Recently, there were comments at the Pibgorn GoComics page about using affiliate links to shop at Amazon.com rather than using their front door in order to share a little of what we’re going to spend anyway with Pib supporters.
Howard Tayler, who draws Schlock Mercenary has posted the same "shop Amazon locally" sentiment on his blog and has invited his fans to post 'worthy' affiliate links.
On behalf of fellow 9CwL/Pib aficionado Fairportfan at http://electronictiger.net/ and myself, thank you for your patronage!
Welcome The Stone Coin. Today's panel is a prologue to the story, which begins in earnest, tomorrow.
In a mid-October email to Joe Minotaur, Brooke described the new arc:
I am also working on the next story for the Pibgorn site. I put it that way because I’m planning to present something consistently fairy-like, but in fact not involving any of the regular Pibgorn personnel. I have a need to let them holiday a bit and stretch out in the tangle of my mind.
The story’s title is "The Stone Coin." It will probably be presented under the heading "From The Otherworld of Pibgorn." Or something like that.
If you wish to discuss this among the OTC, feel free. I haven’t announced it, but it isn’t what I’d call a deep secret.
Brooke
The new Pibgorn books are ready for release on November 15th. Volume 2, "Pibgorn and The Poltergeist in The Piano," and Volume 3, "Pibgorn and The Borgia Cantus," can now be pre-ordered. For full details and instructions, log on to http://pibpress.blogspot.com.
Style revision for the site... sketches are now embedded, flicker-style, under the primary artwork. Just mouseover the main image (wait while the page downloads the sketch) to see the sketch and more importantly, easily compare changes between the sketch and the final artwork.
Cover artwork for Pib Press' upcoming releases, "Volume 2: Pibgorn And The Poltergeist In The Piano" and "Volume 3: Pibgorn And The Borgia Cantus" have been published at Pib Press.
"Poltergeist" is slated to be 96 pages with a retail price of $19.99, while "Borgia", at 72 pages, will sell for $17.99.
Just for OTC members, The Internal Fairy Photosharing Service.
KalahariNight said, "All right, my dears, let the games begin - it's time to start the Pib Cookbook v.2! There's no set schedule for it, but we’ve got nearly 50 recipes already (v.1 contained almost 150) so it’s a decent start...
"For the new OTC members, some months ago I assembled all the lovely recipes that people had either posted or emailed to me into The Pib Cookbook. ~~~ [Ed. note: Not only is this a good cookbook, it's also a good read. Jim]
"There are two ways to get a recipe into volume 2: post it as a comment on the Pibgorn GoComics page, or email me a text file. [Kal humbly admits that she loves the text files, because the formatting doesn't get as befuddled as it does when I copy-n-paste from GoComics, so it's less work to format - but either way will work.]
I've been collecting the recipes that I've seen posted on the GoComics site, but I know I've missed some on days that RL prevented me from reading comments (my apologies, in advance)."
On Friday, 09/11/09, the Honourable Master posted an item about Iana Salenko, first solo dancer of the Staatsballett Berlin at his Chickweed Café blog. Discussion from the OTC brought up a 2004 online interview in which Mr. McEldowney voiced his thoughts on who should voice Pib & Dru's roles. After you check his comments, please join the Casting discussions at the Image 66 Forum.
The menu pane is much less daunting, thanks to a JavaScript-driven accordion menu. (And we know how powerful an accordion can be!) Also added: a date input box to allow quick jumps to a specific date.
In response to requests from OTC contributors, I've just added the same direct-linking function to this archive that I added to the 9CWL site last week. If you know the day of the strip you need, just type ?= and the date as m-d-yy after the URL. For example: KalahariNight said yesterday, "And if T-squared is counting on Dru’s mojo being drained and staying that way, then "inviting" Oognat was a tactical error of highest degree. [Amrilo Jim’s archive: Mozart arc, Week 22: 10/17/05]"
To see the full week in which that was published, come to this site and tack ?=10-17-05 onto the end of the archive's URL (i.e.: http://image66amarillo.com/pib/?=10-17-05) and hit enter.
While complimenting the addition of "Landmarks" to the 9CWL site, BikeNBoatN suggested adding the same to this site. That project has begun, but rather than landmarks, I believe chapters are more apropos to graphic novels, and with that comment, please note the addition of chapters to "A Pibsummer's Night Dream" (seeing as how those chapter designations already exist).
Observation: In making chapters for this arc, I moved some Friday panels to the following week's page, and some Monday panels to the previous week. If you try accessing those with the day-specific shortcut listed above, you may have to hit [Previous Week] or [Next Week] to find that particular panel.
The OTC came up with a new challenge... a similar site for 9 Chickweed Lane. This one's gonna take a lot longer, because comics.com uses a non-linear file system and the chron.com filenames have a random component. I just finished the tough part: writing the JavaScript to generate each weekday page with the least possible work. Using that as a template, all I need to do is change seven variables and save the page with a dated filename to harvest the images.
I had originally suggested to separate the Mon-Sat story arcs from the Sunday "one-gag" panels, but the Couchies weighed in and persuaded me to continue the week-at-a-time format. Thanks for the input!
So, I'm in the process of working backwards to research the non-linear 9CWL filenames... I've made it to 01/05/09. Site is up, with the logical URL... http://image66amarillo.com/9cwl/.
finis! All nine arcs and the two feature arcs have been coded! The JS made the coding on the last four arcs much, much simpler!
Got a thank you note, accompanied by a request for nav links at the bottom of the pages. Thankfully, I enjoy a challenge... so I wrote a JavaScript to replace the manual links on all 308 pages written to date with dynamic links. After installing the JS with a global replace utility, I still had to manually edit each page, but that was only to set a variable on each page and clean up the older variables that the global replace couldn't find.
Posted "Lena" and "Volcano" after discovering that the formulaic URLs do indeed continue for the GoComics content. (Thanks to fatuncle and coBass for the help!) "Lena" ran Mon/Wed/Fri and on 01/05/08, Brooke started publishing his sketches as Tue/Thu/Sat add-ons. I figured the best way to present the sketches would be run them half-scale next to the published artwork, with links to pull up the full-size sketches with half-scale artwork. That way readers can see both side-by-side and toggle the pages for a better look.
Three arcs posted, six to go! Had to make sure "Coffee Cup" and "Borgia" were available because of the current tie-ins. (Tom T. makes his debut by asking Dru for some "quality time" as the Saturday cliffhanger in week 23 of "Cup".)
I decided to make an archive that wasn't quite as labor-intensive. The artwork published by comics.com have formulaic URLs and I felt grouping one week's content per page a logical presentation. In the process, I stumbled upon what I've dubbed "The Annotated Pib," which allowed me to recontruct "A Fairy Merry Christmas" as it was originally presented in 2001. ("Christmas" is just the original 20 strips... "Annotated" features those 20 frames along with 20 more early strips and sketches, all tagged with Brooke's comments.)
"Pibgorn And The Volcano On 77th Street And Park Avenue" continued to unfold and OTC contributors had been explaining how this arc was paralleling "The Borgia Cantus." fearciuil compiled the Borgia artwork links on her LiveJournal blog. While this was a marvelous aid in understanding the backstory, I knew there was an easier way than pulling up the past. one. frame. at. a. time.
As I pulled up my daily online crossword, I noticed an ad for Uclick's GoComics pages. Having a bit of time to kill, I clicked. One of the icons intrigued me... and I discovered a green fairy with reddish-yellow hair following a trail of bubbles to the base of a skyscraper. I used the back buttons to backtrack the story as far as I could. (Uclick has since slashed the non-subscriber's access to previously published content from four weeks to one.) That, along with the pithy, droll and frequently pun-laden comments emanating from the Couch, got me hooked.
AmriloJim - Jim in Amarillo