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First, thanks to everyone for their patience while I took a couple of weeks off. I really needed the time to get caught up on other things.
One of the things I was getting caught up on was an academic paper that I will be presenting this weekend at Michigan State University for their Comics Forum. I am really, really excited to be able to do this, and if you are in the area of East Lansing, it would be nice to meet some readers.
My paper is about Steve Ditko and his application of Romanticism in comics like The Amazing Spider-Man, Blue Beetle, and The Question and the long term effects of his approach on the comics medium. It should be an interesting talk, and there are a lot of other really great panelists all day long. The incredible Nick Bertozzi is the keynote speaker.
The MSU Comics Forum is running March 1-2. I will be speaking at 11:00 AM on March 2.
I will also have a few print editions of Mystery Solved! on hand and for sale. I hope to see some of you there!
Dear gentle reader,
Hi. How are you? Oh, that’s good and/or bad.
Here’s the deal. As many of you may know, I am an excruciatingly busy person as of late. I am currently attempting to juggle the Mystery Solved! webcomic, the Mystery Solved! print edition for Skeptical Inquirer, managing Appleseed Comic Con, the podcast, graduate school, and I am preparing a paper that I will be presenting/lecturing about at Michigan State University at their comics forum. …plus parenting, husbanding, teaching, and general life stuff.
As I think you should be able to see, I have a lot on my plate.
I think that I’ve managed all of these things rather well. However, I worry that the writing of the Mystery Solved! webcomic has suffered as a result of all of these other items also demanding my attention.
This week, I have several items that must be completed: the paper for the MSU Comics Forum, critical elements of Appleseed, the next Mystery Solved! strip for Skeptical Inquirer, and two graduate school papers. So, rather than rush through a Mystery Solved! webstrip—with rushed, substandard writing—I am electing to take a hiatus of a week or two and will then return to the strip with regularity after some of these huge, non-delayable, items get crossed off of the list.
I am sure that, as a reasonable person, you understand. I would prefer to post strips that I think are funny/poignant, rather than ones that appear rushed and do a general disservice to the strip. I love this strip, and I think that I owe it to myself to only do the best work that I am capable of (which may or may not be to your liking). If I am unable to focus properly on the strip, then I am not able to do my best work. (Do you suppose I could be more repetitive in this paragraph?)
Thank you for taking the time to read this and the strip. It means a lot to me that anyone would give this silly strip about skepticism any consideration at all, and I am grateful for your readership and understanding.
your pal,
zack
This week would have marked the beginning of a new story arc, featuring the art of Meg Syverud. However, thanks to a problem with Dropbox, the strip will be postponed until next week. I am not very happy about this, but there is not a lot that can be done about it at this point. Meg did a great job getting the pages ready in time for this week’s start, but the techno-fates apparently disapproved and Dropbox failed us.
So, apologies for the missing strip. We’ll see you all back here next week when the Colonel tackles The Amazing Colossal Cephalopod!
your pal,
zack
Thursday, May 10, will have a brand new Mystery Solved! strip ready for you thanks to a quick assist from super friend, Allen Gladfelter!
Shortly thereafter, there will be two brand new Mystery Solved! stories, the first of which will feature the art of Meg Sevyrud!
Thanks so much to everyone for their patience as I made a sudden, drastic, positive career change. It put me further behind than I had hoped, but I am excited about where things are going!
I know that this video is old, but I was cruising through YouTube this morning and I came across it again. It’s James Randi’s TED presentation from 2010, and it’s wonderful. It’s a basic primer on Randi’s brand of skepticism and is a lot of fun….it even has one of my favorite bits: Randi ingests an entire bottle of homeopathic sleeping pills demonstrates their inefficacy. Anyway, if you’ve never seen it, enjoy! It’s fun stuff.
