th blog post be about the 50th strip. It's not that I have anything in particular to say about the 50th strip.

Of course the 50th strip is number 49 because I started with strip zero. Starting with zeroseemed right for a science fiction strip. And it also discouraged me from taking the milestones too seriously. (In fact, if the 50th blog and 50th strip had come into such perfect alignment, I probably wouldn't have commented on it at all. At least not to anyone besides myself.) Milestone will not effect the plot, nor the pacing thereof. They will not be commented on within the continuity of the strip. I intend to let the story unfold organically.

As an aside, I'm still upset and pissed about the abrupt cancellation of SGU and the resulting never-to-be-resolved cliffhanger. I'm seriously considering continuing the story in comic form, if only for my own satifaction. I think two more 20-episode seasons would be enough to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. Now all I need is an extra six hours in each day.

Filed under: uac

Blog #49

Friday 13 May 2011

Just watched the last-ever episode of Stargate Universe.

SON OF A FUCKING BITCH!!!!!

Filed under: tv

Blog #48

Sunday 01 May 2011

United States Navy Seals: When you care enough to send the very best.

Filed under: life

Blog #47

Sunday 01 May 2011

We got you, you son of a bitch.

Filed under: life

Blog #46

Monday 25 April 2011

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #45

Sunday 13 March 2011

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #44

Friday 28 January 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Paonia Pawns celebrates its 6-year anniversary.

Saturday 29 January 2011

The science-fantasy webcomic Paonia Pawns, written and drawn by Michael J. 'Mek' Ahlers will celebrate its 6-year anniversary this Saturday (29 January 2011). Saturday's update will be the 1,278th strip. Paonia Pawns is a long-form pixel comic (NOT sprite comic). Mek has been creating comics since the mid-1970s, though Paonia Pawns is by far the longest running of his efforts.

###

Filed under: webcomics

Blog #43

Friday 28 January 2011

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #42

Saturday 01 January 2011

Blog 42. Woo hoo! Should re-read Hitchhikers Guide to the Galazy.

Happy fucking new year!

I'm out.

Filed under: nye2010

Blog #41

Friday 31 December 2010

Quarter til 2011 here in California. Watching Dick & Ryan on the rerun. Gonna watch the ball drop again and then I'm off to bed. I'll be back for one last blog ... but not til next year.

Filed under: nye2010

Blog #40

Friday 31 December 2010

Attention Mountain Time Zone: Welcome to 2011. Happy New Year. As usual the music on Dick Clark's show kicks ass.

Filed under: nye2010

Blog #39

Friday 31 December 2010

For about 45 minutes there I wasn't sure I was gonna be up long enough to send another entry out, but some pretzel crisps and white cran/peach and I'm feeling much better.

Time to wish Central Time Zone a Happy New Year.

Filed under: nye2010

Blog #38

Friday 31 December 2010

3 more minutes for NY and Dick and Ryan. Signing off for a little bit to watch the ball drop. A million people on the ground, a billion people like me watching.

Happy New Year New York (and the rest of EAstern Time Zone).

Filed under: nye2010

Blog #37

Friday 31 December 2010

Dick sounds... well, no worse than last year. But he's been doing this for nearly my entire life.

Paonia Pawns officially at 6 week buffer. Working on UA right now.

New Kids on the Block & Backstreet Boys. They sound pretty good, actually.

17 minutes of 2010 left in NY.

Filed under: nye2010

Blog #36

Friday 31 December 2010

Just under 4 hours of 2010 left here, though it's already 2011 for most of the world. Drinking egg nog and watching Dick Clark (or his show at any rate). More later.

Filed under: nye2010

Blog #35

Thursday 30 December 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #34

Thursday 30 December 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #33

Monday 20 December 2010

Yesterday afternoon, one of the cats jumped on top of Dave's (twenty-plus year-old cockatiel) cage. I didn't see it happen, but I heard it. The unmistakable sound of a cat landing on top of the cage. Dave squaking, flapping his wings frantically. He doesn't always freak out when one of them gets up there. I'm guessing maybe he was asleep and it startled him.

I rushed downstairs. As I said, he doesn't usually freak out. He's lived with cats most of his life and he's taught them to respect him.

He was old and he had fallen off his perches more than a few times the past year or so. He must have fallen wrong. I called him. No response. I unlatched the door and reached in, hoping he would spin around and try to bite me. Nothing.

There's some tiny consolation in knowing that he didn't suffer.

I held him for a while before I prepared him for burial. He never would have tolerated that before, but it felt right.

Dave was a great bird.

Sometimes something as simple as sunlight shining into his cage and he would dance back and forth on his perch, bobbibg his head, and chirping and singing. I alsways thought he was screaming "I'm happy!"

His favorite seed mix had both red and blue seeds mixed into it. As far as I could tell, they were both actually the same seed, just with different food colorings. Dave loved the red ones, systematically picking them out, carefully shelling them and eat them. The blue ones he would pick out and throw out of the bowl, often out of the cage, and when possible, at me. I'd love to have him throw a seed at me just one more time.

A couple of seasons ago, when Evil Dick first came on the screen on Big Brother, Dave started chirpping and dancing. The entire season, during Big Brother, during Big Brother After Dark, and even during the live feeds online, if Evil Dick was onscreen, talking or not, Dave was happy and dancing. I should have called a bookie. Dave obviously knew a winner when he saw one.

A friend brought over a gun that shot suction cups and had a laser sight. The cats were thrilled. The friend pointed the gun at Dave and fliiped on the laser. Without hesitation, Dave flung himself off his perch and out of sight. Over the course of a laugh-filled hour, we concluded that Dave was actually a (semi-)retired Navy Seal. I'll miss you, you fierce little Navy Seal.

Rest in peace, Dave.

Filed under: pets

Blog #32

Sunday 19 December 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #31

Thursday 16 December 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #30

Monday 06 December 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #29

Thursday 02 December 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #28

Thursday 02 December 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #27

Friday 26 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #26

Monday 22 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #25

Friday 19 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #24

Friday 19 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #23

Thursday 18 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #22

Monday 15 November 2010

Back when I lived in Texas, my friend Cesar Stastny was in a band named "Band Schmand". (Reader of Paonia Pawns with good memories will remember that Benny listening to Band Schmand's "Black Pizza" is what tips off Jimmy that Benny had cracked the lock-out code on the Trans-Universal Positioner.)

A couple of times when I was hanging out with the band after practice, the conversation turned to band names. I wrote a few of my favorites down with the idea of using them in some future story. Only the first one below has done so so far. That piece of paper drifted from one pile to another, surviving moves from Texas to Ohio, to New York, to Virginia, back to Ohio (three different addresses), and finally to California. This past weekend, while cleaning the garage, I came across it and shoved it in my pocket.

Below is the list (and, yes, alcohol may have been a factor in some of the name's creation):

Montrose and the Aldo Romper Vixens
Dodecahumdrum
Taboo Tool
The Finito Bradley Extremes
Boogie Household
The Strikeleather Five (a quartet)
and
Smog Pump

I don't know if any of these has ever been an actual band name (in most cases they are weird enough to bet on no) and at least one of them (Taboo Tool) I'm hesitant to Google. I just enjoy the list and wanted to pass it on.

Filed under: life

Blog #21

Sunday 14 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #20

Tuesday 09 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #19

Sunday 07 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #18

Thursday 04 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #17

Monday 01 November 2010

The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!

Filed under: baseball

Blog #16

Monday 01 November 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #15

Saturday 30 October 2010

Rangers won Game 3. The way the Giants were playing, I half expected them to sweep the series. It got me thinking about World Series sweeps. THe first World Championship (which MLB sometimes treats on the same level as a World Series though the name was not yet attached to the series) was a sweep by the 1884 Providence Grays. And I know the Reds did it at least twice (the 1976 incarnation of the Big Red Machine, and the 1990 miracle over the universally favored A's).

Off to Google!

Cubs in 1907
Boston Braves in 1914
(New York) Giants in 1922 and 1954
Yankees in 1927, 1928, 1932, 1938, 1939, 1950, 1998, and 1999
Dodgers in 1963
Orioles in 1966
Reds in 1976 and 1990
Athletics in 1989
Red Sox in 2004 and 2007
and White Sox in 2005

Filed under: baseball

Blog #14

Wednesday 27 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #13

Tuesday 26 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #12

Monday 25 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #11

Saturday 23 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #10

Friday 22 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #9

Thursday 21 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #8

Wednesday 20 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #7

Tuesday 19 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #6

Tuesday 19 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #5

Friday 15 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #4

Thursday 14 October 2010

[POST DELETED]

Filed under: x

Blog #3

Tuesday 12 October 2010

As a baseball fan, the past decade and a half has been a tough one. But finally, no matter if you call it The Year of the Pitcher or The Year of the Rookie, the Steroid Era is finally over. Watching baseball became fun again, knowing that cheating (at least one particular form of it) was no longer being openly tolerated. Adding to the fun was the fact that three of my favorite teams (Reds, Twins, Rays) all had stellar years, especially in the second half of the season and won their respective Divisions. OK, it was disappointing to see the Twins and Reds both swept in the Division series, but that's baseball (and it the case of the Twins, some bad umpiring, but that's the topic for another blog). I would have liked to have seen a Giants-Reds matchup; I'm close enough to SF that I might have even been able to catch a game. The Rays could still pull it out, setting up one more battle against the (damn) Yankees. And there's always next season.

Filed under: baseball

Blog #2

Monday 11 October 2010

Today is my sister's birthday; her 43rd if I'm doing the math right. Not that this is relevant to UA:WC. She and I have spoken maybe once in the past 5 years, and even then had long since said everything to each other that needed saying.

However, as I am trying to make this blog a daily ritual, I will probably use any excuse to start any given day's entry.

Although my sister never had an impact on the stories I intend to tell in this comic, there are other who did have, often profound, effects on it. Among them are Mike Burke (my best friend for many many years), Mark Klusman (my favorite teacher in high scool, who I never actually had a class with), and Razak Dahmane (my favorite professor in college, whose classes I went out of my way to take). Each will feature in at least one entry here along the way.

Filed under: life

Blog #1

Sunday 10 October 2010

     10 October 1980: Sitting, increasingly distracted, in Algebra I (my last class of the day), I started doodling faces. One of them (a scan of which can be seen at the bottom of all of the "Extras" pages, including this one) caught my imagination and "Charlie" was born. Charlie (now T*Chorel) soon became the central figure in what I saw as a "Future History" in the vein of Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and H. Beam Piper. Disparate stories flowed together to form a cohesive universe.

     For thirty years I have (almost completely) failed to live up to the grand plans I had for Charlie and the others he crosses paths with.

     10 October 2010: The thirtieth anniversary of that first sketch (and entertaining date 10/10/10) seemed like a good time to start rectifying the situation. I've proven, to myself at least, that I can set and stick to a consistant update schedule with my other webcomic, Paonia Pawns. And so now I will finally, belatedly, embark on telling T*Chorel's story.

     Welcome to "United Allegiance: the Web Comic"

Filed under: uac