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Thanks for reading.

6/2/05

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.