Hey guys! Yeah, you can follow my not-having-power debacle on Twitter. In short, no power in my apartment last night and had to take off work to get it settled. So things are a little behind, but I’ll get a new comic up as soon as I can. Hopefully tonight.

Keep reading at Medium.com »

About a month ago I was talking with Jason “I Love Charts” Charts and he invited me to join his collective over at Medium.com. What that means is every Wednesday I will post a chart to Medium.com, and then a week later I can post it wherever else that I want (such as here on my own site). Since I make a fair number of charts anyway, seemed like a win-win situation.

The first of these posts (the above is just the first part) is now up at Medium for you to read. Or, if you’re feeling lazy or don’t like Medium, it’ll be up here in a week. Just know clicking the link and reading the comic actually gets me paid for my work, so I’d much appreciate the click-through.

Read the rest here »

New comic on Friday! Hooray!

Appearances and Conventions!

I’ll be bringing the new book (soon to be in the online store) to a bunch of conventions, along with t-shirts, ties, prints, and tote bags. Oh, and my charming personality. If you’re a convention goer, mark these on your calendar! I always like it when fans come and say hi, even if they have no money and can’t buy anything. It’s wonderful to meet the people who read my stupid comic.

Also if you are a part of a convention that would like to have me as a guest, reach out through my email (systemcomic at gmail dot com) and hopefully we can get me to you!

PAX East
(Boston, MA / Next Weekend)
Going with my girlfriend and hanging out! Woo! If you’re going to be there, say so in the comments and let’s meet up!

Awesome Con
(Washington, DC / April 18 – 20th)
I’ll have a table with the Super Art Fight gang, who will be performing on Sunday!

My New Apartment
(Washington, DC / April 25th)
Seriously, I’m moving in with my girlfriend. It’s gonna be awesome. SEE YOU THERE!

BMore Into Comics
(Baltimore, MD, De Kleine Duivel / May 17th)
More info soon!

Super Art Fight at the Black Cat!
(Washington, DC / May 17th)
A big show for us as we are TAKING OVER THE UPSTAIRS OF THE BLACK CAT. There will be kaiju action as giant monsters destroy an entire city on stage. Yes, really. Tickets here »

Anime Expo
(Los Angeles, CA / July 3rd – July 6th)
I’ll have a table in Artist Alley with the Super Art Fight crew, and we’ll be doing shows all weekend. Please help me pay for it.

Connecticon
(Hartford, CT / July 10 – 13th)
Where it all started for The System, we’ll be having Art Fight shows, another “Jamie Noguchi System” panel, and a whole bunch more. Also, I’ll have my books!

Otakon
(Baltimore, MD / August 8 – August 10th)
I’ll have a table in Artist Alley! Join me as I try and figure out what people are cosplaying as and realize that I’m too old to not be creepy at an anime convention.

SPX
(Bethesda, MD / September 13th – 14th)
Unfortunately, I’m on the wait list. Cross those fingers!

Did you know you could buy prints, t-shirts, and more from my online store?

Well, now you can’t for a while.

I’m taking down HilariAwesome.com, the place for all the System Comic merch for a little while. Mainly because I’m moving in the next two weeks, and I need to pack up everything, and that includes the merchandise itself.

My current site was built by a friend, but so long ago that it just plain needs an overhaul. So I’m also going to use it as a time to move the site to a better platform, such as Shopify or Big Cartel or something similar. If you have used any of them and have any thoughts on which, please leave a note in the comments.

As soon as I’m settled in the new place, expect it to come back up with The System Book 1 (from the Kickstarter) for sale. Also ties, bags, and hopefully some new t-shirts.

In the meantime, start saving money! The store will be open (hopefully) in May.

Sorry, guys. As it says above, work is looking particularly hectic this upcoming week, so instead of missing updates I’d rather just tell you all to come back next Monday. I’ll be here for you then.

In the meantime, I’ve made a lovely archive, both by subject and by date.

I’ve been working with Lori (who helped me build this shiny webcomic site) to do some housekeeping. We’ve done three noticeable updates:

Back Button Fixed

On the homepage, clicking “previous” takes you to the latest comic minus one. Screw scrolling.

Scrolling Fixed

Oh, you like scrolling? Me too! You can use infinite scroll all the way down the page. This works on the homepage, any search result or tag page, and of course the TURBO READER (see the Archive Page sidebar). Just imagine that The System is like your favorite Tumblr. Or something.

New Commenting System

The site has been running on Intense Debate for the last five years, but the team behind ID stopped updating it about a year ago. This means every day I get notifications and then manually delete about 10 spam posts a day, and I don’t always catch all of them. This is annoying.

We’ve installed Disqus as a solution to the problem, and so far it seems to be working great. No more spam, or definitely much less.

Unfortunately as a result, you will have to make a Disqus account or log into Disqus in order to comment. It’s free and there’s no emails or anything. You can link it to Twitter or Facebook and junk if you’d rather for authentication.

Anything else?

This site was hand coded by myself and Lori. We aren’t perfect (well she is, I take full responsibility for any issues). I know there are more issues and I’m willing to throw money at the problem to fix them. So please, post in the comments if you have any issues. Unless the issue is about posting in the comments, in which case email me at systemcomic at gmail.

Thanks, guys. I appreciate all the support and patience.

The site has developed a few issues since I installed the newest version of WordPress. Infinite scroll is down, the previous button on the homepage is wonky, and the RSS doesn’t have images. I’m on it, guys.

The System is not down.

Hi Systemics!

Time to try out something new on the site. Some of you have noticed (and commented) about “Rossmom” posts in the comments. Yes, those are in fact my mother. Well, after much debate and little planning, here we go. The chance for you to write in and ask my mother questions, and she’ll answer them here on the site. Here’s how this works:

Send an email to systemcomic at gmail dot com with the subject line “Ask Rossmom” and then, well, ask your question! We’ll post the answers here on the site as we can. Some suggested topics after knowing my mom for 28 or so years:

• Chocolate
• Organization
• “Mom advice”
• Life questions
• Silly questions

Really, anything except about the time my brother pooped in the corner at the age of 3 is up for grabs. She graduated magna cum laude from a very prestigious university and holds degrees in things, so anything is fair game. If it’s successful enough, maybe it’ll become a podcast? So START WRITING!

I’m trying to fix it. If anyone knows how, just let me know. Otherwise, stay tuned. It’s at the top of my list.

Wow, what a launch! Lots of feedback, and a lot positive. Some negative. Of that, a lot constructive. Here’s some things that are going to be happening on my end:

• Adding in the “previous” button on the home page. I had it greyed out because I wasn’t sure it logistically made sense, but enough people asking for it convinced me. it’s coming back.
• Browser testing. I’m working my way through Firefox, Camino, Chrome, IE7 and beyond, going through all the issues and THERE ARE A LOT. I’m working on it, please be patient and feel free to send me screen shots along with notes about what browser/OS you’re using.
• Turbo Reader: I think I’m going to collapse the “below info” so it’s JUST comics. That’ll be really turbo, it’ll also take a couple weeks to implement but I think it’ll be awesome for quick reading.
• More comics! With the site launched, I’m going to be making sure to have better updates again. I hope.

Meanwhile, thanks so much for all the feedback! I read it all, positive, negative and everything in between. Just keep it constructive, that’s all I ask.

Hey Statistics Nerds!

For those of you that asked, here’s what’s been up with the stats since launch which I realize isn’t a very large sample site. Here’s some so-far details comparing the last month on the old site to the days since launch on the new one, using Google Analytics:

Pages per visit are up from 2.74 to 3.08. Truthfully not a huge change but it’s up and that’s nice. I’m thinking that, and all these other stats, are largely more due to people poking around the new site than anything.

Average duration is up from 00:01:30 to 00:01:37. Not huge but yay.

Bounce rate is down from 74.43% to 67.70%. Yay!

I’m avoiding new visit-related things because the site is too new to use them. Interestingly though, here’s the browser breakdown for the new site:

Wow, first of all, that’s a lot of Chrome. I’ll get right on that top-margin issue you guys. Here’s the mobile breakdown:

But here’s where it gets interesting, here’s the mobile breakdown from the old site:

Look at that difference in bounce rate and usage on mobile! SO MUCH LOWER. That is very encouraging, but again too early to make any calls.

Also, the % exit from the home page is down from 77.15% to 69.56%. That implies to me that more people are digging around instead of leaving, and that is part of the goal as well. Good on ya, users.

Oh, and one last thing that’s exciting. Before, among the top content types, “tags” didn’t even make the list. Nobody was using them, which was understandable since the site didn’t highlight them and their usage at all. Now “tag” (meaning any page listed by subject) and “tag-list” (the archive page with all the tags) are both in the top 10 of my analytics “content drilldown”.

Anyway, it’s an exciting start. More info when I have it, and more updates as they happen. If there’s more data/info you want that I can pull from Google Analytics, just let me know what to look for and I’ll try to provide. Just leave a note in the comments and I’ll respond.

Thanks again, all!