- Here’s a great Medusa (for my birthday a few weeks ago) by my friend and summer studio mate Robyn Ritchie!

- Here’s some tiny art by reader Zack (or Zach?). It didn’t scan well, unfortunately, but it’s a recreation of the strip where Medusa uses Tackle on Marah.

- I’ve only been kind of keeping up with E3 coverage this week, but I’m super excited about FF 15, MGS 5, the new 3DS Zelda game set in the Link to the Past world and A REAL HONEST TO GOD SEQUEL TO MIRROR’S EDGE! Honestly, the only thing that would make me more excited is if Sega announced a new JSRF game. Anyway, what cool stuff have I missed?

So I thought about this over the last two weeks while at Fanime down in San Jose and while working on the last few strips. I spent some time trying out different gags and working up some clever ways to make all these little things fit together nice and funny and neat. I came up with some good stuff and some okay stuff and a lot of really not so great stuff, but the end of it was that no matter what it was 12-25 pages of extra stuff before I could get to the season finale. Now here’s the thing: That shouldn’t have been a problem at all. I should have told myself to do the story right, give it the space it needs and take my time to bring everything to a conclusion. But… this season has been pretty hard, and the Wither Away arc was especially draining and the season was already going to be well over the 100 pages I had originally envisioned. More than anything, I was just ready to wrap everything up, and the thought of doing another unexpected 12-25 pages was just too much. So I had this idea to do a single summary strip that would cover all the loose ends in one go and get everything out of the way.  It wasn’t a great idea, and I put it aside while I tried to write something better, but in the end it’s the idea I came back to.

So here’s the strip I ran last Friday (click to enlarge):

Okay, so I thought it was kind of clever. But on the walk home from my studio after i posted it I realized that the summery was a mistake. That kind of short cut wasn’t going to add anything to the story. It would save me some time and effort, but a year from now I wouldn’t be happy with it and I couldn’t image any of my readers would be either. So by the time I got home I had decided to pull the strip and resolved myself to finishing out the season the right way, even if it meant doing 25 extra strips I wasn’t super enthusiastic about. In fact, i needed to find a way to be enthusiastic about those strips and make them work.

So the Friday strip got yanked from this site before more than a few people saw it. It stayed up on DA and Drunk Duck though, and you can see the comments here and there for yourself. Some people thought it was okay and a lot didn’t, but I think I was right that almost everyone would prefer actual strips over a summary, so that’s what’ll happen. I do want to be clear that the negative comments did not influence my decision. I had made up my mind by the time I got around to reading any of them.

So starting with this strip I’ll be fleshing out the events from the summary comic. You can think of the summary as a spoiler if you want, but I’ll do my best to make this content worthwhile and fun, and I guess we’ll get to the end of the season eventually!

- Aitwo posted a Blackrock Shooter Medusa over on DA. Please check it out!

- Here’s some fan art byLilah!

- Thinking about doing some new t-shirts.  Any requests or ideas?

- Here’s the sign I left at our Fanime booth on Sunday evening. We had to leave a day early. Thanks to Lena Ma for the photo. I hope someone got to take it home!

- I’m still getting used to using the Yiynova, but I think today’s strip looks pretty good. I’m finding that I have more control over my lines in photoshop, but the whole process takes a bit longer. I’m guessing I’ll speed up as I get used to the new pad.

- I’ve been playing Disgaea 3 on the Vita for the last week or so in my spare time. What a great game!

- I’m in San Jose now, getting ready for the Fanime Artist Alley. Check my twitter and facebook over the weekend for updates.

- I’ve updated Monday’s strip to full color, so click back and check it out. I’m starting to get a handle on the new Yiynova, but it’s going to take awhile before I’m really comfortable with it. I don’t know if you can see a difference in the coloring on this strip and the last one, or whether it’s better or worse.

- I’ll be at Fanime in San Jose until next week. Look for me and Ben Hsu in the artist alley. Our table is listed under the name “Tagalaong” and it’s near the middle of the hall. Please come by and say hi!

- Because I’ll be out of town I’ll be posting some filler strips on Friday and Monday. I’ll be back on regular strips next Weds!

- I drew this for my Sister’s birthday earlier this month.