Yeah, I know, I said check back in mid-November. I got waylaid by FFXII.

There is an update coming before that holiday with the tree. It's the final RP strip, and it's actually already finished. I'm just finishing up a couple other things to go with it.

See you soon.

So for all intents and purposes this is the end of Radioactive Panda.

There will be at least one more strip transitioning into the new project sometime in the spring, but this storyline and regular updates in general are over.

I'ts funny. I've spent the past year on this storyline, and I feel now like I probably should have just done the whole thing in one strip. Don't get me wrong, I loved doing all the different webcomic cameos, even when no one figured them out. But a year can change a lot of things. A year ago I was pissed at Scott Kurtz and Kristofer Straub for picking on Tim Buckley. I was ticked because they shot down the idea of Buckley doing animation without seeing more than the test footage, which while rough still looked promising by any measure. For a webcomic artist to put a foot into animation in the way Buckley was talking was a big thing. Webcomics were built on innovation, and succeed or fail the attempt should be applauded. I set out to show Kurtz as the incendiary personality he'd been for the past year or so before this started. To explore how his constant mouthing-off had affected the relationships between him and other artists, and more importantly, his fans and the community in general. I wanted to point out all the little things he did that pissed me off. To prod at his use of templates when drawing his characters, self admitted tracing really. To lampoon the softening of his character designs, the panda in particular always bothered me. The often irregular pacing brought on by a daily schedule. And the near total lack of backgrounds in his strips. All of which were related to his apparent drive to achieve a newspaper audience.

But a year can change a lot of things.

After the incident which started all this, Kurtz began to soften. There were no giant flame wars this year, at least none that I saw him at the center of. His character designs changed again, this time for the better. He began to visibly shake up the way he wrote and drew the strip, with changes in both in character positions and in backgrounds. The writing took some big risks, with big payoffs. And most surprising of all, he came out and admitted the absurdity of the panda's decline, changing it back to something a bit more appropriate to the character. In short, he impressed the hell out of me when I least expected it. I still think he could benefit from taking weekends off, but it's no longer something critical.

On the other side of the situation, Ctrl+Alt+Del is about to release it's ninth animated episode. And in another far cry from last year, I cringe at the thought of watching it. Virtually anyone who's seen the first eight episodes knows why. They're terrible. And the budget is no excuse. The backgrounds are often cheap looking, but the bulk of the problems stem from a near total lack of comedic timing. Some episodes are actually watchable, if not really re-watchable, but most are jaw-droppingly bad. The first part of their "blackout" dual-parter gave me hope for a little while, but the second half took that away. And episode 8 should NOT have seen the light of day. And this is coming from someone who actually "likes" Tim's strip.

I find it really ironic that in the end, my opinions on the creative merits of these two have done a near total reversal. Kurtz has improved both artistically and socially. Buckley's strip is still pretty much exactly what it was a year ago, and that's fine, but I find myself looking at it with a greater deal of scrutiny than I'd given it a year ago. I always knew he tended to reuse panels, and redraw as little as possible, but it didn't bother me as much before. I know the man can draw, he keeps a sketch blog which regularly shows him capable of better work. Frankly the cut and paste nature of his strip would be a little easier to swallow if his strip was at least Monday through Friday. But 3 strips a week, with an "average" of 2 panels worth of actual art stretched into 4, using largely pre-drawn or blurred photo backgrounds. Comes to what? 6-7 panels a week, with minimal background effort? My strip may be total crap, and I may not be able to hold to a schedule for shit, but when I do sit down and produce I spit out more than that in a week. I work a full time job and draw comics on the side. Tim does this full time, he can and should be producing better work. Now I know I'm gonna hear about this from his fans, how I'm knocking his art and saying I 'm a better artist than he is. I'm not a better artist than him, but I am knocking his art. In the same way, and for the same reasons I was knocking Kurtz's last year. I like CAD, I read and enjoy it regularly. It is not my hope that Tim stops doing his strip, it's my hope that he takes a good long look at it, and does what he can to improve it. I've always felt growth to be the duty of any artist. And it's not a duty to an audience, but to the artist themselves. He's young and talented. Given time, I think Tim's gonna do just fine. The CAD animation on the other hand, I think is sadly DOA.

As for me, I'm done doing strips commenting on webcomic society. My next project does not leave things open to do so. And frankly, I think I've said my peace as best I can.

I need to disappear for a while and take care of some personal business. I've got a lot of things I need to do outside of comics, and it's high time I did them. You can expect to see an update here sometime in November which should be fairly substantial. The site for my next project, Stone Clouds, may be up by then. No promises just yet. But progress updates will resume before the holidays, and you can expect to see a good chunk of art flowing around that time.

Till then, thanks for reading.

I'll see you again soon.

Eric J.