I’ve always thought there was something vaguely sinister about birds. I’m pretty sure this is what it is.

First comic back since the site’s sort-of-accidental hiatus! For the time being, comics will have to be hand-drawn and not coloured I’m afraid, because I just don’t have time to do full-colour ones all the time. That’s kind of what caused the hiatus in the first place. I’ll try to do as many colour ones as I can though!

Anyway, my point is that I have received about 120 comments in the last 24 hours, all of them complete bullshit. BUT, the spammers have also taken to copy-pasting comments that are already on the site and hiding spam links in them hoping I can’t always tell what’s legit and what isn’t. I think so far I have it all sorted, but if your comment doesn’t show up, or you find a repeated one somewhere that is spam, please let me know and I’ll take care of it.

Also doing a whole buttload of cartoons today and tomorrow, regular updates will resume Monday! For real this time. I’ve had a hard time keeping all my plates spinning lately because I’m switching jobs/working 6 days a week full-time. But that’s starting to ease off now, just in time for the season when no-one looks at comics.

I have had dealings with two computery-type companies lately. Firstly, Toon Boom, who make a program rather abstractly named Toon Boom. It’s the animation software that all the Expired Copyright Theatre animations were made with. I just upgraded to Animate, which is the pro software that RANT DOG is made with. Anyway, I bought version 1, and as these things are wont to do, version 2 was announced almost immediately. I just chalked it up to “Stuff happens”, but then I got a very nice email from them saying that because it had been less than 30 days since I bought version 1, they would send me version 2 for free! As in, a $600 piece of animation software. For free. So unless the follow-up email asks for me to send a money order to Nigeria, Toon Boom is very awesome people.

I also bought an EA game from Steam (Red Alert 3, shut up it’s fun) which refused to play online. I Googled it and it seems the common opinion is that EA sent out a bunch of serial codes that don’t work, and refuse to admit it. Some people have managed to get it fixed via tech support, others appear to be boned. So I wrote to tech support, who said they would get back to me in 24 hours, a week ago. I think I am in the boned category.

Oh well. Now I don’t feel so bad about playing Spore all the way through on someone else’s computer and never buying it. Ba-zing.

I have finally returned after a protracted, job-switching absence. This comic is probably such a non-sequitur that it will alienate everybody except me. Enjoy!

P.S. At least it’s not a Ghost Crab comic. You guys seem to really not like Ghost Crab.

SO, yes. Take a look at the RANT DOG shorts, they are pretty awesome. Up to now they have all been sort of unrelated, but this years are all part of one continuous narrative, whereby zombies emerge from the Alberta Tar Sands and all manner of hijinks ensue. Due to the nature of animation (ie it takes FRIGGING FOREVER) none of the work I have actually done has appeared yet. I think my stuff should start to appear in episodes 3-4, but I’m not sure. When you see a zombie stripper dancing, that was (partly) me.

Oh yes, and normal Deed The Inky service will resume Monday. Sorry again.

Also a second recommendation to DickensURL, which does the same thing but gives you a URL which is a line from Charles Dickens. Ours is http://dickensurl.com/4303/Old_Marley_was_as_dead_as_a_doornail.

So February 1st is Hourly Comics Day, which is more or less what you would expect – if you are inclined to draw comics, February 1st is a day to draw one comic per hour for every hour you are awake. I vowed to do it this year, forgot, and then did it anyway several days later. It did not go particularly well but here are the results anyway. I am very sorry.

Just to clear up any confusion with this comic, Halliburton really is totally all about rape. Actually, so are about 30 Republican Senators, including John McCain. Stay classy, everyone.

Oh yeah, and AT&T networks can’t handle the iPhone. So their solution is to tell people to not use their iPhones so much.