Bitten by the Bug, Possibly a Tyranid

It's happened.  I want to play games...with people...again and often.  Since parting ways with Hidden City Games roughly three years ago, I've almost completely succeeded from the hobby of playing games.  What was a daily part of my life  has become something I struggle to do more then two or three times each year.

Mentor Legion Commander, ATTACK!

I don't want to buy any games I'm buried in gaming stuff as is. I want fewer boxes of games in my house, not more. What I want is to USE these boxes of games. First up, quite possibly my favorite all time game, Warhammer 40k.  Only D&D could rival the hours I've spent on 40k, and if you count the time spent painting minis and constructing terrain, it's likely I've spent more time on 40k than any other hobby in life. Even so, I haven't played it in four or five years.

Chaplain with Jump Pack and Power Fist. In the old days, he was quite the tank buster. Not sure how he'll do under the new rules. (I think fine.)

New editions have changed the rules twice since last I played.  Prices of 40k miniatures appear to have doubled since last I played. I'm frankly shocked by the prices. Even if I really start playing frequently, which I doubt, there's no way I will purchase more than a few small miniatures, if any.  If I do want more minis, bargain purchases from eBay and used items from friends would be the most likely option.

I've got Space Marines and Imperial Guard (a LOT of both) and the Marines are ready to go.  The composition of a Space Marine army appears to much as it has been since 2nd edition.

In addition to Tanks, I have a lot of Imperial Guard troopers with heavy weapons superglued to their shoulders.  I need to turn those troopers into two-man weapon team units. I'm going to try and find some parts to do nice conversions with them.  My first project! Awesome!

Don't worry, his Gene-Seed has been successfully recovered by the Platoon Medic.

I've started painting. I don't have all the supplies I need to finish the bases, so I've suspending painting until I get to Hobbytown again. Also, I want to paint some more Ultramarines, but I forgot to buy Ultramarine Blue last time.

My first new painted mini in years.  I'm pleased though I know I can paint better. See the crappy gravel on the base. The bases on my other minis are pretty modest, but that's not nearly good enough. Yes, that's 15 Rough Riders in the background.  I want to field all of them someday.

So the next thing to do is sort out how to actually get playing. If I must, I can probably find a local game store with a 40k night.  Not my first choice, as I have so many friends that play.  I want to play something, not necessarily always 40k, at least twice a month on weeknight evenings.  Not being able to drive might put this off until Autumn, but nice weather has always made it hard to game, so that could be for the best.  Besides, I've got mini's to paint.

-Adam!!! 

Props

Obviously the plain figures are the first thing somebody sees when they read MC.  Since they're boring, the entire focus is on the text of the joke.  An exception to this is when I add art or modify the figures in some way. most often adding color to the figures in some way, but also adding images like the mustache in Reality. Originally the rule was I never do that. "The figures must never change!", I thought.  Well, comics where I add to the figures are generally better received than the average comic, plus as I find it harder and harder to think of strips, I can't afford to be picky about the ideas I use. Props, as I call then, are going to show up more and more.  Still fewer than half, but possibly as often as weekly.

Platform

Today's strip, Platform, was a success.  Why? I think people like political humor that doesn't attack anyone.  Some of my other 'lefty' strips have been mean-spirited and in general they don't go over well.  I'm going to try and avoid that in the future (unless it's really funny.)

I have to admit, the lack of positive response was starting to get me down.  Each strip seemed to be viewed by fewer people than one the before it for the last few weeks.  I'm not sure how quality translates to page-views, but it's the only measurement I have, so I was starting to fear the strips were just not as good as they were even a few weeks ago.  A nice, well received, strip was just what the doctor ordered.  I know not every strip will be a home run, but I like to have one take off and get 500+ page views at least once a week.  Platform got to about 700 before the traffic died off.  It makes me happy.

-Adam

NaziBusters

Some found my comic "Catbusters" offensive.  I can see where they're coming from. One suggestion was to modify the comic slightly.  Honestly, I like it better this way:

Daily or Bust!

I don't know how much longer this will last.  It's getting harder and the days are ticking off faster than new comics are springing to life.  I mentioned this to my friend Jake and he suggested I go to a 3-times per week strip rather than daily.  For some reason I'm really against this, and I got real defensive about it.  While I truly doubt I could keep any sort of schedule other than daily, I also think the strip needs to be daily to work. It's just too small, in every way, to survive without constant update.  The strip is a chain, and every comic is a link.  Miss a comic, the chain is broken.  That's how I feel about it.

Reddit, why have you forsaken me?

For the first month of Minimum Comics, most of the page-views came from my friends on Facebook.  That was great, because those are the people I'm writing the comics for (besides myself, I mean.)  After posting to Reddit a couple of times, I noticed that Reddit was generating a huge number of page-views, relative to Facebook.  As a result, listing the comic on Reddit become part of my daily comic posting habit.

Reddit is a tricky beast to make work for you, without gaming it (and beyond what I describe here, I'm not willing to game it.) Essentially I post the comic with some sort of descriptive subject on Reddit: Comics each day.  If that starts generating traffic, that's all I'll do.  If the comic is immediately voted down into Reddit oblivion AND I think it's a good comic, I'll re-post the comic to Reddit: Webcomics with the simple title "Minimum Comics: [name]".   Reddit: Comics is more big-time and if I get a few early up-votes there I'm sure to get a big response, but that's somewhat uncommon.  Reddit: Webcomics is more like the minor leagues, so it's easier to get up-votes but the response is less intense than what I'd get from a successful Reddit: Comics entry.

Lately, neither is working for me.  I'm not sure if it's the quality of the comics or perhaps I've just got a bad rep with Redditors and they vote me down so fast nobody ever gets to see the comics.  Today's comic, Guilt, is a little unusual but still funny (I think).  It was voted down in just a few minutes on Comics and when I reposted to Webcomics, it was voted down right away again.  I can't tell if the comics are bad or I have an enemy on Reddit or perhaps just bad luck.

I like the enemy theory.

-Adam!!!

Dig Dug

Reddit was down today, so it's hard to gauge the reaction to today's comic. One 'down' vote is all that's happened so far. As I'm a huge nerd for classic video games, I'm as familiar with DigDug as a gambler would be with poker.  I suspect a large number of the people in the world are largely unfamiliar with the game, and thus today's joke would be meaningless to all of them.  That's too bad.

Stumbleupon is becoming more and more a source of traffic.  I'm not getting any feedback from SU, which is unfortunate.  I'd like to know if random visitors are liking the strip (or hating it.) My guess: The average SU visitor reads the strip, gives a quick 'heh', then moves on never to think of it again.  If so, job done!

Blogging about Minimum Comics

How I feel about my own sort-of comic strip. Self indulgent? Probably. Entertaining? Maybe, we'll see. I want to do a journal about the strip, and blog-form makes sense given the topic. So here goes...

Prophet.
I was nervous about this. If there were enough readers, there is a tiny, tiny, tiny chance a crazy person would take offense.  Now, I don't know how I feel about it being one of my least viewed strips ever.  I sort of had this whole thing built up in my head, and then nobody reads it. Probably for the best. I think it's funny. I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't.

Getting more comics written lately.  I really thought I might be done with it a couple of weeks ago. No new ideas for close to two weeks.  Following that bout of writer's block, I now know when MC will end.  Once I miss that first day, because there isn't a comic ready to post, that'll be the signal to stop. I want to go for a year, now. I think that'll happen, because the jokes have started coming back to me at a good pace. I really enjoy the response I get from the more popular ones.

20,000
I'm a page-view whore.  I must get more page-views. Must. Get. More.  20k people read the Cookie Comic. I'm floored. I don't know what was so different about it than what i do every day.  There's a little art.  Was that the difference? I don't think so.  I think it was a good joke tied to an appealing topic.  Because it was a more traditional comic, with art, one of the barriers to enjoying what I do was removed.  Hmmmm.

Comic Sans
 I think it's perfect for what I'm doing. Irony in font choice. That's right. I went there.

Sunday Comics
The Cookie Comic was so popular, I definitely want to try and recreate that.  I'm going to try and create three or four more comics, similar to the CC, and see if I can duplicate any of CC's success.  If so, I'll make non-MC comics a regular feature.

Yep. Self Indulgent. Terrible writing, too.  Maybe I'll come back and edit it later.

-Adam