Monday - September 27, 2004:

Hmm. This issue will partially resolve itself tomorrow, as far as the strip is concerned, that is. don't worry; I have no intention of including anything even closely resembling pornography on the site.

I've just been a little frustrated that there seems to be a web-comic success formula for popularity that I'm not willing to embrace. Talking heads hinting, sometimes not so subtly about sex has filled lots of panels and garnered lots of clicks, I wager. As a former teacher, I've been cautious with my own work, not out of any particularly moral streak, but out of recognition of the reality that former students, parents and coworkers will stumble onto this material.

Because so few web-cartoonists make a living at comics, I wonder how other people handle the overlap between their professional lives and the world of web-comics. Several colleagues know about my work on web-comics. The director of one of the schools I taught at found my work a couple of years ago and talked to me about it. She had no problem with it. I mean there's no swearing, nudity, innuendo in any of the stuff that I've written, but my work on More Fun over at Graphic Smash has some adult themes. Interestingly, the director did make some comment about me sharing political views in several of my strips. She didn't seem to have a problem with it, simply noting that my characters often sounded like they shared my views.

That's one reason I've introduced the two ends of the pencil characters first. There's a bit of me in each of them, I think. I share many of the eraser's (I call him 'Pink') aesthetic views, but sometimes with the passion of the point (named HB). Part of me wishes I was as sure as HB about my views or had the gall to air them so forcefully. Mainly though, the pencils are a tool for talking about two sides of an issue. I'll take up my positions in the blog below. So for now, the pencils are going to be concentrating on things about which they disagree and starting tomorrow, they'll be disagreeing about comics, primarily comics on the internet.

I would like to encourage readers to join and submit comments. Membership is free and I'm not interested in selling your name or anything. If you're anything like me, your name's already out there and bringing in plenty of junk mail. I have to require registration to prevent bot's from posting.

Lastly, I'm planning on posting something new every weekday, comics on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, sketches, travel photo's and other blogs on Tuesday and Thursday.