Howdy all!
Just wanted to let you guys know that I’m doing a few guest strips for my buddy, Chris Hallbeck. Chris has three, count ’em, three webcomics that he does:
My guest strip for The Book of Biff will go live today, the others will show up later in the week. Click on the links above to check them out, and definitely check out the archives of all three. Chris has that wonderful, messed-up sense of humor that I absolutely love!
Do you guys know I do a podcast?
Every week I sit down with my buddy, Matt, and we chat about all sorts of geeky things. This week we talk about the Playstation 4 and give our review of the Man of Steel. Click here to check it out.
Starting next week I’ll be changing the title of my comic from “Bug” to Bug Martini.” The website’s url (bugcomic.com) will redirect to bugmartini.com by next week as well.
Okay, why am I doing this?
As cute and succinct as “Bug” is, it’s just not a great title; it’s not very unique, a lot of people called my comic “Bugcomic,” you can’t Google “Bug” and easily find my comic, and (most importantly) it isn’t very safe trademark-wise.
Believe it or not, this is a change that I’ve been working on since 2010 – I’m nothing if not indecisive. I’ve been racking my brains, trying to think of a title that still incorporated the word “bug” that sounded good, but wasn’t already being used – easier said than done. But eventually I came up with “Bug Martini” and immediately felt something click. I dunno, it just sounded right.
Now, if you like my comic (and I don’t know why you’re here if you don’t) this name change is a good thing. If I was going to quit comic in the next few years, I wouldn’t concern myself with changing the title. This change shows that I’m in it for the long haul. I plan to draw this comic right up until I croak. And even then, they might have to temporarily resurrect my corpse and make me fix a few last typos before I enter the ever-after.
This is also good news if you’ve been waiting for me to release book collections because this was the main roadblock. I couldn’t make a book if I wasn’t sure what the hell I was gonna call my comic.
So, now that this whole name change is outta the way, I’m finally ready to get to work!
[Edit] – Some of you have asked about the RSS feed. I asked the guy who’s handling the url change and he said:
@schuyler_s on Twitter asked if I could do another theme week. Since I’ve already started the week with a pants strip I figured I’d just keep it goin’.
Hello All,
Thought I’d give you guys a quick update on Bug merchandise:
T-shirts – My initial plan was to find a local shirt-making company, make a few designs, do a pre-order and make / distribute the shirts myself. But, after talking to other webcartoonists, I was advised that I wouldn’t sell that many shirts with my little bugs on them – not enough to justify the time and money anyway.
Disheartened, but not ready to give up, I looked into print-on-demand services. It sounded pretty good: I could offer tons of designs and it wouldn’t be so time-consuming. I showed other webcartoonists this new plan and they said the shirts were overpriced (and this is after I lowered my royalty). There’s no point in selling you expensive shirts that I make no money on.
Further disheartened, I’m going back to my original idea of making and selling the shirts myself. Now my plan is to come up with one design that I think would have the broadest appeal. I may come up with a few contenders and allow you guys to vote on them.
Book one – This is a little trickier.
I’ve never made a book before and there’s a whole lot to learn. Thankfully, I know a lot of great guys and gals who’ve done this before and have offered to help. But it’s still going to take me time to lay it all out. Plus, I want all future books to follow the same blueprint so they all match when they’re on your bookshelf. This has produced a lot of pressure on me to get this right the first time. That and my desire for perfection has made this whole process slow to a crawl as I measure once, measure twice, grab the scissors, get ready to cut, put the scissors down and measure a third time, go to bed, wonder if I should change the dimensions and re-measure. Stuff like that.
Plus, there’s one part of my webcomic I need to change before any books get published. It’s nothing too drastic, but it involves me and my trademark lawyer and I’ll leave it at that.
Thanks for being patient as I figure this stuff out.