Interruption of service announcement redux.

I'm starting to think the interruption in the blogging may be permanent -- another unfinished Robotech-related project on my part, like the various comic synopsis/blogging projects I've been playing with for the past decade-plus. Here's the situation as it stands.

Three days after I got back from RT 25: THE CELEBRATION, I lost my fifth manager in not quite two years. The district manager tapped me to serve as interim manager until he can find a replacement, although it seems what he really wants is for me to step up and say I'll take the job on a permanent basis. I'd rather not do that, but I'm taking a "wait and see" attitude on it -- I'm waiting to see what my first paycheck as interim manager looks like, and what my workload is like once the nearest hiring manager sends me some additional staff. Right now our store is terribly understaffed, and even on my days off I find I'm stopping by and calling in to make sure things are proceeding apace. I come home exhausted, and have no energy to spend three or four hours analyzing a Robotech episode or comic book or whatever. At most, when I come home I throw in a DVD and lean back and try to relax -- and then feel guilty about it, because in the back of my head I'm thinking, "I should be writing a blog post, or drawing something, or doing SOMETHING constructive."

Unfortunately for all of you who were following my latest laughable attempt to maintain daily blogging activities, that "something constructive" won't be the Roboblog for the foreseeable future. This isn't a big dramatic "I'M LEAVING ROBOTECH FOREVER" shutdown like last time; this is totally about me and my own energy level and my work schedule, not about negative energy floating around in the community and associating Robotech with a fractured fandom or whatever the heck was going on in my head last year. I'm reserving the right to come back to the blog later if and when I step back from my current position, or find another job elsewhere, or get myself fired -- basically anything that lands me a great heaping pile of free time to return to gazing deeply into the depths of the Robotech TV series and its twenty tons of printed spin-off material.

I still will need a creative outlet, something that allows me to express myself in a positive way that makes me feel like I'm not just a zombie-like retail monkey, and I do have an idea what that might be. If and when something comes of this idea, I'll let you all know. It's not SCWONKEY DOG this time -- no, that's on hold just like the blog, because that requires even MORE energy and effort than the blog; that requires me to dig into the depths of my being and tear out bits of my soul, silly as that may sound, especially given that on the surface it just looks like a twisted psuedo-mature Saturday morning space opera action cartoon. But at its core, SCWONKEY is a project of self-examination; what I need to do right now is something a little lighter. If this does go forward, it's going to be another webcomic project. A friend of mine's been bugging me to collaborate on something with him for months now, and I'm thinking I might go ahead and do it. I'm shooting off that e-mail sometime in the morning.

So, until I've got time to come back here and start hammering out the Robotech thoughts again, this is Captain JLS, signing off.

See you on the next go-around.

Heading to Wizard World Chicago ...

Just a note to all my pals in ROBOTECH-land -- I'm heading out of town for about a week, in order to attend Wizard World Chicago. I'll actually be set up in the Artists' Alley at table #4212 along with a couple of co-conspirators -- I'll be selling copies of my Scwonkey Dog comics, but if you just want to drop by and say hello, or have one of the handful of ROBOTECH-related books I've contributed to over the past year or so (for example, The Art of Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles) that you want signed, any attention and conversation will be appreciated. I've got a feeling it's gonna be a looooooooooong weekend!

I'll see about getting another ROBOBLOG CHRONICLES video up the day I get back, though I think I'll probably be spending the better part of next Tuesday evening trying desperately to get the next page of Scwonkey Dog up before Wednesday morning ... so, no promises there.

Hope to see a few of you in the Windy City (or rather, a suburb of it)!

The Roboblog Chronicles: Episode 21 - Sum of its Parts

Watch this NOW.



If you have any questions about what you've just seen, do not hesitate to e-mail me at jlswitzer@gmail.com. I'll put up an FAQ by the end of the week.

Oh, and SPREAD THE WORD!

Whoops! Apologies and cross-promotion.

"WAIT, THAT'S NOT ROBOTECH! I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT IS!"

Well, what you're looking at is the reason why there hasn't been any posting since the thirteenth. I even actually recorded a Roboblog Chronicles video right before I posted last, with every intention of putting it up and then putting up the other thing in the evening.

Ha! Alas, my enthusiasm for my current endeavor killed all those plans. What really sucks is that I have to rerecord it, too, once I want to post it, because it contained time-sensitive material.

Thing is, I literally haven't slept for more than six hours within the past three days because I want to spend all night chained to the drawing table, working on this personal project here.

I haven't actually mentioned what this is. It's an ongoing action/adventure/sci-fi/fantasy/romance/drama webcomic thing based on a universe of ideas that have been rattling around in my head forever, anchored by a character I created when I was three years old. So yeah, crazy stuff. It's called Scwonkey Dog, and can be found at www.scwonkey.com. I'm eleven pages in right now, and I started on page twelve this afternoon. I've also been going back and redrawing things all along, because the old drawing muscles are only finally starting to get warmed up and some of the early art is kinda weak as a consequence. Though I've reached the point where I'm thinking, "Meh, as long as it isn't TOO ugly and gets the idea across, it stays."

I'll probably change some of those drawings later anyway, though. I can never quite leave things well enough alone.

Anyhoo, as I said in the Twitter box on the sidebar, it feels so damn good to be getting all excited about something of my own, something spinning from my own head, instead of worrying and fretting about someone else's property. I still love ROBOTECH to death, but y'know, as long as I'm on this high, posting might be light to nonexistent. Sorry, folks. Not saying I'm quitting -- not quite yet -- but we may be on hiatus for a while. Which is a shame, because I do have something really cool I want to share. Maybe after I hit the first real cliffhanger ...

Roboblog Chronicles delay. | Toynami @ AX coverage

I just remembered that the AC adapter and Firewire cord for my camera are in my suitcase, which U.S. Airways failed to send along to United for my final connecting flight back to Kansas City. I could record the intro and commentary -- the camera itself is in my laptop bag -- but I still wouldn't be able to get it into the computer. The suitcase is supposed to be coming along via FedEx, but are they really going to drop my suitcase off on my porch on the Fourth of July? It would certainly be a shock. We'll see.

*sigh*

(Even worse -- my cell phone charger was in there. No juice 'til the bag turns up. Ugh.)

Anyway ...

---

Reader and Figures.com contributor Scott Rubin points me to his coverage of the Toynami booth at Anime Expo. I got some footage of the Voltron and ROBOTECH displays myself, which you'll be able to see when/if my luggage arrives (or I track down another Firewire cord), but for more static and less potentially nausea-inducing images (trust me, I'm a terrible cameraman), clicky-click here. Some slightly interesting developments in there. (The big one I noticed

Roboblog Chronicles tomorrow night, business right now.

• I'm selling stuff on eBay right now -- a hefty stack of comic books and a pile of action figures. No ROBOTECH stuff, but mostly anime-related stuff nonetheless. This is going towards my Anime Expo fund -- got a ticket, got a room, now I just need to be able to eat when I get there ...


• Speaking of which, as I just said, I have booked my room for the Anime Expo '07 weekend, so I'm not looking for a place to hang my hat. Now I'm looking for someone who needs a room and wouldn't mind crashing with me. If you're in need of a spot to crash for AX, drop me a line and we'll work something out.

I'm very sorry about not having a new video up, but I spent the entire evening posting the above eBay auctions. It's the first night I haven't felt all fuzzy in the head all week long, and like I said, the AX fund needs dollars, and I honestly wouldn't mind getting back some of the space that this stuff was taking up, either. But not to worry, after tomorrow I'm off of work for the next two and a half months (barring any change of jobs -- that would surely reduce that figure), so I'll be able to work long into the night on the new Roboblog Chronicles episode if need be. It's just not in the cards for tonight, unfortunately; I gotta be up bright & early in the morning for one last day.

More typing, less talking.

Been feeling a little under the weather the past couple of nights, so no Roboblog Chronicles until maybe tomorrow night at best, but I still found the time to keep working steadily on the Robotech comics site. Read up on the adventures of the 15th Squadron in the post-Masters era in Rolling Thunder Part 1, and Jonathan Wolfe's clashes with the Invid on Earth in #1 and Invid War#4.


Man, all these Macross II songs on my ROBOTECH work playlist have me wanting to write about that sequel comic series Viz did back in the day, The Micron Conspiracy (essentially a kind of Malcontent Uprisings set in the Macross II universe), but I've still got so many actual ROBOTECH comics left in the queue. I always did like that series, in some ways even more than the original anime series itself. Maybe after the pile by the computer has dwindled a bit ...

FYI

The new episode of The Roboblog Chronicles will be up by Tuesday morning. This week's show is a little more complicated than I'm used to, so it's going to take another night's worth of work. You'll see why when it's up.

Update: Make that Wednesday morning. Hey, you can't rush art, and what's in the works this week is about as close to art as you're ever going to get on this show.