I made myself a promise, and it’s time to collect.

As you know if you’ve read this site, I don’t like it when webcomic blogs yammer about trying not to miss more updates. As you also know if you’ve read this site, I missed several Gordian Algebra updates recently. Truth is I’m at a confluence of events that are eating up my time. It’s not going to end this week or next week.

Since I promised myself I wouldn’t yammer, I’m flat out announcing a brief vacation. Gordian Algebra will return in August. I’d hoped we could get at least a year in the can before I took a break, but, y’know, life.

Luckily it’s much easier to keep up with a blog than a comic strip, so I’ll continue to post here during July. I haven’t forgotten, dear readers, that I owe you some webcomic recommendations. They’ll arrive after I finish another writing project this weekend.

Also, I’m open to suggestions about what else to post in the next month. I could dust off some antique comics I wrote for my college paper ten years ago. I’d enjoy posting some guest comics, if anyone gets the urge to fill the uncomfortable strip-silence. I’ll continue to toss sketches up at my deviantArt page, but I could post a few here as well. Any requests? (Before you ask, “fan service” drawings of the nurse would drive away readers faster than Mario Andretti windsurfing on a cheetah.)

I suspect you’ll learn more about me this July than you or I ever wanted. Batten down and buckle up, stalwart readers. This could get interesting.

Due to circumstances largely beyond my control, I missed my updates this week. Usually I’d make up the days but this time I’m gonna have to forge ahead. I owe you all some recommendations. See you Monday.

Ever had a half-crazy girlfriend or boyfriend? The kind where one little hardship appears and boom, they erupt into a tangled Slinky ball of howling self-absorption? People like that have so many internalized neuroses, their defense mechanisms are guaranteed to cause far more chaos than any actual problem that strays too close.

The human body is like a half-crazy girlfriend. When a germ comes along, no matter how seemingly innocuous, the body cracks open its battery of aches and slime and temperature extremes and launches into an opera of prolonged misery that makes Wagner look like Fun with Dick and Jane. This was the story of my household last week. Each of us in turn was laid low by his body’s reaction to a microbe that’s wandered the city all month. On my children’s spring break, no less. Yet with faith and determination, as a family, we survived our collective anatomical neurosis to face this week renewed.

So yeah, um, that’s why I didn’t post any comics last week.

As a consolation to you, Dearest Reader, for my dearth of output, every day this week I’ll be pointing you toward a series of webcomics that (a) have art that intrigues me and (b) you may not have heard of.

It’s probably cheating to start the week with The Abominable Charles Christopher, for two reasons. Firstly, you may have heard of it. The comic is featured in the top-notch Transmission-X lineup. Secondly it’s made by Karl Kerschl, a professional artist who’s drawn Superman and Teen Titans comic books and other really-real publications. But who says webcomics must rise from the unclean wilderness, from struggling nobodies like me? Besides, we all like to pick a guaranteed winner on occasion.

The Abominable Charles Christopher takes us to an affable forest community of birds and bees and furry critters. In fact every animal talks and socializes and parties as if the woods were a small-town American neighborhood. Every animal, that is, except the silent, humanoid pile of fur that sucks on a pacifier and lends its (presumed) name to the comic. At present this innocent monstrosity is laboring up a nearby snowy mountainside. He was placed there by cosmic forces on a pseudo-spiritual quest for the wind. Sounds deep and symbolic, doesn’t it? But the strip’s not really like that. It’s a slick, delightful sweetmeat of a milieu with webcomic lucidness, Disney-esque pathos and naturalistic, ink wash artwork (digitally rendered, I presume) that nails the just-before-twilight mood.

As always, I recommend you start at the beginning. The Abominable Charles Christopher is a breezy read that won’t disappoint.

Friday’s strip (Feb 15th) arrives through the stylish benefaction of guest artist Tjin Chong. Tjin is the graphical half of a new webcomic named I Can’t Draw Feet. While the title is self-explanatory, I’m reasonably certain Tjin can in fact draw feet; and yet we must collectively praise his stylistic aplomb, which so clearly springs from the same divine source as my own humble scribblings.

Or at least he, y’know, draws pointy feet on his characters.

In any event, ICDF is funny and I like the minimalist style. It’s new so the archives aren’t brimming, but if you invest a couple of clicks, you’ll get some quality chuckles.

(My apologies, by the way, for the slightly askew business under the strip. Obviously my site design wasn’t as robust as I kidded myself.)

Wow, what’s with all the gloom and angst in the comic lately? Our luckless schlemiel is really twisting in the wind these days. That’s what schlemiels do, I guess. Maybe his fortunes will upgrade soon.

Speaking of upgrades, I made a couple of minor tweaks to the site and a major one: I finally wrote the code to embed the strip in the RSS feed. Good bye site views! Hello, happier readers! Tomorrow’s strip should turn up in the feed at midnight. Of course the whole thing might fall apart like a stained glass bumpercar, in which case I’ll flail madly at the code tonight and your feed reader may have a small pile of test posts in the morning. Ain’t technology rewarding?

I do have one request for you, my most praiseworthy audience. I’ve only tested the embedded strips in a couple of RSS readers. Please let me know if tonight’s feed looks funny in your reader. Let’s squash any bugs and get on with the ride. Muchas gracias.

Thanksgiving is like the Hump Day of holidays. Now that we’ve cleared it, we’re rolling downhill toward the wild weekend of Christmas and New Year’s. Which means it’s currently the Thursday of holidays, I guess. Anything good on TV?

Gordian Algebra has been rolling downhill for several weeks now. A solid month stuck in a dream sequence. Quite the stroke of artistic derring-do. In the meantime I’ve received a pile of emails. For the sake of brevity, I’m only going to post my responses to some of them here. Those who asked the questions will know who they are. (more…)

The strip is on schedule. We’re really into the story now. Our hero is ambulatory. The fourth wall is fighting back, almost like it’s another character.

Okay, maybe not. Definitely not. But we hear that a lot, don’t we? “The music is like a separate character in the movie.” “The fantasy world is its own character in the novel.” What does that even mean? (more…)

Friday’s strip is up. It’s a pivotal moment in the story. Well, except the story doesn’t pivot so much as teeter around like a bowl of jello on a unicycle. Drunk.

So, Gordian Algebra is already a year old. (more…)

Though the site’s rolling along brilliantly, I made a few tweaks because I’m a dork who can’t stop playing with my code in public. Mostly I removed a cookie that redirected you to the last strip you saw, which was probably more confusing than helpful.

Also, there are new strips for Monday and Wednesday. For those of you following that part of the site.

I was going to launch this webcomic site with some cheeseball wordplay like “We have ignition!” Then I reread the first strip and it clubbed me with unwrought irony. Humbled, I present Gordian Algebra for your rumination. Chew slowly.