Okay. For the time being, I'm calling a brief tactical retreat from the plan of selling T&K artwork. No more than a couple of weeks.

--Now I realize that we've all had our run-ins with computer difficulties; indeed it's so common that nobody even blinks an eye. That we've based much of our lives on such fragile and temperamental devices is pretty staggering. "My hard-drive died." "Oh yeah? That's tough." And life moves on. So I know. But this time for me is actually one of the more ridiculous streaks I've seen. And to be honest, I quite enjoy these times; when everything goes to paste and you finally throw up your hands and cry to the heavens, "Okay! Fine! I'll stop! You win! See? I'm stepping back from the keyboard. Happy?"

I find there's something strangely fun and stress-relieving about doing that.

And so, let's review the fallen. . .

One 17" flatbed scanner. Dead and buried as of ten days ago. I guess it's number was just up. --It was a good trooper; having scanned hundreds of pages and a couple dozen paintings since I first rescued it from the back of a computer store during the late nineties. May it rest in peace. --From now on, I have to use my weenie little scanner, (the only kind you can buy these days), scan everything in two halves and stitch the images back together in Photoshop. I don't mind doing this for new work as it only adds ten or fifteen minutes to the few hours I spend anyway on each page during pre-press. But this isn't really an option when trying to process nearly 400 old toned pages for the web! Yikes.

Plan B; Scan directly from the comic books. After all, the whole exercise of putting pages on-line is primarily for reference purposes so that those who want to buy pages can easily communicate which one they are interested in. Right?

Yeah, yeah. I've heard of page numbers. But back in '95 when the first collected volume was going to press, it would have cost $10 per page to re-shoot already existing film from the comics in order to add numbers. I wasn't anxious to spend $1000 per hundred pages just so that people would be able to count. And anyway, numbers are only useful for texts being studied in school, and for people who want to remember where they are in a book. Since T&K isn't exactly course material, and since comics have other visual cues to tell people where they last put the book down, (one would hope, anyway), I figured page numbers were an expense I could live without. At least, that was my excuse. In any event, after spending the morning fiddling around with scanned newsprint, I realized, "Wow. I don't care if this is just for reference; these scans make my work look terrible! This is not an option. There must be a better way to solve this. . ."

One (almost) brand new digital camera; R.I.P. Indoor lighting just wasn't good enough and I didn't have easy access to proper photography lighting equipment. . . So clever Mark thought, "Hey! I know! I'll use natural sunlight out in the back yard to illuminate the original pages! Brilliant! Just like the old film makers back when Hollywood was founded and the 'indoor' sets all made use of California's naturally clear skies. Cool!" Except three hours later, a humbled and not-so-clever-feeling Mark wanderd back inside thinking, "Hm. So if you leave a digital camera pointing at a blank white sheet reflecting un-filtered sunlight for any length of time, the delicate electronic eye inside goes, 'Fizz'. --And stays that way." The worst part was that I already knew this, having trained on studio video equipment some years ago. For some reason, though, I figured that this problem had been solved. Digital pocket cameras are designed to be used outdoors, after all. Though, I guess they are designed to be pointed at groups of people standing in front of Niagra Falls, and not at blazing white sheets of paper. I'll have to make a note. . .

Plan C; Borrow some proper lighting gear and your room mate's far superior and very expensive digital camera, (after promising not to blow it up as well.) Except that when Angela's last boyfriend took off, he also made the petty decision to steal the card-reader and data cable for her camera, rendering it useless. So after running around town and spending $120 dollars on legacy equipment I'm too broke to afford, (half of which had to be returned for exchange due to malfunctioning and incompatible parts; Angela's camera is so old that the largest card it can read is 8 Megabytes. Just try finding one of those in this day when 32 Megs is considered unbearably small!). --Oh, and none of which would work at all unless I upgraded my operating system to Windows 2000. Yipee. There went another whole day of messing around. Still, even with Angela moving away with her camera in two days to Vancouver, (I'll miss you, kiddo! Enjoy the mountains!), I managed to jump through enough hoops and get the whole set-up running. Hah! I'll get this project done in time yet!

Or that's what I thought until my evil computer began to flake out. I'm writing this on a computer which, as of early this evening, is now without a cooling fan for its power supply. --The burning plastic smell is my reminder to shut down every forty minutes. --That sucker gets replaced tomorrow; I'll just have to fit a trip to the computer store district in with helping Angela load her stuff into the truck tomorrow. Whatever.

Not that fixing my computer will make much difference with no working email. My ISP has been having arguments with my machine over the last month. My ability to receive email remains unimpaired, but my computer's ability to send messages has become flakier and flakier until a week ago when it stopped working altogether. Thanks, Bell! I'm now using a stupid web-based Yahoo account, which makes the job of keeping accurate records three times more difficult. And then for no reason other than that it fits perfectly with the current pattern of annoying set-backs, Yahoo just stopped accepting my password. --While in the middle of setting up another new email account, I stopped short for the first time in a week, looked around at the carnage and realized, "The hell?"

So, that's it. I've blown the ten days I gave to myself and I've achieved barely a third of what I intended. So I'm calling it quits on this project for the time being until I get all this nonsense worked out. I've long been a believer in patterns, and I think this one is worth sitting out for a while. Until I am confident that I will be able to reliably communicate with people who want to buy artwork, I'm going to back off. --Which is a good thing, I think. It'll give me time to properly organize the pricing scheme and all the miles of HTML I need to code, (forty minutes at a time, the way things are at the moment.)

I just wish I didn't need the money. . .

The company audit hurt, but it wasn't lethal; still it just adds to the debt load which is only going to increase when I reprint the first TPB in another two months. Plus, I'm finally moving out of Toronto, and moving long distance isn't cheap. Still, come the end of May, I'll be living in considerably less expensive digs in a small town on the Atlantic coast. --Very beautiful, and I am very much hoping that it will allow me to concentrate on working in some peace and quiet. City living and the constant parade of room mates has been steadily driving me around the bend. Maybe I'm just getting old, (my 33rd birthday is at the end of May!), but the last few years have seemed much harder than normal. I'm certainly not the sort who complains easily, but I can't seem to not offer my strength to others when they need it. It will be nice to only have to deal with my own life for a while. In any case, I just found out that moving myself and all my stuff, (which consists primarily of boxes of T&K stock, a drafting board and something to sleep on), will cost about the same as it would to buy a used van or a pick-up truck and make the 20 hour drive between Toronto and Halifax three times in order to move everything. That way I get to keep the truck when it's all over. So, (I'm still scratching my head), it now looks like I'm going to own a gas-burning vehicle. --I never figured myself the type! The only vehicle I've ever wanted to own was a bicycle. Still, in a remote town, (two hours outside of Halifax), such a thing can be useful. Necessary, even.

Anyway. . .

I'll have something up and running in a few weeks. And boy! It's been an eye-opener going through all my old artwork! Some of these pages haven't seen light in several years! I forgot just how much those early pages glow. --With the tone and text applied directly to those pages, they are something else! There are several of them which really take my breath away! I'd forgotten just how much of the 'shine' is lost during the printing process. This always used to break my heart until I got used to it. But I'd forgotten! In this new age of computers, there is now no point during which one can properly gauge how much is lost and how much is retained from drafting board to newsprint. Though, even the un-toned, line-work only pages of the post computer era, (another 400 pages or so), hold more life than the printed versions! Those of you who have seen some decent original comic pages will know exactly what I'm talking about! I think I'm going to do some paste-work, white-paint and text finishes on those pages to make them look right when I finally do start making them available.

--It's also amazing how much I am learning about drawing in the Present simply by looking at what I'd done in the Past. I didn't realize how many things I'd forgotten! Hum! It's a good practice to blow the dust off, once in a while. From both comics and life in general. . .

Anyway, like I said, the sale of original T&K artwork is all on hold for the next couple of weeks. And that's okay; after all, what I really need now, (aside from organizing a big move at month's end), is to be drawing the next issue! Argh! Really, that's ALL I want to do! I've got this amazing script where Rubel builds a tower and where Heath. . . Well, you'll see. --And the pages I've drawn so far look really neat! (Calypso doing Kung-Fu magic with her staff, and Locumire rolling up her sleeves to fight for the first time. I didn't realize just how powerful she was until I began drawing the scene! But I suppose it only makes sense, what with her being the Right Hand of Darkness and all. . .)

Okay. Fumes of plastic are beginning to drift from my computer again. Time to call it a night!

I wish you all the very best in this beautiful Spring weather! Take care! --Oh, and anybody who wants to purchase a book or CD, Paypal and my bank still seem to be working properly and I'll still be able to check my email semi-regularly. --With a million-plus computers hooked up in this town, that is at least something one can be sure of!

Okay. I'm gone! Good-night everybody! Or good afternoon, that is. --Between typing the first and last sentence here, the sun has risen, I've fought with my Web Host tech support department, (because THAT also decided to crap out; froze up for nearly seven hours. Their tech support guy sounded pretty stressed.), --along with all that, I've helped load up a truck and Angela just hugged me goodbye forever. She talks about visiting, but you know how these things go. She'll be on the Pacific coast, and I'll be on the Atlantic. Canada is just too big to bear somedays. . .

And now I am determined to move myself as well so that I can avoid the whole 'looking for room mates' thing again. James, dude, thanks for letting me live here in your beautiful house; I've done the best I could by this place, but come the 31st of May, I'm history.

And not a moment too soon!

-Mark