*I’m looking for a little reader feedback here, so suggestions, affirmations, or criticisms are welcome in the comments.

In putting together the first book of The Churchians, I realized that ‘Arrival’ is a terrible name. Here’s the original comic. It’s okay for what it is, but we can do better.

‘Crashlander’, ‘Crashlanders’, ‘Story Crashers’, and ‘StoryCrashers’ are all on the table. Many of you are long-time readers and know the history of Rory and The Professor. We’ll be doing a better transition comic – introducing Rory and the Prof – for the book. I’m partial to the first two because Old Hick referred to Rory as ‘Rory Crashlander’ here:

However… I think this comic is technically in book two. Book two is called ‘Shadow Saints’. It’s an awesome name and an awesome concept. You’ll find out in 3 or 4 comics. It’s explained in the second-to-last comic of Book Two. Yes, I’m Gen X. ‘Awesome’ was super-cool back in the day. Much, much better than ‘rad’, which completely changed meaning after Fukushima. And Chernobyl. And especially after the first 100 days of the Biden presidency.

Book 3, which I literally started writing yesterday, is going to be called ‘Night Veg’. I think. It’s about an 80% chance. When we reveal the meaning… let’s just say the tenor of the comic is going to change.

Another book, probably 5th or 6th, possibly 7th, will be called ‘Biblical’. It has to be. It can’t… not be. What do you call it after Kel says in the last comic of the previous book, “No. We’re going biblical.”, and looks up at the reader with tired, hateful, vengeful eyes?

That comic, just so you know, has been blocked out in my brain for more than 3 years now.

A fantastic name, which is sadly already claimed, is ‘Dust and Grace’. I… might have to steal it, since it isn’t a comic name.  Yet. I’m not sure what book it will be, but it won’t be book 1, 2, or 3 because non-racist math won’t let it be. It will probably be book 4 or 5, because book 7 is also already taken. I haven’t named it yet but I’m pretty sure it will be the last Churchians book. Heaven seems a little pretentious. Hell seems pessimistic. And The Churchians: We Still Didn’t Manage to Destroy It, Despite Trying Really, Really, Really Hard seems unnecessarily long and accurate.

As you  can conclude, we have very strong names for future books… but our name for book one is terrible. Help us, valued readers.

There’s probably a signed, grateful, paper copy at stake.

–> Codex & Q

Codex wanted the weekend off. ‘Why not’, I thought, ‘she deserves it.’

I don’t want this to be all-about-me but let’s face it: best husband and co-comic-collaborator ever.

We’re putting the book together. Or rather, the first two books. The single biggest part of it is the list of errata and minor changes in our first 200 comics. It… isn’t short. The bulk of the fixes relies on Codex. I get to shuffle the finished bits around, lay out the pages, and execute the marketing plan. It’s a good one.

Just out of curiosity, do any of you have blackmail material on any of the beloved oligarchs currently ruling the planet? I’d like to borrow it.

Taking the weekend off is somewhat of a problem. What would happen to our beloved readers if you came to us and didn’t see a new comic on Friday or Monday? I can see the disappointment, the dashed expectations, and the lowered immune systems through the magic of the internet. It could leave you vulnerable to whatever creeping crud is going around. We’d feel bad about that.

You might even go read old Garfield strips [shudder]. We’d feel even worse.

So, Codex managed to create an Easter comic, which will run on Sunday rather than Monday, and I managed to create a Good Friday comic, which will run as usual tomorrow morning, and we managed to create them almost simultaneously and without any argument of any kind what so ever. We call that a ‘comix miracle’.

Have a good weekend, everyone, and stay sane. It’s just two more weeks to flatten the curve until tax day. We’ll be back to the mystery cave and imminent demise of one our most beloved characters next Friday.

–> Codex & Q

November has been a cruel month and I won’t mention it any longer. The reverb will echo in the lives of my family, and my extended family, for a long, long time.

A couple of weeks ago, I re-read twenty years worth of Peanuts Christmas comics, with many Wizard of Id and BC comics thrown into the mix. I even went back over my Calvin & Hobbes.

I wanted to capture a little of the Christmas magic they published in their art, unique to their characters, yet accountable to the season.

We’re doing that this December. We’ll resume our story on Jan 8. That’s pretty traditional for us, for the last couple weeks of December. We’ll just have to frontload a few more into December.

We’ll still be here to respond to your comments or groan at your horrible puns. God bless, and thanks for reading.

–> Quizzer

I finally bit the bullet and updated our Archive. It had been almost a year, which turned out to be a lot of comics. I learned several things in the process.

Our next comic will be #189.

Extra Frames don’t get their own number; they get a ‘b’. For example: #136b.

We only had one duplicate title: Return Trip. Comics #127 and #129. I renamed #129 to Broken Silence, which was the original name. I’m assuming the shop gremlin was somehow involved, since they were so close together.

I’m already thinking about what to do with comic #666. Any ideas?

The alt-text appears below each comic in the archive. I changed a few of them to add more funny.

As a result of all this work, we’ll be making a slight change to our comic format, but it won’t show up for a few more comics.

Enjoy!

–> Quizzer