Well, I thought the date went well.

So after six years of faithful service, my backwards compatible Playstation3 that I’ve had since launch has finally died, it’s final moments playing Rocko’s Modern Life on Netflix. I had just renewed PSN+ on that damn thing, only for it to die the day before Max Payne 3 came out. Fate is a cruel mistress. Luckily I’ve got plenty of other shit to do and play but dammit, I easily used the PStriple the most and it’s going to be expensive as hell to repair.

But that’s the only thing I can be upset about, because everything else has been WONDERFUL! Thanks to our Hiveworks affiliation and Antares’s awesome marketing, we’ve had so many hits over the last few days! Each day has seen about 40 to 50,000 hits and it feels SO GOOD, MAN. I mean, have you seen how many comments you guys posted last update? Granted, it was a pretty ball-breaking page, but jesus, over 50 comments! That hasn’t happened since the Rinnie vs Ash page I think! You guys are amazing, Antares is amazing, everything is amazing and I love everyone! You’re all the best! All of you!

But that’s the end of today’s update. We’re working as hard as we can to get as many pages done this week because Leslie’s going to spend a few days babysitting for her parents and won’t be able to do comics for three days. We’re not expecting delays, but if it happens, we’ll let you know! Until then, see you Sunday!

You’re entering a dimension…a dimension of loneliness. A dimension of passive-aggressive misogyny. A dimension of lost hope. You have entered…the Friendzone.

A lot of people have guessed where this whole scenario would end up and normally I love writing things people can’t guess correctly at, but I like this. Right from the beginning, we had set up this elaborate personification of the friendzone. Initial write-ups included Matt getting stabbed with metaphorical knives before getting tossed into the friendzone by a horrifying version of Ash, but I think this is a lot less scary.

So, it’s our first few days of being on The Hiveworks, and oh my god it has helped so amazingly. Just in the last couple of days, I’ve seen so many new readers, so many new comments. We even finally got our ad up on the front page of MSPaint Adventures! THE AMERICAN AD-BOX! We finally did it, people. We’re big-time webcomic players now.

Unfortunately, with the new affiliation, we had to remove some of our sidebar features to make room for the ads. The Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook icons have been reduced from their large handdrawn icons to the original logos, and the wallpaper/donation button has also disappeared, all in the interest of keeping that right sidebar neat. Not nearly as bad as it sounds, of course. More ads means we can hopefully stop living off hot dogs and ramen, and we still have all the essential functionality. If you guys want to toss money directly at us, you can always click the Support Us button and get yourself a wallpaper in the process! But otherwise, we think things are looking good, and as long as we get to see more people enjoying our comic, then Leslie and I are as happy as can be.

That’s all for today. If you guys are interested, our good friend Chloe at Go Get a Roomie is doing a little fundraiser so that she can make a living off her webcomic! For those that want to see her succeed, stop on by and throw some cash at her! Maybe one day, you guys can do the same when we’re living like webcomic rockstars! But until then, see you Wednesday!

It all had to come to this eventually, didn’t it?

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE! Blaster Nation is now a part of the Hiveworks webcomic hub! We’ve been speaking to our good friend and Hiveworks founder, Antares, and he thought we were just perfect for his site! What this means for you guys is that you’ll get to see a little logo at the top right of the sidebar and a few more ads here and there. What it means for us is that we get a LOT of help in marketing the site, we’ll get to collaborate with some awesome webcomic individuals (more on that later), and best of all, it means we’ll get more ad money and most importantly, MORE READERS!  Antares is a little bit of a marketing wiz and is going to making some pushes towards getting us noticed, and that’s probably the best thing we could ever ask for! Leslie and I are even going to make an internet radio ad for him to use! It’s all going to be so AWESOME!

Naturally, there’s a lot more work to be done with all this. Leslie and I have to put up some new  pieces of art for the Hiveworks site and a few things on our own site will have to be adjusted to fit with the new additions, but I think it’ll all be great and I’m sure you guys will either like it or not be bothered by it at all! The future of Blaster Nation is looking bright, people! And you guys were the ones to set it all in motion!

So who all will we be collaborating with, you may ask? Let me introduce you to the other websites on Hiveworks! No, I’m not being told to advertise them, I’m legitimately interested in these guys. They’re pretty neat.

First up is the site that actually set it all in motion, Go Get a Roomie! A sweet little comic about an uninhibited lass named Roomie who believes in free love and is an active participant and champion of numerous lesbian romantic activities! Our own character Rinnie has a ton of similarities to her, and we’ve been fans of this comic for quite some time. We had originally sent the creator an email to see if she was interested in a link exchange, but after reading us and falling in love, she sent us to Antares who struck up this neat deal! For all this, she gets a whole damn paragraph of attention!

Second is Sister Claire, a strange and twisted tale of nuns and witches and toilet-travelling messengers! It’s colorful, cute, kind of weird beyond all hell but in a good, creative way! We like it so you’ll probably like it too!

Third is Four Tales, a fantasy/horror graphic novel series published as a tri-weekly webcomic. The art is incredibly atmospheric and the whole thing just feels so damn mysterious and foreboding. Certainly a welcome change from these slice-of-shenanigans!

Fourth is Misfile, and I wish I actually had time enough to read over it so I can give you guys a proper synopsis! But from what I can tell, it’s an anime-inspired tale with a pretty intricate backstory and a love of automobiles! Also, it’s been going on since 2004, and that amazes me!

Fifth is Namesake, a fantasy-adventure about a world-traveling girl struggling to survive in a number of fairy tale-based lands! It’s got some fantastic use of color and the characters all look really interesting. I seriously can’t wait to read this one. Again, I’m not a paid advertiser! I really do have a commercial voice, though, I should exploit it.

Which brings us to the the final site in the crew, 91.8: The Fan! Strangely enough, it’s not a webcomic at all, but a J-Pop-themed  internet radio station! 91.8 streams daily and plays the best in Japanese music, so give it a listen if you’re into that! Leslie and I will actually be doing a radio ad for Blaster Nation on their show, so you can all look forward to that!

Alright, that’s enough promotion for today. Time to cook Leslie some food and collect my sweet ad check. See you guys on Sunday!

Some music to go with your update.

Okay, so this update was a liiiiittle late and short on words. Apologies are on me! See, Leslie had a full day of shading and detailing planned out for her today, but I ruined it by taking her to see The Avengers. Good enough of a reason to delay the comic as any. Leslie loves herself some Captain America and Iron Man, but was never really too fond of the jolly green giant and the Norse mullet. I actually really like Hulk myself. I relate to him in a bunch of different ways; always angry all the time, trouble fitting into clothes, huge ass, etc. So it was good to finally see a live-action movie do some fucking justice to the Hulk. So good, in fact, that it turned Leslie completely around on the Hulk. Maybe not enough to go buy some comics, but watching Hulk smash stuff got us really inspired to work on our own big-dude-smashing-stuff story.

Anyway, after the movie we got some burgers, walked along some rainy streets, dicked around in a bookstore, and got some delicious ice cream on the way home to finish this comic. It might’ve taken awhile to finish this one, but the next page should be much quicker. It’s actually already almost completely pencilled out! Just needs inks and colors. This chapter’s moving kinda slow and we really want to get to the good parts, so we’re trying to hurry up and get some buffer going so we hopefully do a double update at least once before it’s all over. We’re terribly excited for the next chapter and want to get to work on it as soon as possible! No time to spare!

So, if you’re done with reading through all those words on today’s update, why don’t you go check out the Bonus section for some Blaster Nation art? I updated it last week, but just in case you didn’t see that tiny little edit, I’m plugging it again! We’ve got a bunch of new art on there, plus literally everything we’ve ever posted on our blogs ever! And once you’re done with that, then maybe you could read some other webcomics? Our good ol’ friend Vicky has finally starting updating his own comic (Sidequest Story) again, so go check it out! It’s pretty cute.

And that’s all for us today. See on Wednesday! Or probably just Tuesday evening, we’ll see.

Sorry for the delayed update, guys! Had to wait until after work to post it. Literally just got home from work, and while I’m typing, Leslie is working on uploading all those sketches we’ve been promising for two updates now. They’ll be done soon after I post this (and after we eat some delicious Leslie-cooked omelettes) so we’ll update this post and give you guys a message on facebook/twitter when they’re done.

So, want to hear a progress report on shirts? We HAD the money to shop around for some silk-screen printing shops around the area, but then one of my tires blew out and we discovered another one that’s about to go pretty soon, so that ate up mostly all of it. That plus a ton of bills made this a pretty terrible week, financially. We’ll be fine, and I’m sure we can save up the money again once I get some overtime at work, but hey, if you wanna help us out, there’s always the donation page!

As far as other Blaster Nation news goes, this current chapter will be ending this month, so Leslie and I have been working out the details for the next chapter, which will be focusing on two characters we only saw for three pages way back on Chapter 2. The next chapter will also introduce a small cast of new characters that we think are going to be fun as hell to work with, and I think it will easily be a fan-favorite chapter. We’re loving it and I’m sure you guys will too, and if you want a sneak peak, the previously mentioned sketches will actually include a couple rough drafts of a couple characters!

Of course, those sketches have to be uploaded first, and before that can happen, I need to eat some delicious Leslie omelettes. So until then, see you Sunday!

EDIT: OH! Let me respond to some comments here so that you don’t have to skip back a page to see a response there. Someone had suggested trying Topatco for t-shirts, but unfortunately, signing up with them requires a history of selling t-shirts or a minimum of 500,000 regular unique viewers. Unfortunately, we have neither of those (YET). We will investigate other suggested options, though!

EDIT 2: The Bonus section has been updated! And we included way more art than we ever intended! Basically almost any and all pictures we’ve ever uploaded anywhere ever! Go check that shit out!

OH MAN LOOK AT ALL THAT TANTALIZING FANSERVICE, IS THERE ANYTHING WE WON’T STOOP TO?

Status update on our t-shirts! Leslie and I are looking into various silk screen-printing services. It’s kind of expensive on our part, but we want you guys to have some quality shirts and stuff (plus I’m sure we can make the money back in the long run. Capitalism, ho!) . There ARE websites like cafepress that don’t require any money up front to sell things, but we make significantly less and I’ve heard that the stuff is slightly lower in quality. No idea if it’s true or not. If anything, Leslie and I could always start up on cafepress and move on to silk-screen printing when we have the money to do so. To be honest, I kind of like the selection on cafepress. We can do shirts, buttons, mousepads, even men and women’s underwear! We’ll figure that out once we’ve finalized our designs. Have six in mind so far, and I think you guys will like them!

As for non-merchandising news, we’ve recently purchased Manga Studio for Leslie, a pretty neat digital art program with a unfortunate name. Great for lettering and inking according to Leslie, and can do a lot of stuff Photoshop just isn’t as good at. Still, it’s not quite something she’s used to so it might be a few updates before you see it incorporated into the comic. Meanwhile, I’ve been replaying both Max Payne games because I’m super excited for Max Payne 3. Leslie’s also been playing a lot of Kid Icarus and kicking my ass at Skullgirls but I swear to god her Ms. Fortune is just plain devastating to all anuses everywhere.

Aaaand that’s it for today! See you guys on Wednesday! We’ll try to have some bonus art straight from Leslie’s sketchbook up on the site sometime before then!

For those of you who didn’t live through the 90s on North American television, please see the video below.

I pity the youth of our generation, for they will not have such great kids shows to grow up with. Nickelodeon had the best damn series of live-action kids shows and I have no idea why they stopped doing those. Amazing set designs, themes, and really cool challenges. Shit was so AWESOME. Everyone can agree that Legends of the Hidden Temple was the best simply because of that bad-ass temple run, but I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Guts. No real gimmicks, a slightly less cheesy host, just a mini-olympics for kids with a bad-ass mountain. What was even cooler was when they graduated to Global Guts and got kids from around the world to compete on some ridiculously fun-looking challenge games. Each kid got a translated introduction and a little montage video of what they like and how much cooler their country is compared to everyone else’s. It was such a cool little show and I hope it gets resurrected just like everything else from the 90s is slowly returning.

So, yeah. Leslie and I have been doing nothing but marathonning The Last Airbender. Almost at the end of season 2, will probably finish that up after this post. We also watched the live-action movie and well, I kinda wish I could have spent those two hours doing anything else. I love bad movies, but it wasn’t even really that bad. Like that douche on a messageboard who insists that he’s trolling, it’s just wrong enough to be slightly irritating but too bland to really care. At least I could laugh at Dragonball Evolution (and oh god I laughed so much), and at least the Super Mario/Street Fighter live action movies had some heart under all that campiness. Still, I’m probably pretty late to complain about this movie and at the very least, it had some really pretty backdrops.

Alright, that’s enough out of me. See you guys on Sunday!

ROCK WALL CLIMBING, HOOO!

Not gonna lie, this comic’s kinda short on content. Plenty of art but not much story advancement. For those who wait by your computer for us to update, we’re sorry that you probably blew through this page pretty quickly. This is one of those pages that, while totally necessary, are much better for when people are blowing through the archives and don’t have to wait another three days to find out where the hell we’re going with this. And for you guys who diligently read every update as it happens, we thank you!

So, Legend of Korra is out now I think, and I’m really loving its character designs because that’s all I’ve allowed myself to see. I’ve never watched the original series! I think I was in some cool anime kid phase where I rejected anything not from glorious nippon and a western cartoon with anime aesthetics was a crime against the Toonami nation. But Leslie and I have started watching the series and I seriously can’t believe how good it is. It’s got some weak moments and episodes, sure, but the humor is really well-executed, the art’s pretty consistent and even though it’s pretty rough, you can tell there’s a ton of heart in it. Plus, the fight scenes are really damn cool. I know I’m praising this series MUCH too late, but damn, I feel like I really missed out.

Anyways, after I submit this blog post, Leslie and I will be working on print and t-shirt ideas! Basically doing a bunch of designs and listing everything we want to do. See, we actually got a table for Mechacon! It’s several months away, but we’ve got our spot reserved at Table 117 and we’re planning as much as we can for stuff we can bring there and give to you guys on the site! I seriously doubt we have a lot of Louisiana fans at the moment, but hey, if you happen to be vacationing in New Orleans around early September, maybe you guys can swing on by! If not, we’ll share all the details with you when that faithful day happens.

But time to go chill on the couch with Leslie and work on some t-shirt ideas! See you on Wednesday!

Somebody should let Ash know that people don’t go to college to learn manners

Blaster Nation news update! We posted earlier today on Facebook that we were interested in putting up some purchasable merchandise to sell on the site! We let you guys decide on what we should focus on first! Surprisingly, downloadable side-comics were voted dead last with a whopping 1 vote, but I’m assuming that’s because people just wanted the top voted item much more: t-shirts and accessories! So that’s what we’ll be working towards. Now, Leslie and I are firm believers in keeping things fashionable. I don’t know anyone who would just want to wear a shirt with some cheap stock art of an obscure webcomic character on it! So we want these things to look presentable without saying “Look at me, I buy my t-shirts from webcomics”. Do YOU guys have any ideas in mind? We’ve got a few ideas kicking in our head, but we’re welcome to suggestions!

In other news, Skullgirls is still amazing, but boy do I wish I hadn’t sold off all my Capcom fightsticks after I got supermad because Megaman Legends 3 got cancelled. Probably not my smartest move ever. Can’t decide on a main because all the characters are too damn fun, but I don’t want to do tag-teams because I suck at timing tag-based combos and also just generally suck at fighting games. Really want to learn Parasoul but I keep getting my ass whooped by Valentines and Ms. Fortunes. I can’t do nothin’ when these bitches get in my face. SIGH, VIDEO GAME PROBLEMS.

One day I’ll have more to write about than sales pitches and video games. Until then, we’ll see you on Sunday!

WE’RE MILLIONAIRES NOW!

So, yeah. Today was kind of a rough week. Lots of stuff happening, lots of work on my end and family-related business on Leslie’s ended up causing many interruptions in the whole drawing process. Originally the plan was going to be to update with an actual page PLUS this, but the only thing we were able to finish was this picture. I had done all I could, so it was all on Leslie to shade, detail, and fix two whole pictures in a single day, which given our standard of quality here on Blaster Nation, just wasn’t possible. So I personally told her to just finish this celebration picture and we’ll finish the comic by the next update. This way, we can get the next page done quickly and get some buffer going so we can update even faster! I hate updating late more than you hate waiting for late updates, I can assure you! Next update will actually be some plot advancing stuff, you have my word.

BUT YEAH, ONE MILLION VIEWS WHOOOOOO! It feels so cool to see such a huge number when we’ve only been around for little more than a year. If I could throw a physical party with you guys right now, I would. We’d play music, eat cake, and awkwardly cling to the wall with our hands in our pocket as we just half-heartedly bob our head to the music and pray nobody approaches us. We have pretty empty walls, we can have a lot of people cling to them at our party! Unfortunately, 1 million views doesn’t necessarily mean 1 million viewERS, but those of you who keep reading have clicked enough to account for 1 million people and that’s impressive as hell! You guys are amazing! The best, even! I wouldn’t want anyone else viewing this website but you! (Note: Please disregard that previous statement and recommend everyone you know to Blaster Nation) We’ll be working extra hard so that we’ll be worthy of another million views in the future!

But yeah, as far as the picture itself goes, we definitely wanted to have a celebration theme going on, and seeing as it’s Spring Break (or close to it, honestly I forget when Spring Break happens), we figured we’d use that as a theme. All the elements of Spring Break are present and accounted for: Beer, music, food, beach, and boobs. Leslie and I were going on fanservice withdrawal with this Matt/Ash chapter, so this was a welcome treat and I hope you all feel the same!

Thank you all so much for your continued support, and we’ll see you all Wednesday!

Note: Want a bigger version of today’s picture? CLICK HERE!