The Kalem Society

Okay, this is the final installment of The Doubter's Journal. On Friday I'll post the title page of Chapter 2. It's already done, but with my current erratic updating schedule, I thought I'd give all of my 3 and 1/2 fans a few days to notice the new page.

Just so people know, I am NOT giving up on making this comic or even getting tired of it. The fact is that the process of moving has taken a lot more time and effort over the past month than anyone could have reasonably expected. My update schedule will continue to be hazy, probably for another month. But in the mean time I'll do my best to post at least 2 comics a month (honestly, at an absolute minimum) and hopefully return to a normal once a week or better schedule after that.

I'm still keeping track of the number of missed weeks I haven't made up for. If you're keeping score, the running total is 9 so far, but I still cling to the deluded opium-dream of not only catching up but building a buffer. Hey, this is #42, and if I made up for all lost time I'd be at #51. That's an 82.35% success rate, approximately, and last time I checked that was still a passing grade.

Do the comments I attach to my comics come across as overly self-depreciating?

A friend suggested that I should call them "Chris's Apology Corner." Instead of posting comics, I could post photographs of random objects or animals, accompanied by detailed descriptions of what the image might have looked like had I been more talented. "Okay, see the kitten? Just imagine its a massive squid-dragon thing, writhing terribly in its own horrid juices. And the laundry basket its sitting in? If you'll bare with me for a moment you'll understand how it's intended it represent a vast cyclopean vista strewn with incomprehensible non-euclidean shapes, the remnants of an alien city destroyed in some distant epoch of Earth's forgotten history before life as we know it first oozed about the primordial sea. You see, if you squint just so..."

It would certainly be an original approach, as far as I know. At least, compared to my own admittedly derivative work. And hey, I think I could manage to update every day.

TRANSCRIPT

The figure extends its arm toward me. There’s no weapon that I can see, but I feel as though there were. I’m overcome by a sense of helplessness, like when I was a child and my parents caught me doing something I wasn’t supposed to, and I knew that no matter what I said, punishment was inevitable. I usually feel this way around doctors. I’m not going back to the hospital now, am I?

It takes a step forward into the light and now I can see that it’s a man with a bushy goatee. He wears a deep grimace, like he’s not any happier to see me than I am to see him. He’s bald, with a familiar tattoo patterned across the left side of his head and part of his face.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him,” the now familiar figure spoke to someone, not me.

“...G-G-George?”

END First Interlude

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