I refuse to call it hiatus, but we’re not getting much done for the next couple weeks. Stay tuned to the homepage, the RSS feed, or our twitter(s) for update info.
I’ll see what I can get done myself, but we’re out of town and away from most of our tools. Blame my family for not disowning me years ago.
OK, consider them blamed.
I eagerly await the next comic.
I find that it’s tough sometimes as a devoted reader. I like the artist, the art and the story. I appreciate that the content is free and that the artists and writers have lives, so we should be only grateful for what we get.
But, I find that if any comic or story doesn’t update at least once a week, I find that it’s hard to follow. I often have to review the last several comics to catch up on whats happening.
Note that this limitation is about me and not about any particular comic or artist. It could be the best drawn, most interesting comic with the most personable and funny artists/writers and this limitation would still stand because it’s all about me and not about anyone else.
There are a handful of ways to make it easier on folks like me though. If there was a way on the website to click directly back to the previous few comics (not including news/commentary) then the review would go faster.
I use the iGoogle home page (a RSS tracker) to monitor this comic and many others. If the RSS feed’s article title had the Comic’s date in it and was Clearly marked “Comic” and didn’t include news updates. BTW, its not that i don’t care about news, but i want the RSS feed for that separate and/or optionally combined.
For my tastes, A great example of a good RSS feed entry looks like:
RSS Feed name: Close to the Chest
Comic: CttC: #85 – Friendly Reinforcements – April 17th, 2009 (whole line linked directly to the comic)
CttC #085 – Millie gets the door (with a link directly to the comic).
I rarely see such consistency and am often discouraged when I check people’s comics only to find a news entry or a comic I’ve seen before. When I get to the comic, I want to quickly be able to see the last two or three comics to remind me of what’s happening.
An interesting aside is that comics can update slower if they don’t have an ongoing plot. XKCD and Calvin and Hobes are both comics where each comic could stand alone without considering. Girl Genius (which i love) and Prince Valiant (not that i read it) are comics deeply tied to ongoing actions and plot, such a comic would need to be updated several times a week to to be followed (GG is 3x a week, PV is 5x a week).
With CttC, maybe the answer here is not have as many frames in a comic and update more often. I’m not sure, what do you think?