Strictly Commercial.

The title of today’s blog may reference a Frank Zappa compilation album, but it’s actually in regards to the unfortunate timing of our last two “staggered filler” updates.  Having filler one day, then a comic page the next, followed by another filler the very next day was something we planned to avoid when we started this experiment, but circumstances conspired against us this one time.

We scheduled the in-house ads and lore entries months ago, so we would have plenty of comic pages without feeling like we were breaking the momentum of the story.  For most of Issue 25, I feel like we were successful.  There was a healthy mix of convention announcements, in-house ads, and lore that built on the setting of STAR POWER.  We were doing mostly lore entries the last few weeks, setting aside advertising for the sake of world building, until Black Friday came along.  When you make a living selling your work online, it’s foolish not to take advantage of the biggest shopping day of the year.  So we planned an advertisement right after a cliffhanger page.  I thought it was a nice touch, and it was scheduled to be our last filler of Issue 25.

But then we received an exciting email last week.  As you could see from yesterday’s update, Star Power & The Ninth Wormhole is now available on ComiXology!  We were told, only last week, that the link would go live on Wednesday (yesterday).  When your livelihood depends on selling your comics online, it’s foolish not to make a huge announcement about your work becoming available on the biggest online comics distribution service.  So we made the last-minute call to put one final staggered filler in Issue 25, despite our Black Friday announcement having updated so recently.

It was a perfect storm that we felt was unavoidable.  Comics are so much fun and we love letting you folks read our work for free, but it’s also our livelihood and sometimes we have to interrupt the regularly scheduled programming.  Some folks didn’t like the frequent filler, and I understand why, but I also hope you understand why we did what we did.