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In this case FAQ stands for frequently anticipated questions. No one
had yet asked me any of these when I first created this page (except as
noted), and now I suppose no one'll ever have to; but this seems to be the
standard set webcartoonists are asked.
What's your comic about?
When King Arthur drew the sword Excalibur from the stone, its magic proved
more powerful than even Merlin had known. It unmoored Arthur and his
contemporaries from their home time, so that sometimes they exist in their
original time, and sometimes they exist in the far future, and sometimes they
exist in our time, etc.
There's a New Reader Orientation page with about a
dozen cartoons summarizing the archive.
Why King Arthur?
Because, of the sets of characters I love best, this is the only one that
doesn't fall under someone else's copyright. So I matched it with a premise
versatile enough to simulate any of the others at will.
Why "of Time and Space"?
Being loosed in time, the characters are dropped into a variety of
storytelling genres. There are three major genre arcs for the webcomic's
projected twenty-five year run. The fairy tale arc (once called the
medieval arc, but no more; see the essay on this
page) is also called the baseline arc because it's an attempt to
retell the classic King Arthur legend - as faithfully as panel gags may be
capable of retelling a story cycle which originated in medieval romances that
sometimes contradict each other - so that deviations and similarities in
other arcs can be contrasted by a reader with only a moviegoer's knowledge of
the legend.
- In the fairy tale arc Arthur is the High King of Britain in a time
that's nominally the fifth century A.D. but is laced with anachronisms and
fantasy.
- In the space arc Arthur is the High King of all British space
during the decline of the Roman interstellar empire, and commanding officer
of the starship Excalibur which is the largest and best spaceship
remaining in British space.
- In the contemporary arc Arthur is a US high school graduate and
started business school at college in the fall, and has just come into his
late parents' inheritance (Arthur turned eighteen years old December 2006 in
these three arcs).
The major differences between these arcs at this writing:
- In the fairy tale arc, Arthur's reign has pretty much finally settled
down after several years of succession wars against his father's allies and
vassals, the Roman emperor, and the forever invading Saxons from the
Continent. Guenevere and Lancelot have begun their affair, aided by the
machinations of Lancelot's pal Sir Galehaut the Haute Prince of Serleuse and
Guenevere's pal Lady Eglante of Malehaut who were also lovers at the time.
Arthur remains fond of them both, and has implied to the lovers (who know
that Merlin's omniscience means Arthur must know of their feelings for each
other) that he will not endanger the stability of the High Kingdom by
exposing them. Lancelot was tricked into conceiving a child, Galahad, on
Elaine of Carbonek; the combination of her machinations and Guenevere's
jealousy have unhinged him, and he has embarked on what Merlin has prophesied
to be a two-year stint as a wild man in the woods. Galehaute has had to
return to his own realm, though he is heartsick at Lancleot's turn of
fortune. Arthur's nephews Gawaine, Agravaine and Gaheris are Round Table
knights despite their parents' past rebellion (which got their father King
Lot of Lothian and Orkney killed), and their mother Morgause's continuing
plots. Tristram of Lyonesse is also a Round Table knight, having been chased
out of Cornwall by his uncle Duke Mark for being a better knight; Mark's
barons have forced him to recall Tristram once but his affair with Queen
Isolde was discovered and now Tristram is facing an arranged marriage to
Iseult of Brittany. Arthur learned that the daughters of his father's enemy
Duke Gorlois of Cornwall - Morgause, Elaine and Morgan le Fey - are his
half-sisters; just after sleeping with Morgause and impregnating her
with the bastard son who shall one day, according to Merlin, destroy his
kingdom, Mordred. Morgan le Fey exposed herself as Arthur's enemy with a plot
to steal Excalibur, and is no longer among the court at Camelot; she plots
with faerie allies to become High Queen of Britain.
- In the space arc Arthur, Guenevere and Lancelot are all officers aboard
the starship Excalibur. Having served on the Excalibur
since Arthur's crowning (instead of, as in the fairy tale arc, arriving at
Camelot after the wedding) Lancelot realized he was in love with Guenevere
just before she got married; as in the fairy tale arc Guenevere came to
realization during their separation during Arthur's Roman campaign and the
affair began during Arthur's Saxon Rock campaign. Because Morgan was Merlin's
apprentice in time-traveling, she and Arthur didn't realize she was his
half-sister until she was pregnant with Mordred; Merlin quickly returned her
to her own time. All in the present but Merlin and Morgan (and Morgause in
whom Morgan confided) remain ignorant Arthur has an heir. Morgan frankly
admits to plotting to become High Queen (rather than Queen Mother), but has
yet to be caught in legal proof of treason; in this time zone she also has
faerie allies. Also among the Round Table knights on Excalibur are
Gawaine, Agravaine, Gaheris, Griflet, Eglante, and Arthur's foster sibling
Bedivere. Because of the time-travel anomaly, Mordred is old enough to be
Gawaine's squire, but no one on the Excalibur knows he's Arthur's son,
not even Merlin, or Mordred himself. Galehaute served on the Excalibur
for a time, until he made romantic overtures to Lancelot, whose admitted but
reflexive homophobia required Galehaute to leave the ship. Lancelot, in this
time zone under medication for bipolar disorder, was not driven off by the
tension when Elaine of Carbonek came aboard the Excalibur for the
christening of Lancelot's son Galahad; subsequently Arthur made Elaine
Excalibur chaplain. Merlin's future apprentice Nimue infrequently
visits him from the future time when she has inherited his time machine.
Usually she is accompanied by her husband Sir Pelleas, but once by Lancelot's
son Sir Galahad traveling incognito.
- In the contemporary arc Arthur is a US college freshman. At his
eighteenth birthday he came into his long-dead parents' controlling interest
in Excalicorp, the biggest megacorporation in the world. Merlin, Arthur's
high school art teacher and part-time boss at Merlin's comics shop, with the
parents' power of attorney had him raised in a middle-class foster family so
that as an adult he could run Excalicorp with the common touch. Arthur had
wanted to be a cartoonist (both he and Merlin draw webcomics) but now he
is majoring in business and plans to run Excalicorp. Arthur, his foster
siblings Kay and Bedivere, and Merlin lived while Arthur was in high school
in Springfield, a suburb of the Midwestern major metropolis Camelot. Arthur
met Guenevere, Lancelot and Tristram in an online role-playing game. Lancelot
is native to the east coast and Guenevere to the west, but as of January 2007
both contrived to go to school in Springfield/Camelot; Guenevere at Arthur's
high school for their last semester as seniors, Lancelot (and his cousin
Bors) as seminary students at Camelot University. Both their families are
more wealthy than Arthur's foster family, but not than Arthur now that he's
come into his inheritance. Morgan was the high school's drama teacher during
Arthur's sophomore year, but she married rich and then quit teaching to go to
Hollywood. She plays the evil psychiatrist on Eureka, shot in
Springfield from its second season; also shooting in Springfield last fall
was a new Clive Craven horror movie in which Morgan stars and in which one of
her co-stars is a European royal known in the press as "Galehaute the Hot
Prince" who has confessed designs on Lancelot to Morgan. Merlin's future
apprentice Nimue, whom he hasn't properly met in the other arcs, is here his
orphaned ward. Tristram holds a masters in piano and voice from Camelot
University, and leads a jazz trio which has signed a recording contract;
Isolde is a doctor; Mark is a captain of corporate industry. Morgause is in a
position of power at Excalicorp, probably CEO or acting CEO; she had a couple
of mysterious phone calls with Merlin before Arthur's inheritance was
revealed, and she acts as Arthur's mentor in the ways of corporate life.
Morgause introduced Gawaine to Arthur as a sixteen-year-old high school
senior - the two are now roommates at C.U., and Guenevere has a single room
in the same dorm. Also, Merlin has goaded Morgause into running his regular
tabletop roleplaying group, by trading on an undescribed rivalry between her
and his friend Pellinore (Pellinore, in the baseline arc, killed Lot in the
final battle of Lot's rebellion against Arthur's accession).
- Bedivere and Tristram are male in the baseline arc, and female in the
other two. Bedivere and Kay are an item when Bedivere is female. Tristram and
Mark's wife Isolde carry on an affair whether Tristram is male or not.
Agravaine has been seen male in the fairy tale arc and female in the space
arc. Other knights' gender will be bent across the arcs too.
- In the fairy tale/baseline arc, Morgause is Mordred's mother. In the
space arc Morgan is Mordred's mother. In the contemporary arc Mordred is not
yet conceived.
Merlin's time-travel in the space arc has shown that others besides Arthur's
contemporaries (including but not limited to Hercules, Sinbad the sailor,
Ghenghis Khan, and their respective contemporaries) can be
proportionately displaced in time by Excalibur's magic. The contemporary
arc's occasional allusions to topical persons and elements of twenty-first
century life show that the magic isn't always a catch-all. Merlin has
demonstrated a limited ability to travel between the time zones at will, but
ordinarily not even Merlin and Arthur are at all conscious that it happens.
Secondary arcs to date include but are not limited to the western arc,
the movie parody arc, the MASH arc and the superhero
arc. In the Lord of the Rings movie parody several characters were of
course physically modified according to the movies' fantasy races'
characteristics. In the Star Wars parody Guenevere and Morgan were
combined into one character for the Princess Leia role. In the MASH arc
Morgan and Nimue are male. Arcs and parodies yet to come will no doubt
contain similar character manipulation.
To aid in identification across the arcs, characters' clothing is
color-coded (except in the MASH arc where of course everyone mostly wears
fatigues). Arthur is always in yellow or in the olive-drab that's what you
get when you try to tint yellow. Guenevere's in shades of blue, Lancelot red
- thus the three primary characters of the legends wear the primary colors
from the color wheel. Secondary colors go to Merlin (orange), Morgan (green),
and Nimue (purple). Supporting characters wear variants of their closest
association's color - Gawaine in a yellow-green because he's Morgan's and
Arthur's nephew, Morgause in a dark green because she's Morgan's sister but
more Arthur's enemy than she, Agravaine in (most recently) Morgause-green
because s/he's more Arthur's enemy than Gawaine, Tristram's bandmates in pink
and red, etc. The combination Guenevere/Morgan character in the
Star Wars parody wears blue-green. (For more on the reasoning behind
the color-coding of the six leads see the newspost of this page.)
When Arthur, King of Time and Space pages are red instead of green,
that means the day's cartoon is set sometime in the future of the cartoon's
regular, current time. When Arthur, King of Time and Space pages are
blue instead of green, that means the day's cartoon is set sometime in the
past of the cartoons' regular, current time. Note that this displacement in
time hasn't anything to do with the timeshifting between story arcs. It's
relative to Arthur's time-hopping history, not absolute to time itself. There
could be a red-paged fairy tale arc cartoon that's set during the Renaissance
or a blue-paged contemporary arc cartoon that's set in 1976.
Retroactively, perhaps it's a separate arc when the characters step out of
the frames and speak out as fictional characters, the frameless arc,
but I don't track it separately in my notes. I do track separately the
filler arc, comprised of the cartoons uploaded on days when I've been
unable to draw a cartoon. Fillers are pulled from a reserve of cartoons
created expressly for the purpose (unless the reserve is emtpy). The only
format of the filler arc is that it has no format. Salutes to other webcomics were once usual.
Note this isn't a continuity strip at heart, it's gag-a-day humor. There is a
story being told here, but less as an epic than a biography, or a blog;
working less from a plot outline than from a calendar of landmark events.
Borrowing vocabulary from Stephen King, Arthur, King of Time and Space
is for the legends' breadcrumbs. If you're looking for more of the legends'
meat than this (actually, even if you aren't), I recommend the Arthurian
works listed in the influences paragraph below.
What's your update schedule?
Daily. And I haven't missed an update since I started in 2004. That's with a
day job which I haven't any intention of leaving. There are very few
webcartoonists out there who have never missed a scheduled daily update over
a comparable or longer period unless they're cartooning professionals (or
aspire to be, or did aspire to be when they started and achieved it) who must
update for their living and their career. (And that's not to mention the
webcartoonists making their living at it who miss updates.) I'm proud of this
and I don't mind who knows it. I not infrequently write that to miss an
update I'd have to be in mourning, hospitalized or dead myself.
Originally, scheduled update time was 00:01 GMT. At the beginning of 2007 I
announced in a newspost that scheduled update time would be changed to a
window 02:00-06:00 GMT till further notice, in anticipation of logistical
difficulties that didn't actually materialize. I never retracted the change
because it's less stressful this way, because midnight GMT is the dinner hour
in my timezone so I frequently updated in the 02:00-06:00 window
anyway.
Why start a webcomic?
I've been drawing a cartoon a day since 1976, with the occasional hiatus.
Putting them online beats carrying them around in a blue three-ring binder as
a method of distribution.
Who are your influences?
Peanuts, B.C., Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle
illustrations, Phil Foglio's 70s Star Trek fanzine work. Storytelling
influences include the above plus A.A. Milne, Larry Gelbart and those who
wrote M*A*S*H under his administration, Garry Trudeau; science fantasy
influences include Star Trek, Doctor Who, Star Wars, the
Oz books, the Narnia books, Joss Whedon; Arthurian influences are primarily
T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The
Mists of Avalon and sundry literary and non-fiction works edited by
Norris Lacy.
What's your experience?
I've got insignificant paid experience as a cartoonist. But I've got the
unpaid experience noted in the Why a webcomic? question. Like many
webcomics, my blue binder cartoons depicted the cartoonist and his pals
involved in conflicts ranging from everyday frustrations to dark lords with
spacefleets. Aihok and Effex, here Merlin's characters and Morgan's fairy
allies, appeared in these. In the 70s I had stories published in two or three
Star Trek fanzines; in the 80s, two or three Doctor Who
fanzines. In the 80s I wrote and performed for the Chicago science fiction
comedy troupe Moebius Theatre, sold a few cartoons at science fiction
convention art shows, appeared in the APAzine Vootie alongside such as
Reed Waller, Ken Fletcher, Larry Beck and Tim Fay, and earned an A.A. at the
American Academy of Art in Chicago. In the early 90s I self-published two
fanzines: a Star Trek: The Next Generation novella The Legacy of
Kirk, and 500 Year Diary, a book of Doctor Who crossover
cartoons. Fanfiction cartoons appear regularly in the fanzine Alexiad
edited by Hugo-nominated writer Joe Major.
In the late 90s and early 00s I wrote stories and drew cartoons on a personal
website. That material was all fanfiction, primarily of Doctor Who,
Star Trek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That is, it was all
fanfiction until I started globally replacing each proper noun in my
Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover stories and cartoons with a
proper noun from the King Arthur legend and giving the new versions the
umbrella title King Arthur in Time and Space. This material of course
was the progenitor of the present work. (The reason no one asked me FAQs
before I composed this page is because most or all the readers I had then
followed me from that website to this one, and already know all this. Many
were in the blue binder cartoons.) The diskspace quota for the fanfiction
site filled up after ten years, so now I update fanfiction cartoons at
The Hero of Three Faces.
Which of the characters is most like you?
Arthur is the innocent I hope I am. Merlin is the wise man I hope I am.
Guenevere is the free spirit I hope I am. Lancelot is the believer I hope I
am. Effex is my left brain and Aihok is my right brain.
Where do you get your ideas?
I hate that question.
How do you create a cartoon?
Once I've written the gag, I create a blank strip in MSPaint from a template
PNG file, delete default panel borders and add new ones as needed, and letter
dialog before I draw. Originally I drew with an "ultra fine point" Sharpie on
Mead Academie "Sketch Diary" paper, but shortly I switched to standard
copy/printer paper because the marker seems to bleed less. There was a period
when I drew a large percentage of the strips with a mouse in MSPaint; that
seems be a phase that comes and goes. Now I usually draw with pencil - your
standard No. 2 - because I figured out how to change my MSPaint scanning
settings so that pencil lines show up, so paper type isn't an issue. For
awhile I went back to drawing with ink when at home rather than at work
because the scanner there wasn't as good. Then I started using pencil even at
home, because the scanner is also a copier, so I'd copy the original pencils
to get something dark enough for the scanner. I remember reading when young
that Jim Berry, cartoonist of Berry's World, used to photocopy his
pencils rather than ink them and lose their spontaneity.
I scan the drawings into MSPaint (when they aren't created there) then paste
up, clean up and color the strip there. Usually there's very little clean up
because I don't pencil before I ink (when I ink) and I don't use preliminary
construction lines (I recall astounding one or two fellow Vootie
contributors with that, the one time I jammed with them in person; as well as
Fred Berger when I was his student at the American Academy of Art). A weekday
cartoon usually takes half an hour or an hour to execute. A Sunday cartoon
there's no telling, which is why they get drawn on Saturdays.
The webcomic community in general regards MSPaint with unabashed disdain, but
so far it does pretty much everything I
need done. The webcomic community also dislikes the font I use, Comic
Sans MS, but that appears to me an overreaction to its overuse in the
long-past early days of webcomics so I ignore it. Plus, when I went online in
1995 I made a conscious decision to live my online life as much as possible
through industry standard system defaults. I also handcode my websites with
the HTML I know, so that I know if something goes wrong I did it and I can
fix it. Consequently the work I do today can pretty much be done, with at
most minor inconvenience (particularly given the files I carry around with me
on a flash drive), at almost any desk in the world. (Once when I wrote
this at some online forum or other the rebuttal was attempted, "Photoshop is
pretty standard nowadays." I responded, "It didn't come on any of my
computers.")
How is the website maintained?
(Edited from a news section essay in response to a reader's questions.) I've
typed the code for every page on this site myself in the Windows text editor.
I use green backgrounds because I once read that green's the color easiest on
the eyes. I don't know PHP (I don't even know what the acronym stands for)
yet. Every day I must edit or create the pages for the archive, the new
cartoon, the previous day's cartoon and the index page, in order to update
all links properly; and if there was a news section yesterday then that must
be pasted into the news archive page.
I've always believed in easy-loading web pages (which is why I didn't
put comic strips on the web back in the dialup age as did
Scott Kurtz and
Pete Abrams and others
who are now the old men of webcomics). Even when I learn fancier code, my
look may not change much.
What music inspires Arthur, King of Time and
Space?
I'm a child of "classic rock" and movie soundtracks. That said, most of the
music that inspires me does so for associations I bring to it. I like jazz,
but the jazz I like best is reinterpretations of melodies I already know
(like Ahmad Jamal's rendition of Suicide is Painless or - my favorite
piece of recorded music of all time - Eumir Deodato's Also Sprach
Zarathustra). Stealing the Enterprise from the Search for
Spock soundtrack, and the fifteen minute version of the 70s disco suite
of Star Wars themes, mean Arthur, King of Time and Space to me
through association with material that inspired it, and because there's not a
lot of modern pop music inspired by King Arthur. There is Rick Wakeman's
album King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (Is that its
name?) of which my favorite track is Merlin because I like
instrumentals. The 1812 Overture is my theme for the battle of
Bedegraine and for the space arc version of [spoiler deleted]. There's
a folk song called (here's another title I'm probably mangling) I'll
Give You My Riley to Ride 1952 Vincent about a bad boy who leaves his
bike to his girl, which makes me think of Merlin and Nimue (that tells
you more about those characters than any cast bio ever could). Early on
Guenevere adopted Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves as her
theme song. The day the western arc debuted, Lancelot staked out the Eagles'
Desperado. This cartoon established Still
the One as Arthur's and Guenevere's song.
When I like a piece of music I'll listen to it over and over. When I started
drawing a cartoon a day in 1976, I picked out the longest single piece I had
in my collection, so that I'd have to turn the phonograph needle back least
often while drawing. In that way the alltime theme for my daily cartoons
became the Ballet for a Girl from Buchanan suite on Chicago II.
When I finally started buying CDs almost the first thing I did was rectify
the total lack up till then in my music collection of Vince Guaraldi
Peanuts music. If and when Arthur, King of Time and Space is
animated for the screen, its theme will be Greensleeves arranged for
jazz trio.
When are you going to offer swag?
I'm putting off offering merchandise - or even figuring out how to, or what
merchandise - until or unless I need supplemental funds to maintain the site,
or until enough readers ask me this question that I believe there's a
market. Make me an offer.
I hope to eventually offer print collections of the cartoons despite their
low resolution. Some browsing at Lulu.com in 2006 made me much more optimistic that this
will eventually happen. At the moment I'm thinking of best-of collections
every five years.
When are you going to offer an RSS feed?
I've looked into RSS more than once and it appears to be just beyond my level
of technical expertise. But readers and others continue to point me at
supposedly easy-to-implement tutorials and perhaps one day one'll take.
Which are your favorite webcomics?
The ones linked on the index page. Every day I save PvP for last (even
when Kurtz updates early). Boxjam's Doodle is the closest thing there
still is to Peanuts. I like seeing Ctrl-Alt-Del come up in turn
but I can't explain why.
What's in the future for Arthur, King of Time and
Space?
I intend to tell the story of King Arthur in real time in daily panel gags
over twenty-five years, less as a novel than as a journal, as if it were
Arthur drawing one of those cartoonist-and-his-pals webcomics. It's going to
get more "adult-oriented" as it goes along, I do know that, and so do you if
you know the legend. But not graphically so, as I don't need some parents'
watch organization suing me because a fourth grader found graphic cartoon
sex on my site while researching King Arthur for class. There's been some
blood and language though.
Will you draw your female characters naked for me?
Look here, and here, and here. Or
make me an offer.
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