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Arthur, King of Time and Space Arthur, King of Time and Space

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Arthur, King of Time and Space

6/2/05

Remember the other day when I said that day's cartoon will be the final one in the AKOTAS year one print collection when/if that ever happens? When I wrote that I realized, if there was a year two collection, then the week's cartoons since could one day possibly become the introduction to AKOTAS of someone who for whatever reason picked up the second book first. So I've been trying to couch the gags in dialog that'd be good orientation for a new reader. Have you noticed? Is it too heavy-handed? If not, is it getting the job done? Or am I just always that expositional so you couldn't tell the difference? I also plan that I'd reprint the very first gag on the back of every year's collection...

In general the attempt at introductory material has served to lend to the opening of AKOTAS's second year a sense of occasion to me that I don't recall experiencing with any other instance of anniversary during my long history of drawing cartoons daily. For example, I feel very conscious that yesterday's gag was more wacky and slapstick than AKOTAS usually produces; and I noticed because I've been reflecting that I did draw wackier, more slapstick gags in the 70s and 80s, so I wonder whether the present-day lack of wackiness is a symptom of mature sophistication, or of creative stagnation, or both; and I wonder whether I ought to make year two The Wacky Year just for the creative exercise. I wonder whether I'm going through midlife crisis, and whether contemporary Merlin ought to buy a compensatory sportscar (compensating for my own disinterest in sportscars). And since midlife crises are all about the mortality, I wonder whether I'm going to live till 2029 as I committed to doing when I started AKOTAS - even though I'll only be sixty-nine then, and both my parents are older than that and going strong, and both my grandparents who died of natural causes lived to nice margins older than that.

I bet other webcartoonists, generally being half my age, don't go through this at their first anniversary. Maybe I'll ask one the next time I catch them cutting across my lawn.


Webcomics I read mornings: The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge,
Peanuts, General Protection Fault, Todd and Penguin, College Roommates from Hell!!!, Kevin & Kell, Real Life
Webcomics I read middays: Calvin & Hobbes, Least I Could Do, User Friendly,
Questionable Content, Daily Dinosaur Comics, Dandy and Company, Queen of Wands, Narbonic
Webcomics I read evenings: B.C., Pearls Before Swine, Count Your Sheep, Loserz, Schlock Mercenary, Sinfest, Irregular Comic, Little Dee
Webcomics I read bedtimes: Something Positive, Midnight Macabre, Bruno,
Rolling With the Punches, Wapsi Square, Medium Large, Alice!, Sluggy Freelance, PvP
Webcomics I read M-W-F mornings: El Goonish Shive, Checkerboard Nightmare, Gossamer Commons
Webcomics I read M-W-F evenings: Reasoned Cognition, Theater Hopper, Girl Genius, Megatokyo
Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa mornings: Digger, AppleGeeks, Skirting Danger, Striptease, Penny Arcade
Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa evenings: Her: Girl vs Pig, Get Out of My Head, Order of the Stick
Webcomics I read Mondays: The Whovian Observer, Butternut Squash, Stuff Sucks, Pibgorn, Fish Institution, Boxjam's Doodle
See also Talk About Comics, The Belfry Comics Index, The Webcomic List,
Nth Degree, 100% Originality Theatre, Comixpedia, The Living Comic and Websnark.

Arthuriana sources I use or recommend:
Arthurian Legend
Arthuriana - the Journal of Arthurian Studies; the website of the quarterly journal of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society.
The Camelot Project at the University of Rochester.
Camelot In Four Colors: A Survey of the Arthurian Legend in Comics
Mystical-WWW - The Arthurian A2Z knowledge Bank which has encyclopedically-arranged entries on the characters of the Arthurian legends.
Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table, Volume 1 and Volume 2.

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