I.

Voting for the Top Webcomics rankings reset on the 1st, and I’ve added a brand new voting incentive to encourage you to go vote.  There’s a shiny new map of the Great Republic and surrounding countries waiting for you just a couple of clicks away.

You can vote every 24 hours, and if you guys would hit the little link in the upper left every time you’re here, that would be awesome.

Thanks to the magic of Facebook and getting an early start in over the weekend, Clockworks is currently in the top 100.  I have no idea if it will stay there, but it would be pretty awesome if it did.

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II.

Shirts!

I’m still finalizing the design for the first shirt.  I want to do something cool and interesting.  I don’t just want to slap the logo on some shirts (although I might do a run of those later), but I don’t want to make something too obscure.  Expect a pre order announcement in the next week or so.

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III.

The Peacock King is a free online serial novel.  The latest update was a 4 part halloween zombie outbreak tale Hall of the Dead, featuring a cameo by yours truly.  (Well, named after yours truly, and inspired by Toby.)

Go read it!

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IV.

Today’s Questionable Content features the return of Jimbo (yay!) and a pretty amusing steampunk joke.

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V.

So far the response to the Gentleman Caller has been pretty positive.  The PDF was viewed/downloaded about 200 times, which is pretty trivial compared to how many hits the comic gets, but is pretty exciting to think about for an adventure I thought up.

I don’t know if anyone had a chance to run it over the weekend.  If you do, I’d love to hear an actual play report, or just a few comments.   Expect the updated version with fancy art and layout and any needed corrections in the next couple of weeks.  (Hopefully.)

Once the final version is up, I’ll be pimping it out to the peginc forums, savage heroes, etc.

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That’s about it for today.  Livestream either in the AM or late at night for Tuesday’s comic.

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Edit to add: The first episode of Riese came out today, on the internets.  It’s a 10 minute steampunkish adventure, the first of 5 episodes and maybe more.  All in all, it’s not bad.  I’d have liked to have seen some dialogue and character in this first episode, but I know all too well how tricky it can be to introduce a story.  So far all we know is there’s a heroine, she has a wolf, she kicks butt, and some dudes in awesome coats are chasing her.  There’s a bit more than that, but that recap really doesn’t spoil anything.

I will rant about my one pet peeve, in hopes that if they do a second series they’ll change it:  the bad guy has a bunch of gears glued to his armor, to show that he’s “steampunk”.  For the love of all that’s holy don’t do this people.  Take the time to at least make it look like your steampunk costume/armor/widget could theoretically do something, and isn’t just a bunch of gears hotglued to something else.

Other than that one nitpick (and the horribleness of the closing credits song – which sounds like a desperately poor man’s Pop Will Eat Itself), it’s a pretty impressive showing.  For a self produced independant show, it’s amazing in the fact that it exists at all.  The fact that it’s of comparable quality to something like Legend of the Seeker is pretty damned astounding.

Anyway, go, check it out.