The Adventures of Dr. McNews

Hey, did you know I was in Overcompensating like... a month ago? WHOOPS.

Just as Jeffrey has said, you can do your own karaoke mashups of Together Forever and Never Gonna Give You Up, easy peasy. Try it next time! Just go with the rhythm.

Also, I liked Rick Astley after it was originally cool, and before it was cool again. Just FYI.

I did an interview with Wired, ya'all! They're running a series of profiles on ROFLCon attendees, and ole Crazy Chris the Nightmare Man is interview number one.

After living in the same dormitory for four years, and the same apartment for three, Kent and I are moving to separate residences in different states by the end of the month. I could tell you why, but you've seen me in a Robin costume, and I think that's the limit for personal information.

I should assure you that we are not leaving on anywhere near bad terms, and I wouldn't have even thought to bring it up, except that I know that people who don't know us would maybe have wondered without my saying so.

The second, obvious thing I should assure you is that this will not affect how you read the comic! It will actually ensure that the comic is more timely and regular. Instead of handing pages back and forth to each other on a daily basis, we're mailing them once a week, doing four or five pages a week till we can do it just once a month. And in fact, we've been doing this for the past two weeks while Kent was off looking for his new place. So I think the new system is working well.

Anyway, I'm not feeling particularly sappy about this, and I think we're both excited about the new homes we've found, especially since we get to move our drafting tables out of our bedrooms for the first time in our lives, and into separate studio rooms.

Enjoy your weekend! I'll let the shading poll go on till next week, and then announce my decision.

As you have probably noticed, (what with those working eyeballs of yours and all) but I have not lately had time to shade the comic. What is surprising to me is that I've gotten no complaints about this, but actually emails and forum comments suggesting the comic is in fact better without the shading!
So I'm putting the decision to you. Do we drop the shading, or do we keep it? Before you vote, let me present my arguments for both sides.

SHADING

Allows me to do some very cool lighting effects with things like lightning, fire, explosions, ghosts etc. It also helps "organize" the images so that it is easier for the reader to immediately distinguish the fore, middle, and background elements from each other.


NO SHADING

The shading takes me a long time to do, and this is time that's taken away from the actual drawing of the comics. If you particularly like the artwork of the recent unshaded artwork, this is why. I have been taking a much longer time to draw the pages, and have managed to draw effects that normally I left to the shading. I have also worked harder to better contrast black and white, so the shading is not needed to make out what's going on. Also, some people prefer the tone the pure black and white art brings to the comic. It makes the art more "serious" which makes the comic funnier in contrast.

Ultimately it comes down to just which you prefer more. I'm happy to go either way, which is why I'm leaving the vote to you.

LET YOUR HEART DECIDE! And feel free to elaborate on your opinion in the forum.

EDIT: Poll now closed. Final votes: Shaded: 3527 Unshaded: 3286

Do you like little piggies dressed up like Sherlock Holmes, Nazi bunny rabbits, and a dead hamster head that just keeps dripping blood EVERYWHERE? (I do.) Then you may wish to peruse The Slightly Askew Adventures of Ham and Eggs, from the creative talent that also brought you Jesus Hates Zombies.

Another awesome comic is a breath of fresh air (oh you'll see what I did there), because it's the first environmental activist entertainment I've enjoyed since Captain Planet and the Planeteers. It's DA BEAVER and he's riding a BIKE because the BATMOBILE depletes our natural resources! Take THAT.

Greetings, doctor fans! We've spent far too long now only communicating in the tiny space below the comic, and that's just not right. As a result, there has been a lot of news backing up. So I'm going to post every day this week with a new item of note, saving my biggest announcement for Friday.

For today's news, I just found out that Dr. McNinja has been nominated for an Eagle Award!! I am quite honored, and thank you to everybody who nominated our comic. We're up for Favourite Web Based Comic, and you can go and vote, if you like.