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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

10/7/05

I've been thinking about quantity versus quality this week, sort of. Drawing one of these things every day, I notice that the quality of the art and the quality of the writing can be erratic. This one's art was held up as shoddy by one critic - and failed to get the point across to at least one reader; hence this one, to get the same point across. The sleeper ship story was too abridged of plot elements to be clear to readers who didn't know, or who didn't know the story was a parody of, the Star Trek episode Space Seed; if I ever do another parody (in other than the parody arc) I must be more careful of that.

Yet, when I wonder what can be done I don't ask myself, "Should I go to a less than daily schedule?", but, "How can the daily updates be improved?" To me the whole point of the project is the daily exposure of these characters (Okay, just this once I'll admit it: to my interpretation of these characters).

In a recent interview Randy Milholland of Something Positive observed that the best thing about drawing a webcomic is having no editor, and the worst thing is having no editor. He's not the first and he won't be the last. I've said that about webfanfiction. But that's the natural state of the medium.* I knew that going in. Very few of you won't already have known it when you came to this cartoon, and if it bugs you enough you'll stop coming, and I knew that too. As a rule, though, my daily unique visitor counts go up rather than down. And then, the other side of it is that there are some experiments that seem to have worked, too.

So I guess my conclusion is, doing this daily is working more often than it's not working, and when I've identified the bits that don't work they'll improve.

*****

I started a poll on the forum to see how familiar my readers are with the King Arthur stories and the relation between that and AKOTAS. Unfortunately you must be a registered forum user to respond.
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* Hell, it's not particularly unnatural to be unclear when you have an editor. It came out in a recent Websnark discussion of a For Better or for Worse cartoon that the final panel was unclear to more than one commenter participating.


Webcomics I read mornings: The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge,
Peanuts, General Protection Fault, Achewood, Scary Go Round,
The Adventures of Brigadier General John Stark,
Tux & Bunny, College Roommates from Hell!!!, Kevin & Kell, Real Life
Webcomics I read middays: Calvin & Hobbes, Least I Could Do, User Friendly,
Questionable Content, Starslip Crisis, Dandy and Company, Queen of Wands, Narbonic
Webcomics I read evenings: LuAnn, Count Your Sheep, Goats,
Pearls Before Swine, For Better Or For Worse, Help Desk, Schlock Mercenary, Sinfest, Irregular Comic
Webcomics I read bedtimes: B.C., Something Positive,
The Angriest Rice Cooker In The World,
Dinosaur Comics, Wapsi Square, Medium Large, Alice!, Sluggy Freelance, PvP
Webcomics I read M-W-F mornings: El Goonish Shive, Ctrl+Alt+Del, Nukees,
Todd and Penguin, Syntax Errors, Checkerboard Nightmare, Gossamer Commons
Webcomics I read M-W-F evenings: Reasoned Cognition, Two Lumps,
Theater Hopper, Tweep, Shortpacked, Girl Genius, Megatokyo
Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa mornings: Digger,
Crap I Drew On My Lunch Break, AppleGeeks, Orneryboy, Striptease, Penny Arcade
Webcomics I read Tu-Th-Sa evenings: Casey & Andy,
Extra Life, The Noob, As If!, Get Out of My Head, Order of the Stick
Webcomics I read Sundays: The Whovian Observer, Nemesis, Loserz, Journey Into History, Butternut Squash,
Dr. Devious vs Lincoln High, Goobs, Ctrl+Alt+Del, Her: Girl Vs Pig, 13 Seconds, Pibgorn, Perry Bible Fellowship, 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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