Welcome back! Good to see you again. Type to you? Let you know that I’m still alive? Let me know that you’re still alive? Something along those lines.

Glad we’re still alive. Hopefully that means we’re all at a perfect 100% ratio of “Days Existing/Days Alive.”

I don’t have any silly baby stories this week, unfortunately. As adorable as my little one is, her antics were pretty standard. But I do have another chapter of bloodthirsty robots ready to be read… Woohoo! Definitely two topics that deserve to go together. The Failed Technomancer, Zed’s interlude, is live!

As a final note, I will be attending LTUE (Life, the Universe, and Everything) this year. If you’re planning on going as well, let me know, and hopefully we can say hi!

Bloggyness Review: Scurry

Scurry is a “Small Mouse/Big and Scary World” webcomic by Mac Smith. I originally discovered it through the video that I shared last week, and since it’s freely available online I decided to give it a try. I pretty quickly and easily found myself tearing through pages, devouring this story way too fast.

If you don’t want major spoilers, avoid reading last week’s final paragraph, where I give up a worldbuilding point that some people will figure out in the first few pages, other people will need to wait until near the end of the story to have revealed. Whichever camp you fall into, it’s still a very exciting moment. What you need to know is that Scurry primarily follows two mice, Wix and Pikt, who are trying to keep their colony alive. Their big problem? As a colony of house mice in a world where humans have seemingly disappeared, they are quickly running out of food and have no idea how to procure more for themselves… Also, one of the colony members might be a wicked, selfish traitor… Adventure ensues!

I would put Scurry at about the same reading level as the Bone graphic novels, maybe a little lower (the start of middle grade). That isn’t to say that this comic can’t be enjoyed by all ages, just that if I ever buy the physical copy I wouldn’t be afraid to hand it over to my kids in early middle school/late elementary school—and I’d still enjoy reading it myself. The art is gorgeous, the characters are distinct and likable, the mystery can be tense and very engaging… there’s a lot going for this story. Mac Smith did a good job. (Especially on the art—holy cow. I mostly read Order of the Stick, a webcomic that does, essentially, stylized stick figures for its art. Moving from being most familiar with that to the painted detail of Scurry is quite the jump.)

If there’s one complaint I have, it’s a complaint that I have with most graphic novels (what I’ve read, anyway): art takes up a ton of space. A ton of space. And that can hurt pacing on a story and character level. To me, most graphic novels feels frustratingly rushed, as I wish things would slow down and dwell a little more on individual characters, on relationships, on world elements—but no, there’s no page count for that. (And it makes sense—a page of gorgeous, detailed art takes more time to produce than a page of text alone.) Mostly only the basic story can be told, and we need to do that fast, because drawings don’t move things along in the same pace or manner that words do. This isn’t necessarily a problem, per say, as I think people who love the medium more than I do see it as a feature rather than a flaw, but for someone accustomed to thick fantasy tomes I felt a little whiplash at times.

But hey! What does that matter when nearly every page is full of gorgeous art of adorable mice, wicked cats, and a really likable moose?

Writing Updates

Hazel Halfwhisker is at almost 28,000 words. Given that I ended last week at just over 23,000 words, I’m once again just off my goal of 5,000 words, but I think a planning session last week will turn into a lot of momentum this week. I hope. I’m still struggling with sitting down and finding my brain completely empty, all my plans (and all the lessons I’ve learned) lost to me, but stuff usually starts coming back after I force out enough words. I dunno what’s up with my head, but I’m not going to let it stop me from pressing forward!

All other projects are in the same position as usual.

Send-Off

Are you a fan of webcomics? What are your favorites? Let me know!