My wife and I have been playing Diablo 3 on the Xbox for the last few nights. We played a bit of the PC version together but both of us agree this is much better. Controlling your character with an analog stick rather than with pointing and clicking just feels better to me. It could be that I was a console gamer long before I ever had a PC but the couch just feels like the right place for Diablo 3. Kara and I are both playing new characters so while we’re covering some of the stuff we already played on the PC we’re at least experiencing it in a new way. If you never played it on the PC I highly recommend you give the console version a shot.

Here is the next one.

The Lookouts pin set that we had for sale at PAX Prime is now available in our store.

The ammount of fan art I'm seeing for the Tithe is pretty amazing. We've never done anything before that has generated this sort of response. I'm getting songs and drawings and stories sent to me every day. I'm hearing from readers who are reading the Tithe with their own real daughters and loving it. I've actually walked by offices here at PA and heard girls that work here talking about what flower would grow in their hair if they were a daughter. I am so happy.

I'm gonna leave his up there; no reason to move it, so far as I can see. We're both doing the same thing now.

Page 5 has Hanna scared and alone in the forest doing the only thing she can think of, Calling the Thornwatch. We've spoken of them before on the site and even did a little three part comic based on them. The comic was from the point of view of the Lookouts though and they see the Thornwatch as oath breakers and criminals. Boys are warned to never call the Thornwatch no matter how dire their situation is.

Page 4 of the Tithe is one of my favorites. You’re not always able to get exactly what’s in your head out on the page. On this page though I feel like I hit all the emotions I was after. Here’s a look at my sketchbook for this page.

So, there are some strange things about our division of labor that can result in interesting outcomes.

Page 3 is up today and I have another high res panel for you.

Oh ho, who's this? Why yes, now that you ask, I am obsessed with the Triple Goddess. Between this and the sixth issue of the comic series, you've got some fairly strong datapoints there. There's a page later in the series I want to talk about, but I can't, which is sort of weird or me. As my cohort suggested previously, we are way ahead of the game on this project. We'd be way ahead by any reckoning, but specifically for us, it's almost inconceivable. We make comics seven to ten hours before they're required. That I would have knowledge of any kind about upcoming strips feels like prescience.

Jesus. So, we've got tons and tons of people sending in their versions of Hanna's song from the strip. Like, tons. I could not be more pleased. A capella versions, also guitar, mandolin, autoharp (my mom had an autoharp!), banjo, and I swear to GOD I have a hammer dulcimer version in here. Everybody has their own melody. That means I can hack in another section, and they will have twice as much song with virtually no work on their side. Plus, singing for another person is incredibly scary, and I want to honor that. If she had kept singing, it would sound like this:

There are five strips total, but the first one just went up. I would describe this project as deeply, just... fundamentally batshit, and it was a ton of fun to have her take over the art duties.

I posted ie a while back but if you’re looking for a nice high res version of the first panel in today’s strip here it is:

I like this poem.

The Lookouts tells the story of what it’s like to be a young boy in the Eyrewood. It’s essentially fantasy boy scouts and almost immediately after the first strip we were asked if there was a girl scout equivalent in that world. It was actually a fan that gave us the name Daughters of the Eyrewood but it’s taken us a few years to figure out exactly what their story is.

Any spare minute where we were not in, you know, Australia or something, Gabriel has been drawing Daughters of the Eyrewood: The Tithe. I don't think it looks like he drew it. Obviously, that's not my department. I don't have a robust methodology for determining things like that. But looking at it, with the organs I use for that purpose, it clearly represents a change either in him or in his style.