Sept. 15th: Down at the Used Car Lot

Comic finished, sorry for the wait.  Once again i am going to bed now, so g’night and thanks for reading my semi-successful weekly god-knows-what-in-a-blender.

and how the year does linger,

WR

More by this author

Doing a new comic strip over at Cracked.com. No walls of text, no sombre moments, very few Sphynxes, but hopefully some laughs so have a look if you’re interested. Should be a regular deal, barring any natural disasters or in-home bear attacks (those bears are wily, can’t be too careful). More on this later. As you were!

wr

The Whole T-Shirts Thing

OKAY, SO…

Okay, so i went ahead and spent fifty thousand hours setting everything up and so now there are t-shirts, there are t-shirts. Did you ever want a shirt with a belligerent mythical creature on it? Well, now’s your chance, kids and cadets. You can even choose the color of the shirt (except in Europe, but more on that later). You can even not buy any because i realize that you’re here for comix and not clothing, but more on that later as well. At any rate, what i do know is that i worked hard at some designs and then i worked hard at fixing up the website (have a look around, it’s, well, vaguely different in spots. New home page and logo and such), so one may judge for one’s self the results. As for me, i’m kind of…

…CONFLICTED!

I mean, i realize that selling merchandise is the new business model of online comix, and i realize that i’ve been spending the last four years drawing and drawing and literally not making a dime, but i’m still not used to the whole t-shirts thing. It’s just kind of weird and surreal. I’m not a seller of things, i’m a, uh, comics guy. I’ll get used to it though, don’t worry about me. Gotta make comix to make money to buy time to make more comix. Support your non-local comicker! Plus the Sphynx shirt comes with a guarantee that you will not be eaten by a Sphynx while wearing it. Can’t beat that. Fuckin’ can’t. Anyway…

CAVEAT

My goal had always been to use a shirt manufacturer/shipper with distribution centers in both North America and Europe, thus removing the need for people to pay ridiculous shipping fees to import t-shirts from other hemispheres. The North American side of things is good to go, but the European side is limited to white t-shirts only for the time being (yes i am serious). This is due to stupid, boring technological issues, both mine and the manufacturer’s, and i shall not waste your time with further descriptions and vague promises. European/Asian customers may peruse the full line of Virus Comix t-shirts at the North American store, but they will have to (sigh) pay increased shipping charges if they buy anything. My apologies for this, and as soon as the situation is remedied i will post an announcement.

The Gist of it

Have a comic. Got some readers. Made some shirts for ‘em. They are nice (the shirts and the readers). Thanks for reading, and now i’m gonna go mentally clear my head of the last four days of capitalistic distractions and get back to comicking. Up next: strip #99. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Rowntree

PS: To anyone who’s sent me a friend request on Facebook, i haven’t answered only because i’m never on Facebook, plus i only have as Facebook friends the half-dozen or so people that are closest to me. So don’t be offended or anything when you don’t hear back from me. I appreciate the requests though! Friends? Friends.

PPS: The t-shirts are print-on-demand, so i unfortunately don’t have the power to send anyone free thank-you merch (you know who you are). This displeases me, but it’s for the greater good. I’m using an online service, you see, so i don’t have to spend thousands of hours i don’t have mailing off shirts and renting cars to ferry around boxes of merch and buying crowbars to fend off vicious nazi shirt thieves and whatever the hell else is involved in running a business. Poison spiders, maybe? Probably. Fuck that.

November 16th: “Sphynx IX”

Comic finished, find it here. Gettin’ late, gotta run. Whatever i had to say wasn’t interesting anyway.

Cheerio,

–Rowntree

July 13th: “Down at the Job Interview”

This week’s strip is dedicated to anyone who’s ever tried to get a job. It is also anti-dedicated to the dirty fucker who stole my bike on friday (that’s Toronto for you). I rudely gesture in your general direction, asshole. Anyway, this week’s comic is also dedicated to my friend Johnny “the Flying Pirahna” Fontaine (he knows who he is), who is going under the knife to repair some damage from a minor tiger attack. Well, not really, but he knows what I’m talkin’ about, so this one’s fer you, J. As for me, uh…well, that’s it for me. I’m off to the bike shop.

–Rowntree

July 6th: “Hypothetical Situation”

New comic now available.

–Rowntree

June 29th: “o–o”

Job done for another week. Jesus christ am I ever glad I replaced my old computer. No more waiting around for seven hours in Paint Shop while the processor leisurely eases itself off its bar stool and slowly crunches a few numbers here and there in between schooners of absinthe. It’s all lightning-quick and molasses-free now. Or something. Look, I feel obliged to type something here, so there you have it: another snapshot of an International Man of Action, coloring his weirdo comics with a little magic box. Until next time…

–Rowntree

June 22nd: “In Defense of Weird”

Another day, another comic that stopped making sense on friday but by then it was too late to think of something else so here it is as preceded and described by this sentence which you might say is maybe a run-on sentence but who’s to say what is and isn’t a run-on sentence in this world of grey areas and blurred lines and comics that don’t make sense even to the person who drew them which is too bad because it’s his birthday tomorrow and he really should take one day a year to feel quasi-pseudo-good about himself. Oh yeah, and I bought me a new PC, hence much setting-up and downloading and installing and so on, hence the lateness of this week’s installment of the comic. Switching computers is pretty much just as bad as switching apartments, I’m finding, but at least I finally replaced my 10-year old monitor–which will result in a different look to the coloring of the comic, perhaps, because the brightness/contrast/whatever settings are all different now. Oh well, at least i’m not subconsciously inserting Chad Kroeger into my comics!! J’ACCUSE, Penny Arcade!!!

–Rowntree

June 15th: “Pizza Hut Sphynx”

This week’s comic now available in the usual place.

Other site updates this week:

Fixed up the About page and also the Links page, so, uh, oh boy howdy and all that. Well, that’s it for me this week.

–Rowntree

PS: It says “You Are Breakfast.”

Subnormality for March 23rd

Comic done, available in the usual manner. Come for the nudity, stay for the huge blocks of text. And then leave…because of the nudity and the huge blocks of text. I was like, “we should get more from our metaphors,” and then I made a comic. Surprising amounts of hairy, naked men and medieval-style peasants with the ragged clothing and the surprisingly good haircuts. Several vegetables were harmed in the making of this comic, including an onion and a red pepper. Negative references to “the online community” are present-company-excepted. See today’s GameFAQs poll results for what I’m referring to.

SITE NEWS:

viruscomix.com updates: Good Reviews and Bad Reviews sections updated and fixed up a bit. Added a second Links page with links not related to comics, for the desperately bored among you who trust my taste/associations. Added a couple new links to this blog’s Blogroll, including The Flowfield Unity (a different sort of comic), Steve Bell (a long-overdue link) and Garfield Minus Garfield (does what it says on the tin).

[EDIT: It's a frenzy of activity! I've added another link, TV Go Home, which isn't a comic and hasn't updated in five years, but is right now The Funniest Thing of All Time.]

–Rowntree