Hell Has Found Me

Beginning week two of a special 5 days per week update schedule! This special event is to give you all a special birthday present from me to you! If you missed the beginning, go to this link and start reading from there. I think you’ll find it to be a very amusing parody. The special schedule ends this Friday, a couple of days before my birthday (yay me)

In other news, I thought I’d bring some special attention to my PDQ comics… It still surprises me how many people say something like “what do you mean, you do 2 different webcomics??” Well, it’s true, and when I started the PDQs, I thought I would do it as a kind of not-so-serious, mess-around-with-the-space kind of thing. A longer form comic that I could do, Pretty Damn Quick. Well, I find that I really enjoy them, and the more I enjoy them, the longer they take. I’m still going to be doing them once per week, and I haven’t decided to make a separate site for them as I’m rather happy about them available as an incentive for voting. So all’s happy in Aleric-land, right?

Well, sure… but what if I wanted to take it a step further? I mean, the hardest thing that I’ve found about doing the PDQs is trying to find a new, unique and funny subject every week. What if I could solve the topic issue and demonstrate to you all how committed I am to doing them? Well, about 30 seconds after I had that thought, I ran across this on the net. 100 Manga art themes? Interesting idea! What if, instead of Manga, I used the same list and made it a 100 comic challenge? Sounds good to me!

So it’s official! 100 comics with pre-generated themes! with 1 per week, that’s almost TWO YEARS of comics coming your way, that is, unless a meteor falls out of the sky and lands on my head… or the zombies get me first.

Credit for the list goes to Angiechild on Deviantart. Remember, to be able to read the current PDQ, you must Vote!

Here is the list for the 100 Comic Challenge: Located on my Deviantart Journal

Hope you enjoy it!!

How have you been enjoying the every-day update schedule so far? Feel free to email me <aleric (at) scottv (dot) com> and let me know what you think!

News of the day: Aleric will NOT be going to Blizzcon this year because their freeking website locked up every time I reached the “enter your information” point. I was within a few clicks of getting the tickets 5 times over the 2 days the tickets were periodically available. Frustrated? I’d say so. Apparently, my Web-fu just wasn’t strong enough. Don’t worry though, I’ll try to find some solace in not going by doing something entertaining. Maybe it’ll be a Non-Blizzard party, or something like that.

In other news, I know that you don’t all necessarily care about American current events or politics, but I try to keep my ear to the ground, and this story about a town with a 24-hour curfew really got to me.

The short version is that one of the poorest towns in America with some of the lowest standards of living has so much crime and violence that the city council approved a ‘24 hour curfew’ for a week. The program was apparently successful enough that the city is extending the police’s power to set up additional zones ‘anywhere in the city‘.

Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that this ‘24 hour curfew’ is a euphemism for ‘martial law’ (heck, even the Mayor called it that). Police standing on street corners, toting guns and night-vision goggles asking anyone who is outside of their homes why they are there and what they are doing isn’t something that I see as strictly legal in the United States. The part that really worries me is that a civil liberties lawyer warned the city council, the Mayor apparently responded with “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.” We’ll just ignore the First Amendment’s right to free assembly (not being harassed for walking down the street) and the Fourth Amendment’s protection from unlawful search and seizure (questioned and searched without a warrant). I have a decent idea of what my rights are, but the wording of the law and the situations that may constitute probable cause can be so vague that it leads to more than a few violations of people’s rights. If one of these officers ask to stop someone, is the individual required to submit themselves to be questioned? Does ignoring the officer constitute probable cause and allows the civilian to be searched? Where is the line? At what point does this situation become a slippery slope and violations of civil rights become abuse of civilians and corruption?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for protecting the innocent and people in this town are certainly in a rough situation. I can’t even really say how bad the situation might be, since I’ve never been there myself, and I don’t know what the citizens are actually thinking. However, there must be some better solution that violating people’s civil rights, and this goes back to the basic idea of treating the symptom versus the underlying ailment. How long can this town maintain this martial law? How long before the citizens of these areas decide that enough is enough and they strike back at the officers that are holding their neighborhoods under martial law? What’s next? Homeland Security stepping in and calling them domestic terrorists? What happens when other, larger cities decide this is a great idea and put up their own ‘24 hour curfews’? Freedom isn’t free, and one of the costs is vigilance against these kinds of violations, even if it’s not in our home town.

Ok, that rant is over.

Feel free to send me an email and tell me what you think. If it’s cogent, relevant and well-written, I may even post it here. At some point, I’ll have a forum and you can discuss it and other things without my Aleric filter on.

In the mean time, please vote for us on Top Web Comics or visit the Twitter or Facebook links!

Cheers!

Aleric