A question and some news.

I haven't posted anything here for a while. Sorry about that. There are two reasons I haven't posted anything: I was entertaining my family, who flew out from Washington to visit. The other reason is that there's been little to report.

I'm in a holding pattern with regards to the Adams Experiment. A while back Scott suggested a format to try. I threw together a very quick draft and sent it to him to see if I was on the right track.


(I had to shrink it a bit to fit my blog. Right-click it and select "view image" to make it easier to read.)

This was what he had in mind. I had several thoughts looking at it, and I'd like your opinions. We had long ago discussed the idea of the daily strips being a changed version of Basic Instructions, and the Sunday strips being a slightly different shaped version of the strip as I produce it now. I guess the question is, does this draft represent too much change? Would the difference between the daily and the Sunday strips seem too jarring? Also, have I eliminated so much of what makes my strip unique that it now wouldn't stand out? (at least for positive reasons, it might still stand out for negative reasons.) I look forward to your input.

One thing the Adams Experiment has taught me is that I can produce strips much faster than I did before. As such, starting next week I'll be posting new strips twice a week -- Monday morning and Thursday morning.

My favorite subject: ME!

The blog Ashcanrantings has posted an interview with me. You might find it interesting if you've ever wondered what kind of man would do the things I do.

Peer Pressure

I don't have much to say about this strip except that I have been fighting the urge to buy an iPhone, and that I came very close to giving in last weekend. In the end, I resisted, but it was more due to the termination fee on my current contract than due to any will power on my part.

Let this serve as a warning to T-Mobile, Microsoft, HTC and Google. You have less than one year to come up with a product as compelling as the iPhone if you want my money.

Also, the iPhone user in this strip is my friend Rodney, who owns an iPhone and thinks I should get one.

This strip is the last of a series of six samples I produced in six days, to prove (to myself, primarily) that I could crank one of these out every day. The next couple of samples I'll post (next Friday) are a slightly different format, so look forward to that!

Thanks for your indulgence.

And now you know the rest of the story...

When Scott Adams first brought up the idea of talking about my strip in his blog, he warned me that his readers could be brutal. I braced myself for some harsh criticism. One of the aspects of my strip I expected to garner the most criticism was the art. I thought people would be lining up to call me a hack for repeating images.

That did not happen. Oh, there was criticism, but not nearly as much of it as I expected.

The whole point of this exercise was to see what my boundaries are, what works and what doesn't. As a test, the last three panel strip I posted had no new art and the same image repeated three times, just to see if anyone would notice.

People did notice. Now I know where the line is, so I can keep from crossing it in the future.

Thanks for your patience.

I'm not the center of the universe!

So, this is part of the on-going Adams Experiment. I don't have much to say about the strip itself, but I do have something to say about the characters.

This may be the first Basic instructions in which I do not appear. I have been trying for a long time now to establish (perhaps too subtly) that the people in the strip other than my wife and I are not just random people I've thrown in because I like the drawing, but that they are people with lives. This couple has a bad marriage. If you go back in the archives, I think you'll find more evidence that these two shouldn't have gotten married.