Yeah your right… it’s not finished. Thought I might as well post the rough pencil until I can get the time to finish it

The comic will be delayed for a while. Yeah I know I said I was coming back strong and was going to update regularly and all that. Well… my family has been hit with a pretty heavy lifestyle change. My son was diagnosed with TYPE I Diabetes a few days ago. He is out of the hospital and back home and doing well. me and my wife are trying our best not to freak out every time there is a change in his sugar levels… but it’s not easy.

I debated if I should mention this or not here. It is after all a very private matter for my family. What has changed my mind is that I have met other parents that are going through the same thing as us. It is very tramatic to say the least so it is great comfort to talk to other parents about this. What works, what doesn’t, how you cope, how reorganize your life, etc.

So it is with that in mind I post this here. It’s not much, but it’s here. It’s here in case another parent, or child, or even another adult that might have diabetes by chance should happen to find this page of the comic and know that they aren’t alone!

Please remember not only us but everyone else that is going through this in your prayers.

Thanks,

-Mike

Helpful links for TYPE I Diabetes…

• Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
• TYPE 1 Parents Community
• Diabetes.org

Now that is what I call a lot of word balloons! So many I almost need a disclaimer… “May make reader nauseous, DO NOT try and follow word balloons if pregnant or if you have taken cough suyrup in the last two hours!”

As you can guess here is yet another homage to a favorite film of mine, (uh… remember this huge arc is going to be peppered with these things) Walking Tall! And not the one with the Rock. The old one from the late 70’s. I always thought Bufford Pusser was pretty cool.

*EDIT - At the suggestion of some trusted and valued friends I redid the bottom of the comic after posting it. Before it looked to much like a narration panel than dialog. So I redid the bottom part where “Dead Sammy” is speaking with all word balloons. I agree that this helps it flow a lot better than before. This is yet another reason I enjoy being in a Webcomic group like Eyeskream. Getting feed back from others struggling with the same concepts and deadlines really helps.

Eyeskream’s Comic Swap IV…

Hope you guys liked last week’s art. I myself thought it is totally wicked cool! In case you couldn’t figure it out, it was written and drawn by the team of BigFish & Myxo of the webcomic “Somewhere in SF“. I will be leaving the page up another week, then after that you can see it in all it’s wickedness on the Fanatics Page with all the other fan and guest art.

You guessed it… that’s not my art displayed this week! But can you guess whose it is? That is the big question! Welcome to Eyeskream Comic Swap IV! This event will run from the 22 September to the 28. And like the previous edition, you can win a commissioned drawing by guessing who drawn who. The form and all the infos you need can be found by clicking “here“.

To help you out a bit here are the members at Eyeskream that are participating in Comic Swap!

• Cy-Boar
• Future Pig
• Little Terrors
• The Flying Ferret
• Samurai Pride
• Somewhere in SF
• Strange Fiction

The ranks they are ah’ growing! this week I wanted to introduce two more new members over at Eyeskream. (”Gamer Candy” will soon be renamed “Good in Theory”.)

These are two great webcomics more than worthy of yoru precious “Click”. But be fore warned, some artists at Eyeskream have comics that are targeting for an older more mature audience. So “click” responsibly.

What do you know? An update? Who would have thunk it!

Bet you forgot about old “Ange” huh? Couldn’t resist putting him in a Dodge Charger. They have got to be some of the coolest looking cop cars out there! A LEO buddy of mine has a midnight blue one as his personal car. Sucker is slick. Blacked out windows, hidden mini strobe lights, and a lock box in the console that houses his patrol radio and switches for the lights. Looking in the window you’d never guess it was a cop car. Even has non-government plates on it. Yeah… your right. This adds nothing to comic what so ever… but was a great excuse for me to brag about my friends car! LOL!!

The site is almost done… the comic archive has been added back all the way to where the current story arc began. So you can get picked up from there. Also the filler art has been removed so you can read straight through the archive and get caught up. Here is what has been done so far…

• About SM - Learn about the story and characters…
• Cultivation - Download banners, social networking links…
• Fanatics - View Fanart, and Reader submitted pictures..
• FAQ - Duh, answering common questions…
• Freebies - Wallpapers, Printable Christmas Ornaments…
• About Me - Uh… self serving bio of myself… (Rollovers not working though.)

You can see and read other stuff I have done and will be working on in the “Other Comic Projects” section at bottom right of the page. this is what is up for now…

• “Filler Art Page” - All filler art now kept here… (Not really liking th gallery system I’m using.)
• “Tripping in Elgin” - A comic about me on a business trip to Elgin IL.
• “2008 Hour Comic Day” - Follow me through an average day for 24 hours.
• “Inside Eyeskream” - The two page (long pages BTW) comic I did for an Eyeskream Contest before I became a member.

And speaking of Eyeskream… we have New members!!! But for now let’s just talk about one of them… Jon Scrivens and his webcomic “Little Terrors!” I have been hoping he would make in for a while now. To be honest, I am surprised he hadn’t made it in sooner! I’ve always liked the his style and it has been fun to watch him and “Little Terrors” progress. I can honestly say the guy is turning out some of his best stuff right now. So what a better time to start reading it!

About “Little Terrors“…

Fitsworth, England. A small commuter town just outside London, not exactly the first place you think of when you hear of epic battles again hordes of undead corpses, Trolls, zombie bears and evil monks.

As unlikely as the setting is our hero, Jonas Milton was a school boy in Fitsworth until we was tragically knocked down walking to school. Cut forward a few weeks and the town is in chaos, colleagues and family members thought dead rise from the grave only to rip their loved ones apart in a lustful hunger. Jonas wakes also but seems to not suffer the hunger or such decay others bodies have suffered. He travels the town trying to figure out what is the cause to all this madness…

I guess this is one way to come back from a long absence huh? Thought I should tie this in with some of the past filler art I have done lately

Back on track… I recently had some matters that required my full attention. So the comic had to go on a little hiatus. Things should be getting back on track now… then I screwed up a config file trying to tweak something on the site and… well… uh… Welcome to the new updated site! I’ll be slowly adding the older comics back and bringing the other stuff back online soon. Some things that have changed…

• SM Forum is gone, using my Section on the Eyeskream Forum now.
• You’ll be able to “tag” comics and pick back up where you left off.
• RSS system should work now… I stress “should work”.
• All filler art will be moved to a seperate page and kept together. (Filler art will only stay up until the real SM comic art is in place then it will be moved.)
• Bizzaro Comics will be collected and moved to a seperate section. Bizzaro comics will appear on the site only for the week of Bizzaro Week… then… you guessed it moved.
• Other projects will have there own sections as well. (Like “tripp’n in Elgin”, “Hour Comic Day”, etc.)
• My blog site will be updated later to match the Suspicious Minds Site better. Not that anyone cares.
• Links will soon be added for certain social networking sites.
• Typos will continue in comic blog posts and sometimes in the comics.

Thanks for hanging in there guys. Oh yeah… big thanks to Tyler Martin the creator of ComicPress. A theme for wordpress that allows creators an easy way to display and manage their comics. I’ve used it since about 2006, and it keeps getting better. But this isn’t about that… it’s about Tyler Martin (Whom I do NOT know personally.) This guy deserves a BIG digital round of applause of all of his hard work on ComicPress and the collective he is in/started… LunchBox Funnies. He has a great reputation digitally for being a nice guy, and while I have only passed a handfull of emails back and forth with him and on message boards in the last three years… I have to say that I have found that his reputation is well earned.

So to Mr. Martin… thank you for ComicPress, for Wally & Osborne (Which my boys LOVE!), for LunchBox Funnies… and most importantly for being a swell guy on the web. The web and webcomic world needs more “good” guys like you! Best to you and your family.

Now… let’s start back making some comics.

-Mike

Early in the comic Ben gave Dead Sammy a bit of a hard way to go. Plus I thought this would be a nice way work in a little comment from me for MLK day. Pity I ddin’t get it posted in time.

Old Dead Sammy has some huh? Little tidbit… Sammy Davis Jr. converted to Judism. So I looked up info on “Krav Maga”. It was developed in Israel and is used by their IDF forces. It’s pretty interesting in that it is truly a real world self defense system. A lot of “punch to the throat”, “break joints”, etc. Not stuff you’ll see in matches or sporting events. Also they incorporate firearms in the training as well. Not just to defend against, but also who to use them while defending yourself. Cool huh?

You can find schools that teach this stuff all over the world. Some countries a little harder to find than others. Also it is a little pricey. But heck… look what your learning!

Oh now he gone and done it! Oh how he has gone and done it!!

Only had time to do a strip this week but I think it worked out okay. Also I have to admit… when I thought of the term “Saltine Psycho” I couldn’t help but laugh. I crack myself up!

Think about it? Have you?

Pretty happy with the first panel. After looking at it again though I think I should have added speed lines.