First the Grammar Nazi, now the General!

George Long once said “Don’t write anything you can phone. Don’t phone anything you can talk. Don’t talk anything you can whisper. Don’t whisper anything you can smile. Don’t smile anything you can nod. Don’t nod anything you can wink.”

Sounds exhausting.

Happy new year, Systemics!

It’s been a rough one around these parts, so this one is dedicated to those of you with new years resolutions. Let’s hope you make it longer than this guy.

If you’re on Twitter, and one of your goals is exercise related, I suggest you tweet about it as a way to help motivate, using the hashtag #teamnotfat. I do all the time. Join me, won’t you?

Magfest

If you’re one of the awesome people attending Magfest this weekend, I will see you there! Super Art Fight has a show on Saturday at 3pm. See you there!

Updates

I know a lot of you are asking “what happened to the comic?” Life has been more than a little busy of late, but one of my goals for the new year is to start updating like the old days, and GET OUT A F*CKING BOOK. Stay tuned for more on that.

A little System Comic Storytime:

A while back, I got in touch with a webcomic artist named Matan, who writes a webcomic in Hebrew called “Ho Lo” (roughly translated to “Oh Crap”, and if you can read Hebrew much better than I can, go read it now!) I asked him a million questions about it, since I wanted to know what it was like to write webcomics in Israel (Do they have any cons? How big of an audience can you get if your comic is in Hebrew? You get the idea). A while back, he let me know he started translating it into English and posting it as “Cheerlessness”, and now did this guest comic for my site. If you like it, you should go check out the rest of Cheerlessness at CheerlessComic.com. There’s a growing archive and, while lacking cheer, is pretty funny.

Thanks for the guest comic, Matan!

Systemic Corey (@CozworthGrind) heard my plea for a guest comic, and was the first to leap to respond. Considering this week’s rapture, his is up first. Thanks, Corey! Btw, his comic can be found at http://www.grind-comic.com/.

If you, whether you have a webcomic or not, would ever like to do a guest comic, I’m always up for seeing what you have. I make NO GARUANTEES about it being posted, but I’m always listening. Just send it to systemcomic at gmail.

I’m out of town through June 9th, and thanks to Twitter have guest comics to help keep you all occupied! Hope you enjoy them, and expect a fresh new comic as well as a big 500th surprise upon my return after June 10th. Also, all new HilariAwesome.com orders will not ship out until my return, be aware if you’re planning on ordering. See you all soon! -Rosscott

I’ve always wondered about self-referential things like this. Web sites about how to make web sites. Television shows about TV. Blogs about other blogs. And yeah, go cats.

Stay tuned, later today I’m posting a really long thing about web design and webcomics. Today’s the day.

I posted recently looking for shows to watch (original post here), and mentioned some I’d watched recently. The outpouring back was HUGE from you Systemics, THANK YOU! I live for the chances when this site gets to feel more like a community. Along with that, a lot of you posted shows that I actually HAVE seen that I forgot to mention. I responded to a lot in the comment of that post, but here’s an update. Here are shows I’ve already seen (and forgot to mention):

• Burn Notice / Blue Collar / Psych / Everything Else on USA
• Castle
• Pushing Daisies
• Doctor Who (Working through Fifth Season now. Didn’t think I’d like Smith but it turns out his intense subtlety and quiet moments are pretty great! He’s getting some really well-written episodes, too.)
• How I Met Your Mother
• The IT Crowd (Really wish there was more of it)
• Red Dwarf (Been a fan since Series 6 aired! There’s going to be more I hear, can’t wait!)
• Star Trek (Seen ‘em all, except for half of Enterprise. So all I feel like seeing.)
• Bob’s Burgers (If H. Jon Benjamin is in it, I’ll watch it.)
• Archer (See above.)

SHOWS SYSTEMICS HAVE CONVINCED ME TO WATCH NEXT:

• Dead Like Me
• Torchwood (Also brought on by my newfound love of Doctor Who.)
• Parks and Rec (I avoided it for a long time, but don’t think I can anymore.)
• Life On Mars
• Dollhouse (Heard it was bad, but FINE. JUST SO I KNOW WHAT EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT.)
• Babylon 5 (Is it good? I’ve heard mixed things. If people want to post on WHY I should watch it, I’d love to hear it.)
• Party Down (I’ve become a huge comedy nerd lately. How I haven’t watched all of this yet is beyond me.)

It’s great to see discussion on the site! If you guys have more show ideas, I’m listening to every comment on the site. I’ll try and keep you updated as I work through this. Hope you guys found some new shows to watch as well.

I’m a guy who likes to watch every episode of a show. In the last couple of years, due in large part to the availability of streaming services like Hulu and Netflix as well as too much time spent working on things while having videos on, I have worked my way through every episode of a series of shows. These include (but are not limited to, and are in no particular order):

• Eureka
• Space: Above and Beyond
• Warehouse 13
• House
• Dexter
• Doctor Who
• Veronica Mars
• Farscape
• The Wire
• Mad Men
• Deadwood
• Reboot
• Firefly
• Terriers
• The new BSG
• Sports Night
• The West Wing

And probably more I can’t think of right now (but am now sick of their theme songs). So I find myself just finishing Farscape (the latest of these) and in need of a new show to devour. Consider this an opportunity to get me to watch that show you won’t shut up about, as well as discuss in the comments shows that you think are worth devouring.

For that matter, I think this whole devouring of a show is kind of a new thing due to the ease of DVR and streaming services. I think it’s interesting and really changes how you watch a show and what you notice about it. Seeing them all in quick succession helps you pick up some of the little details, but it also doesn’t give you the time to really digest all of the things you’ve seen. I think you lose some of the dramatic impact but it makes you hyper-aware of all the subtle things that change from episode to episode and season to season.

But it’s kind of like getting into a band that’s already broken up, you know the end is coming soon. Which has really been the worst part about it. At the end of each one I’m more than a little sad and sometimes even a bit lost trying to figure out what’s next. Such is the exciting life of a workaholic.

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on any of this, or shows to start watching, in the comments! For my sake and the sake of your fellow Systemics.

It’s true, Comedy Central has a new logo that they revealed the other day (thanks to Marty for the link!) and will be going live in January. A very many blogs have been picking on this logo for being too boring for such a funny network, looking too much like the Chanel logo, and just not being that interesting. And, of course, the similarity to the copyright symbol.

One thing is for sure, this logo lends itself much more to being a simple and clear logo. In an age of swooshes and 3-D messes for logos, I for one am excited to see something look so clean with a slight visual wit. Of course it will be rare that this logo sits still. It will be on screen, on web, etc. and in that context it will have its chance to really shine. I think those haters will be turning tides. I mean, come on. This isn’t the Gap logo. This is clear and a refinement of what came before.

Btw, how has nobody made the obvious reference? Comedy Central is going to build Robocop. Check out the OCP logo:

THE WALKING DEAD “Opening Titles” from Daniel Kanemoto on Vimeo.

These aren’t the real credits from the show, these are more of a fan interpretation using artwork from the comics. Still, when it comes to the show, I can’t wait to see this thing.