1 Me: Welcome to the world's first fully interactive webcomic! Where you are as much a part of the comic as I am!
2 {beat}
3 {beat}
4 Me: Well don't just sit there. Do something funny.

I recently read A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. I recommend this book for anyone who creates games, of any sort (board, card, computer, other). It was a bit different from what I expected, but for that definitely one of the best books I have ever read. It has taught me to look at game design in a new way - to treat games as the result of a creative process. A work of art, if you will.

I also recommend this book for anyone who creates anything artistic. Visual art, photography, poetry, prose, performing art. Unless you're already a master of your medium, I think you can gain something from this book.

Today's comic is directly inspired by what I absorbed from Koster. It's breaking the comfortable mould that I sometimes find myself in, writing story arc scripts for Monty Jones, the Fantasy and Space guys, Will Shakespeare, etc. without exploring the boundaries of what I can do with this comic. I've done some quirky, unusual, and really creative strips in the past, and in many ways they are the ones that most embody to myself what I am trying to do.

Koster's message is that art and creativity should constantly be pushing the edges and breaking new ground. In that way it remains fresh and exciting, rather than settling into the same formula. The visual arts community has known this for hundreds of years - this is why movements like Impressionism, Cubism, and Abstract art keep coming along. They are new and unfamiliar, and many people seeing them for the first time don't understand them or actively dislike them. But that's what art is all about - making you uncomfortable with what you think you know and like, and providing mental stimulation to teach you to appreciate something new.

I don't claim this strip is great art. But it is different to the usual strips I've been doing lately, and pushes at one of the boundaries of what a webcomic can do. Which is why I'm here.

Expect a few more like this. And expect something completely unexpected. (No, I don't know what it is yet. I just know that I want to do it.)