Decisions ....

There's a lot of things to be figured out before everything can go up online. I want to get a website devoted to the cartoon and link it to my other website of Falcons Mew, which is being phased down quite a bit.

Back in 1993 I was in the Science Fiction field and had items that were sold at my hucksters table at a few SF conventions.

Then I sequed into the SCA and shifted into making dragons and medieval creatures as stuffed toys for the Pennsic War event, selling them at my merchant table.

Now I need to move into what's being focused on by customers of my original site -- basically cat toys and the Ferret Tarot (the paper dolls get more clicks than any of the other items outside of these two main things). I'm hoping to move any remaining SCA type toys over to Etsy.com and fine tune my main website.

That leaves some things to be determined. Here's a few of them.

Do I do t-shirts/trading cards/Catnip cartoon related cat toys or not?
Do I get a Facebook account to promote the strip or not?
Do I continue to use Office Depot to self publish the booklets or check with a printer to do them up in larger format in book form?
Do I post a daily strip with an archive or put up rotating samples with a mention about the issues available for purchase?

Decisions, decisions.....

Two Issues Are Available!

I have both Issue #1 and Issue #2 printed and ready. Each has cover art, 80 interior strips in black and white, and are saddle stapled.

Where An Idea Comes From

Sometimes it literally falls on you.

I was brushing my hair in the morning and had more CAT FUR on the brush than my own hair. Made a comment on that and my sig. other said that maybe there was a cat fur fairy that came in the night and spread it around.

Thus was born the 'fur fairy'. It made an amusing two strips.

STEAMPUNK

I'm aiming for having one of the booklets be completely 'Steampunk' with the smaller cats. I don't quite have enough to fill it yet since it takes 80 strips each, but I'm getting close.

Two of the cats decided to be Mad Scientists when they utilize empty boxes as play areas. They've had a time machine, underwater submersible, glorious air ballon and a mobile observation blind so far. One of the Tabbies is the lead scientist, the foil he works off of is the white cat. Both show obvious superiority over the others when they're in their Steampunk mode.

I'm up to sixty strips so far. Another two 'adverntures' and I'll have enough to print the booklet off. Huzzah!

The Cast of Characters

Marcus is the big guy, he's the main cat.

The smaller ones all started out as just tails moving around (the rest of them were below the 'camera frame') and the occasional paw going up into view. I've been working them into the picture slowly.

So far we have two tabbies, a black and white, a white one, a gray one, a gray and white, an orange and white, and a tortoishell. I added a Siamese rescue to the group when we added one to our own group of cats at home.

The Siamese in the strip is not able to speak in English. She speaks in 'Siamese' which I was wanting to use Japanese for, but after looking at Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Thai written characters, I settled for Korean as the most visually expressive. Some of the smaller cats can 'speak' Siamese and translate (the black and white one is half Siamese himself) but over time all the smaller cats can understand what she says now. The translation factor doesn't need to be done. She's still in the process of learning what's going on at this home, so is still adapting, as are the others adapting to her. Marcus would prefer that she be given away but even he is 'dealing with it'.

Their 'Universe'

I figure there should be certain ground rules:

You don't see the owner, you just hear her.

Marcus can talk to her (the word balloon is the same as hers) but the smaller cats can't be understood (their words are not in balloons).

I'm sticking to mostly reality, no flights of fancy where they drive cars or do too human a sort of thing. They do use their imagination in play, but it's all contained within the house.

CATNIP, The Comic

Welcome. Soon this will be up and running, with regular updates, and dealing with bits and pieces of information about my new comic strip. It's been in the works for 4 years now and I have two issues produced plus am in the process of putting out another 6 or 7 of them as $$ allows.

They're in black and white, 40 pages, containing 80 strips each. So far I've had some really good feedback on them.

Does the world need another cat comic? Apparently so! Online my competition is The Mows and Two Lumps (I don't include Garfield because that strip does the same basic five or six jokes over and over, and Get Fuzzy has gotten so mean spirited I don't find it funny anymore).

Here's to unique and new! Yeay Cats! Make 'em laugh guys!