Apologies...

Both for the lack of a strip on Wednesday without a word and for today's final panel. Hope no one was eating when they saw that.

Several reasons for no strip this past Wednesday. There is a LOT going on with me personally and with the strip (none of it bad or dramatic, per se), but you will have to wait until Monday to hear about it in a giant blog. Be here for it, it's pretty important stuff.

Right now, it's time for bed. Have a good weekend!

Two things today:

1) Mark of the Beast
Today's strip is Suburban Tribe #666, so I thought it appropriate that Caesar show his face for the first time in four months (!) to star in a stand-alone strip. Back to the new story tomorrow.

2) Palladium Books needs your help!
Suburban Tribe fan Brandon Aten has alerted me that his employer Palladium books, a well-known publisher of table-top RPG material, in addtion to other sci-fi/fantasy products, is in danger of losing all means of financing. You can view the long and sordid details here, but the long story short is that this excellent company will go under for good unless it moves a massive amount of product in a short amount of time.

Don't let this happen! Click here to learn how you can keep Palladium from going out of business. The more companies that produce more of the cool stuff we're all into (and let's not lie; if you're reading a webcomic, you're into this stuff), the better. Hell, I still have my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG manual -- published by Palladium -- from when I was in high school.

Spread the word to all of your friends. Now would be an excellent time to take a little break from World of Warcraft and/or City of Heroes to check out what you've been missing in the pen & paper RPG world. Save Palladium!

Trendsetter!

So a couple of days ago, I went to the closest coffee shop, which happened to be a Starbucks (don't judge me) to get a plain old cup of joe to help me through the mid-afternoon sleepy-sleepies.

I don't know what they're putting in their brew these days, but that $1.50 cup of coffee had me jacked up like a 4-year-old that ate a whole box of Cocoa Pebbles with apple juice. Mother of God! I was afraid to sit in one position too long, for fear that I would start vibrating fast enough to phase through my chair and into the future. All I kept thinking was "OHMYGODTHISMUSTBEWHATCOCAINEISLIKE!"

But I digress. While I was at Starbucks (don't judge me), I noticed that they were using the protective sleeves for their cups to promote a movie about a spelling bee. Each sleeve featured a different winning word from a national spelling bee throughout the years. Which word was on my sleeve? One of the words I had to look up in a Thesaurus so I could use in last Monday's strip.

Does this make me hipper than Starbucks? And if so, does that mean that I can be rich now?

The End... for now!

Today's strip ends the first story arc of 2006. It always feels good to finish a story, especially one as long and complex as this one was. I'm glad everyone seems to have enjoyed it as much as I did.

Before you write me to ask: Carol can now change into Haley and back again. She isn't "stuck" in either persona. But as to how and why she can change back and forth... that's a story for another day. I think that's enough Alan/Carol/Haley drama for a while.

The next story will feature the characters I've been neglecting for the last 3 1/2 months, Namely Roger, Skip and Jessica. It might start on Monday, but I have to get the funny bone back into shape, so I may do a couple of stand-alones or "Ask a Cast Member" strips first. Come back on Monday and see what I pull out of my hat!

Until then, I'll leave you with some cool links:

Superheroes on the Toilet
Titanic 2: Jack's Back (Note the use of footage from the underrated and misunderstood Hulk movie.)

BAH!

Due to my... how shall I say... aggressive(?) day job, which spilled over into this weekend, not to mention the fact that we have spent most of Sunday evening enduring sporadic power outages thanks to severe thunderstorm and/or tornado activity, I have to postpone another strip update again. I'll be back on track Wednesday, if not before.

Hang in there with me, folks! The end of this story is about five strips away, and I do predict you'll like where things end up.

And in case you never guessed why, I'll leave you with a clue why last Wednesday's strip was pencils only; Starts with a "W" and ends in "ork."

BAH!