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News

10 August, 2009. I've created an official Facebook page for Irregular Webcomic! Feel free to become a fan, or however this thing works - I'm still learning.

8 February, 2009. I have decided to release all Irregular Webcomic! strips under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Licence. What does this mean?

You may now reproduce and/or modify the comics under the following conditions: (1) you attribute me as the original author, (2) it is for non-commercial purposes, (3) you re-release any modified work under a similar licence.

All strips are still copyright by me, but anyone may now use them under the terms of Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

30 March, 2008. Interested in wikis? Interested in Irregular Webcomic!? I know the answer to at least one of those is yes... so here are some opportunities to indulge in the other:

  1. The Science Jokes Wiki collects science-related jokes for use as an educational resource. The compiler would like help getting all the science jokes and epxlanations from IWC entered and indexed.
  2. A reader has started an Irregular Webcomic! wiki. All the content is completely fan-created, so if you feel like expanding it, go for it.

2007 Burling World Cup - Australian Team victory logo 2007 Burling World Cup - Australian Team 17 November, 2007. Those who recall the historic victory by Australia in the 2007 Burling World Cup will be excited to know that I managed to meet some members of Australia's championship-winning team now that they're back home and making a triumphant tour of the country. I got these photos of the team and their championship jerseys.

4 November, 2007. The Legacy and crew have made their first speaking appearance in Kris Straub's Starslip Crisis: The Alterverse War. Although it's not clear who is speaking. But going from the dialogue, I'd say it's probably Paris.

On another note, I have a new comic randomiser tool now available.

6 October, 2007. The folks over at the comic Bitmap World have a gallery of other webcomic characters done as bitmapped smileys. They've put together a few characters from Irregular Webcomic! for your delight and edification.

19 September, 2007. I've just uploaded three new pieces of fan art, including this awesome Allosaurus from Martin Shatté.

14 September, 2007. All I want to say is that any fans of Shamus Young's amazingly excellent DM of the Rings probably won't want to miss this.

3 September, 2007. Kristofer Straub, author of not just one, but two awesome webcomics - Starslip Crisis and Checkerboard Nightmare - is beginning a massive crossover series involving a segment of the Starslip Crisis universe known as the Alterverse. This ambitious project is The Alterverse War. The idea is that spaceships from many different webcomics will appear in the Alterverse... and duke it out! In his own words, this will be "the greatest crossover the universe has ever seen! And the outcome may tear all of reality apart! Forever!"

Straub has 29 entries so far, including the Legacy, crewed by none other than Paris, Serron, Iki Piki, Spanners, and Quercus. Tune in to his site every Saturday to cheer them on!

29 August, 2007. Two short items:

1. Some cute fan art of Erwin, posted over on deviantART.

2. The blog Rooktopia's "Webcomic Overlook" feature has reviewed Irregular Webcomic! The author has apparently given the kiss of death to three of the four other webcomics he's reviewed so far. Time to defy the odds!

23 August, 2007. Bob Toomy's CoffeeBurger has posted a comic paying tribute to Irregular Webcomic! Be warned, although that strip is PG-rated, the rest of Bob's site (as he admitted himself in his e-mail to me) is definitely not. Children and people likely to be offended by sexually-oriented black humour should not browse around there.

21 August, 2007. The Webcomic Review has posted a review of Irregular Webcomic!, with an interview with yours truly.

12 June, 2007. Munchkin Cthulhu by Steve Jackson Games features the Froggoth, a monster that causes you to die of choking on a giant frog. Yes, this is a deliberate reference to Irregular Webcomic! Steve suggested it to me.

As far as I know, this is the first time a commercial product has made a reference to IWC. Maybe you should buy a copy!

21 May, 2007. Irregular Podcast #9 is new and freshly available for your downloading and listening pleasure from the podcasts page.

17 May, 2007. I am sad to report the death of a good friend of mine. He was admitted to hospital while I was overseas, and I didn't learn about it until I got home. It's not clear if he regained consciousness at all, and I didn't get to say anything to him. He was, by far, the largest contributor to Irregular Webcomic! after myself. I would regularly bounce ideas off him and use his wit to polish my dialogue. I would run to him for help coming up with a punchline at the last minute. And a lot of what he said over the past few years still sits in my comic ideas file, waiting to be realised.

It's going to make it difficult to refill my buffer in the few days I have left before I go back to work. I'll do my best though.

19 April, 2007. Irregular Podcast #8 has just been uploaded! Grab it from your iTunes feed or download it from the Podcasts page.

17 April, 2007. I am going on vacation from 21 April to 13 May, and will be offline for the entire time. The strip buffer is big enough and the site will continue to update automatically as normal. Unless the server goes down over a scheduled update time. This hasn't happened since March, 2004, but that time I happened to be in Canada at the time, resulting in the last time an update was skipped. Hopefully it won't happen again, but if it does, please don't send me e-mail about it. I really don't want to get back from three weeks of glorious vacation to six thousand e-mails...

8 March, 2007. Is that Will moonlighting as a software developer in the latest issue of The Noob?

26 February, 2007. Irregular Podcast #5 is now available from the podcasts page. Now, I'm the first to admit that the first podcast was pretty uninspiring and painful to listen to, but I think we've hit our stride with #5, and I'm quite pleased with it. So if you've only tried the first one or two, please try this one.

12 February, 2007. Things are happening apace over at my new comic project: Infinity on 30 Credits a Day. Choosing the genre and title were just the first step, now we're choosing main characters and logo designs. If you're curious to see how a webcomic is made from scratch, or want to get in and do some of the making yourself, check it out!

11 February, 2007. Irregular Podcast #4 is now available from the podcasts page.

5 February, 2007. Remember WikiWrit, the Holy Book Anyone Can Edit? Well, the guy who created it is using it to raise money for Streets Ahead Children's Centre, a UK-based charity set up to help abandoned, orphaned, and otherwise forgotten children who are the victims of the recent ethnic conflicts in Rwanda. So why don't you head over there, browse the infinite collective wisdom of the contributors, add your own piece of infallible holy doctrine, and actually do some genuine good?

3 February, 2007. The (You Make The Comic) project has moved into the next stage! The genre has been decided and now users are voting on the title of the comic. Check it out!

28 January, 2007. Several items today! Firstly, Irregular Podcast! #3 is now available from the podcasts page. There's no transcription yet, but hopefuly it'll be there soon.

Secondly, there are two new RSS feeds for people who woud like a feed with the image, rather than just a reminder link to this site: RSS with images only, and RSS with images and annotations. These feeds use the Coral Content Distribution Network to spread the bandwidth load of the images. Performance has been a little patchy so far, but hopefuly it should improve with more people using them. At worst, the link to this site will still be there for you. These two new feeds are also available on LiveJournal, as irregularcomic2 and irregularcomic3 respectively.

Thirdly, and most excitingly, I am launching a brand new webcomic project! Seriously. One where you can take part and help create the comic. Have a look and see what you think.

22 January, 2007. The giant picture of the Hall of Dworin from #1455 was so popular that I made even gianter versions! By popular demand, you can now download it as screen wallpaper at 1920x1280, 1600x1200, 1280x1024, or 1024x768 resolution.

20 January, 2007. Thanks to a couple of eager volunteers, there are now transcripts of the first two Irregular Podcast!s available from the Podcast page. So hearing impaired readers, as well as those who find my rapid-fire Australian English a bit hard to understand, can now read the contents of the audio files. I've also added some brief programme notes - like annotations for each podcast.

17 January, 2007. Irregular Podcast! #2 is now available. Those subscribed to the feed will probably know already, but if not, you can grab it from the podcast page.

16 January, 2007. Remember Poll 214, and the result that the coolest Wiki project would be "the Holy Text anyone can edit"? Well, it's now online! WikiWrit is in fact "The Holy Book Anyone Can Edit". It started off with the Book of Genesis, which has already been edited somewhat. Go there now and add your own beliefs, infallible pronouncements, and holy revelations!

8 January, 2007. Check out the very first Irregular Podcast! Yes folks, I've jumped on another bandwagon. There's even a proper RSS feed so you can subscribe to it in iTunes and all.

Update: I've submitted the feed to iTunes Store, and even received notification that they've approved and added it, but I still can't find it in there by searching. If you need help subscribing in the meantime, you can add it manually by opening Advanced|Subscribe to Podcast and pasting in the feed URL: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/podcasts/podcast.xml

22 December, 2006. Crowntown is a comic by Paul Cockburn. The latest issue has a familiar looking Nigerian in it...

22 November, 2006. Oh, by the way, my latest book, GURPS Bio-Tech, is now out! Seriously! Even if you don't play GURPS or other role-playing games, it has some cool and interesting stuff about all sorts of biotechnology, both current and extrapolated into the far future. There's also a very cool alternate history setting in which clones of Alexander the Great rule a Macedonian empire that never fell... If I've piqued your curiosity, or you just want to show your support, buy it! I get royalties! Woo! (Sorry for the over-the-top excitement; I've been imitating Ryan North too much lately.)

4 October, 2006. There have been a few new pieces of fan art sent in over the past few weeks.

17 September, 2006. Dean's Supers art auction has raised a total of $59 for charity! Thanks to everyone who bid.

10 September, 2006. Dean Stahl, artist for the Supers theme strips is selling more of his original artwork! Now up for your bidding pleasure on eBay are the following:

So, if you want a piece of Irregular Webcomic! history and want to support one of these worthy causes, check out the auctions and bid away!

28 August, 2006. I've finally managed to enable by-theme searching in the new search page. You may not have noticed, but over the past couple of months I've completely reprogrammed the search facility, and it now runs about a bazillion times faster than the old version. Yay!

27 August, 2006. I've changed my mind and decided to include the annotations on comics over at IWC: Modern Tales, because so many people expressed disappointment that they weren't available there, or requested that I make them available. If you don't like seeing annotations, you'll have to work with this site and its customised non-annotation-seeing option, or simply not read them.

25 August, 2006. To celebrate the addition of Irregular Webcomic! to Modern Tales, Shaenon Garrity (creator of Narbonic) has interviewed me over at TalkAboutComics. Go check out what Shaenon had to ask me, and what I had to say!

21 August, 2006. Big news today! Irregular Webcomic! is one of the new strips to appear as part of the launch of Modern Tales new Strip Lounge free comics section. For those who may not know, Modern Tales is one of the biggest and most critically acclaimed webcomic collective sites, and being a part of it means a few good things:

  • Irregular Webcomic! will get a wider exposure and more readers.
  • This site will remain here and continue updating exactly as before. If you don't want to check out Modern Tales, there will be no change whatsoever to your daily IWC fix. The Modern Tales version of IWC will effectively be a mirror of the comics on this site.
  • Having such a mirror is good for two reasons: 1. I am sticking to my principle of not hosting any ads on irregularwebcomic.net. However, Modern Tales allows me to show some Google Ads with my comics, which will hopefully help to defray some of my webhosting expenses. (Also, you get to see what sort of ads Google Ads throws up when the topic of the comic is Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem or whatever...)
  • 2. I know some readers really dislike the annotations I write to most comics, and either can't use the toggle to turn them off or can't bring themselves to turn them off. Now, these readers can see the comics only, without annotations or even the temptation of annotations, on Modern Tales.
All in all, I think this is pretty cool and exciting. So go check out Irregular Webcomic! on Modern Tales! (There are no archives there at the moment, but I'll eventually get those uploaded.)

09 August, 2006. Irregular Webcomic! was mentioned in Lore Sjöberg's Table of Malcontents on blog.wired.com!

08 August, 2006. To celebrate the real Jane Goodall's appearance in Irregular Webcomic! in strip #1290, I am holding an auction. I will donate the entire sale price to the Jane Goodall Institute (i.e. I will not deduct packaging, postage, or PayPal fees). I will post at my own expense to anywhere in the world, so what you bid is exactly what you pay.

The item is the notebook in which I have written the original scripts for approximately the last 600 strips. The first strip in the book is #644, which appeared nearly two years ago (holy cow!). I write maybe 95% of the comics on the bus to and from work, in this notebook, and its 200 pages are now almost full. In addition to regular strips, this notebook contains poll ideas, ideas for strips that I've never used, and scripts for the additional strips that are only available to subscribers to Pyramid - The Best In Gaming. Also, since I work 3-4 weeks in advance, this book contains scripts for comics that nobody else will see for another month. You get the complete, unadulterated, raw, scrawled braindump as it exists before I polish it up and turn it into a comic.

It goes almost without saying that this notebook is in a very used condition, having been knocked about in my bag for two years. But all the pages that have had comic-related material written on them are intact and it's not about to disintegrate or anything.

The auction ended with a winning bid of US$350 by iAN! Wow! Thanks to everyone who bid, and to those bidders who made a donation anyway when their maximum bid was overtaken (there were a few of you).

Jane and me 17 July, 2006. So, I met Jane Goodall last night. Really. She knew about Irregular Webcomic! Also really. She thinks it's funny. Really truly.

She gave an inspirational talk on her research on chimpanzees, the problems faced by wild and captive ape populations, how primate research feeds back into our understanding of ourselves, and how people concerned about what we are doing to this planet can make a difference and kindle hope for the future in themselves and the places in Africa most in need of it.

Did I mention that Irregular Webcomic! has raised over US$1,100 for the Jane Goodall Institute? If you would like to make a donation, you can do so from that website. Please let me know, so I can keep a tally of the good work we're doing here.

15 July, 2006. Martin Shatté provides us with a glimpse of next summer's biggest movie blockbuster with his fan art submission.

1 July, 2006. Hey, I got reviewed on Fleen!

30 June, 2006. I've done some reorganising of links and URLs around the site. The biggest change is "Banners" in the navigation bar is now "More Stuff", and contains ... more stuff. I've also moved most single dangly pages like the FAQ, donations, links, etc. into a new directory, so their URLs have changed.

29 June, 2006. Speaking of the World Cup, Helden 06 in Germany have created an amazing animated Lego version. English content here.

22 June, 2006. Some new fan art has been added recently, including another marvellous piece by Andrew Bird.

15 June, 2006. It's here. Andy Weir's brand new webcomic, Cheshire Crossing. And it's awesome.

I don't advertise other people's websites, but for the new comic by the creator of Casey & Andy, I will make this one-time exception. Go. Read. Live The Grin.

18 May, 2006. Andrew Bird has contributed another wonderful piece of fan art, showing the good samaritan work of the Fantasy gang in rescuing Dwalin the dwarf from orcs.

6 May, 2006. I have fixed an outstanding bug with the site navigation. The standard one-at-a-time previous and next links now work properly after you navigate by theme. I've also enhanced the document relationship linking so that previous and next document navigation uses the same number of strips at a time and by-themeness as your last navigation. (If you don't know what document relationship linking is, you probably don't use this feature.)

Finally, since I frequently get e-mails from readers wanting to provide a different answer to a poll question, or to request a "none of the above" option, or simply to express confusion at the question, I've added a new section to the FAQ addressing such concerns.

22 April, 2006. I have made a major change to the site programming, switching my old flat-file/perl-CGI system for a shiny new MySQL/PHP system. This shouldn't result in any obvious changes to the appearance of pages, but you might notice things load a bit faster. I'll be incrementally upgrading other parts of the programming - the big win should be the search facility, which I expect to speed up by a huge factor when I get it recoded.

If you notice any buggy behaviour, please give me a full 24 hours to fix it before sending me an e-mail. I'm likely to notice things myself as I poke around, and it's easier for me to cope with fixing things if I don't get 300 e-mails about the same problem while I'm asleep. :-)

21 April, 2006. Andrew Bird, who submitted the recent art contest winning entry, has sent in a cool new piece of fan art showing the impressive Fantasy character's teamwork.

13 April, 2006. Some crazy sucker finally went and did it: An IWC T-shirt!

He was good about it and printed up a personal copy just for himself, which is fine. He is not selling them, in line with my explicit policy on this, in the FAQ.

This has, however, prompted me to consider selling some shirts of my own, with any profits being donated to the Jane Goodall Institute. Stay tuned.

16 March, 2006. Weekly Webcomic Reviews has named me as as one of the "Cool Dudes of Webcomics". It's based mostly on me living in Australia and having a funky name, but hey, I'll take anything I can get.

4 March, 2006. For an upcoming comic I would like to solicit submissions from artists of original artwork. The plan is that you will draw/paint/whatever the art for a comic, with no plan for the script/dialogue or direction from me, and send it to me. I will then write dialogue to fit in with whatever you've drawn. The rules:

  • The artwork must fit exactly in 815x275 pixels (width x height). You may create it larger with the same aspect ratio, but it will be scaled down to this size for final use.
  • Artwork must be your own original creation.
  • The art must be PG-rated. No nudity, gore, or culturally offensive depictions.
  • The art does not have to use recognisable established characters from Irregular Webcomic! but I will look very favourably on submissions that do. If you use a theme with an ongoing plot, I will try to work it into the story, but be aware that I have already plotted and created strips 4 weeks ahead of what you have seen - so don't tie it too closely to the latest published strip.
  • The art should preferably be drawn, painted, or created digitally, but good quality photographic art is acceptable.
  • You can leave some blank space for dialogue if you wish, but it's not necessary - I can lay it over the top if I have to.
  • I will choose my favourite submission, add dialogue, and run it as a regular strip. The artist will be properly credited and have a link to their personal website if desired. I may choose to do the same with any chosen runners-up as well.
  • You retain copyright in your own art, but grant permission for me to adapt it as described above and display it on my site.
  • Submissions close at midnight between Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 March, 2006, GMT.

4 January, 2006. I've changed my e-mail address. If you ever send me mail related to the comic, please use the new address shown at the bottom of the page, and update your address book if necessary.

30 December, 2005. Big news today! I've set up a shiny new feedback forum! I've wanted to do this for some time, but was never really happy with the features of the various tools out there. I really wanted to write my own forum code, to do exactly what I wanted. But there's almost no chance of that ever actually getting done, so I've bitten the bullet and set up a phpBB forum. It's not ideal, but hey, it gives you a place to discuss the comic and form some sense of community around it. So go for it!

29 December, 2005. RSS fans will notice a couple of small enhancements to the site. The RSS feed now lists the last week's worth of strips, and I've added the meta tag to enable live bookmarking in current browsers.

If this makes no sense to you, don't worry - you probably don't use any of these features.

17 December, 2005. A reader e-mailed to ask if, by any chance, the image shown in panel 3 of strip #1055 of the starship and planet was available at 1280x1024 resolution, so he could use it as screen wallpaper.

"Don't be silly!" I said, "Why on Earth would I have a 200x150 image available at such an absurd resolution?! But I can make one!!"

So I did, and here it is. It's 417 kB, so might be slow on dial-up.

3 December, 2005. I've had a few new fan art submissions since last time I mentioned it here.

24 November, 2005. I've received a letter from the Jane Goodall Institute thanking me for the donations that I forwarded on to them from readers who contributed to my recent charity fundraising appeal by sending me PayPal funds. You can see the letter here if you wish. I want to pass on that thanks to everyone who contributed to the appeal.

28 October, 2005. The appeal to raise US$1,000 for the Jane Goodall Institute has reached a total of $1,015! Thank you to everyone who contributed! If you'd still like to donate, by all means visit the JGI website and do so (and let me know), but the official fund-raising is now done.

I have consolidated the PayPal donations I received and sent it all on to JGI:

Dear Dr. Morgan-Mar,
Our sincere thanks for your generous gift of $504.98 to the Jane Goodall Institute. This email confirms your contribution has been received and is being processed.
You are an important member of our team and your investment will enable us to strengthen and grow our wildlife research activities, our programs in community centered conservation across Africa, and our environmental and humanitarian education efforts worldwide.
To be honest, I didn't quite expect almost half the contributions to come via PayPal. I've had to hit my credit card for this amount, while only slowly using up the funds now in PayPal when I buy goods in US$. Oh well, it's for a good cause!

25 October, 2005. Andy C. has donated $25, and pledged an additional $50 if I made a special comic with Jane Goodall wondering what this Irregular Webcomic! thing is. You can see the result on the donations page.

24 October, 2005. To celebrate reaching 1,000 strips, I am launching a campaign to raise US$1,000 for the Jane Goodall Institute. Please take a moment to reflect that I run this comic out of my own pocket, and that I don't host any advertising.

If a fraction of you donate a few dollars each, I believe we can reach this target. If you'd like to help, please donate directly to JGI using this secure web form, or by posting a cheque to the address listed on that page. Then drop me an e-mail at the address at the bottom of this page to let me know how much you contributed, so I can keep a total. The JGI doesn't take PayPal, but if you have loose funds gathering dust in PayPal, you can send it to me at the same e-mail address. I will consolidate any such funds I receive and donate the lot to JGI. Thanks.

10 October, 2005. The Jane Goodall page on Wikipedia is, frankly, disgraceful. A third of the paragraphs of text are about her appearances as a character in The Simpsons, The Wild Thronberrys, The Far Side, and <blush> Irregular Webcomic! Her important work on primate behaviour gets a scant three paragraphs - shorter than the text discussing her association with Gary Larson! And there's a big list of publications which is badly formatted.

Any Wikipedians, Jane Goodall fans, or merely someone good at research, please go revamp and revitalise this article, and make it something approaching the better end of the spectrum of Wikipedia articles, rather than the mess it is now.

27 September, 2005. Casey and Andy's strip #538 is a sort of Irregular Webcomic! crossover. Made by Andy Weir. Without my knowledge.

It made me laugh out loud. Because my lawyers will now gleefully bleed him dry. ;-)

Go have a look and observe the evidence before the restraining order goes into effect!

16 September, 2005. I submitted a comic to the Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon, but unfortunately I was too snowed under with lack of sleep to make the deadline for inclusion (and didn't even discover they had a deadline until today). So here's my comic.

If you want to donate, go here.

14 September, 2005. It's already well underway, but if you haven't seen it yet, go check out the Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon. A new original comic every 20 minutes for two full days more than two days (now extended because of overwhelming response by the webcomics community!). For a good cause.

28 August, 2005. The auction of Dean Stahl's original artwork for the Supers strips #945 and #952 was a roaring success, with a final bid of $82.81. Thanks to all the bidders, and congratulations to the winner!

28 August, 2005. Dean Stahl is auctioning the original line artwork he drew for the Supers strip #945. Also on the same piece of art board is the orignal art for the next Supers strip, yet to be revealed here! See the eBay listing and put in a bid for this piece of Irregular Webcomic! history!

7 July, 2005. The search page now allows you to search annotations as well as dialogue. This has been on my to-do enhancements list for some time, and a request from a reader finally motivated me enough to do it. Enjoy!

2 July, 2005. Den Whitton's Bugs comic contains an Irregular Webcomic/Legostar Galactica crossover.

28 May, 2005. I've added a new option to how comics are displayed. You should see a new toggle switch for "Vision-impaired". If you turn this on, the comic will be displayed with the dialogue in text format shown directly underneath. This is for the benefit of any readers who may be visually impaired, so that screen-reading software can read out the dialogue for you.

I've been meaning to do this for some time. It was a relatively easy enhancement to add, since I already have all the comic scripts typed out for the search facility. And I figure just because you may not be able to see, that's no reason not to get a laugh out of a comic. Given that much of my humour is dialogue-driven, I hope some visually-impaired people out there can start enjoying the comic now!

27 April, 2005. Casey & Andy is one of my favourite webcomics. And now it is, as far as I know, the first ever webcomic to be made into a roleplaying game! GURPS Casey & Andy is a complete roleplaying treatment of Andy Weir's insane mad scientists and assorted hangers-on. Gaming stats for Satan, and Quantum Cop! All lavishly illustrated by Andy Weir, and including a never-before-seen 4 page comic story exclusive to this release. GURPS Casey & Andy is a PDF download from Steve Jackson Games' e23 digital gaming content site.

Why am I telling you all this, besides the fact that Andy's a cool guy who makes a great comic and deserves your support? Because the text was written by me! So you're supporting both of us! You better buy two copies...

10 April, 2005. I am taking a vacation to go spend some tourist dollars in Thailand and help them rebuild after the tsunami disaster last year. I'll be gone until 18 April. I'm not running a poll while I'm away; you can see the results of the last poll here. I also won't be responding to any e-mail. The comic will, however, continue to update daily (barring server meltdown) - such is the advantage of a buffer and automated posting. So until I return, sawàt-dii khráp!

1 April, 2005. For as long as I've been using automated updates, new strips have appeared at 11:11 U.S. Pacific Time. I just chose the time at random because it had the digits all the same, and I happen to use a web server based in California.

But in many ways that's a stupid time to update. The most important one to me is that by 11am in California, it's the next day here where I live in Australia. So the 27 August strip (for example) doesn't actually appear until about 5am, 28 August, Sydney time. Which sucks.

So as of now I'm moving the update time earlier by 8 hours. This makes it 03:11 in California, or 21:11 where I live, the same day. I've chosen this new update time to be just before 12:00 GMT, so that it appears in New Zealand (GMT+12) on the right day, as opposed to breakfast time the next day. And since there are no places in the GMT-12 time zone, nobody sees it before the date stamp. (Okay, you could if you were on a ship between the international date line and 172.5° west and happened to have a working web browser - but otherwise, no sneak preview for you!) There's a few places like Tonga and those bits of Kiribati that changed their time zone just so they could be the first place in the world to see the year 2000 that will still get it a day late, but frankly if they're going to stuff around with their time zone for a reason like that they get what they deserve. :-)

And yes, I know I've ignored daylight savings in all this. I couldn't be bothered figuring that out.

So, anyway, if you happen to see this before the 1 April strip appears, check back early! And if you see it after that time, you may have missed the previous (31 March) strip, which only appeared as the current strip for 16 hours, so you might want to check the previous strip. And no, this is not an April Fool's joke. The strip will appear 8 hours earlier in the day from now on.

16 March, 2005. Want more Batman with your LEGO? Check out Batman: New Times - a student project involving Adam West, Mark Hamill as The Joker, Courtney Thorne-Smith as Catwoman, and Dick Van Dyke as Commissioner Gordon. All done in LEGO animation!

3 March, 2005. Yes, I know about the Daily Grind Iron Man Challege. For those who don't, this is a competition between webcomic artists to see who can last the longest providing regular weekdaily updates - the winner gets US$20 from every other entrant.

And yes, I know I would have a half-decent chance of winning, as I am ironically regular in my updates. In fact more frequently than required.

And yes, I tried entering. The organisers said that photo comics weren't eligible. Which isn't written in the rules...

But actually, I think that's fair enough. Drawing takes a talent I don't have in large amounts, and decent drawing does take more time than it takes me to put a strip together.

25 February, 2005. Never one to ignore a shiny looking bandwagon...

Queen of Wands ended. Something Positive posted a tribute strip. Then Checkerboard Nightmare did too. And now I am.

18 February, 2005. Tux and Bunny is a comic about, well, Tux and Bunny. They interview other webcomic artists, and even interviewed me.

28 January, 2005. I've changed the annotation system. Now, new readers without a cookie set will see annotations by default, and you have to deliberately turn them off. I decided to do this to avoid any more people reading the entire archive before discovering there are annotations. If you already have annotations enabled, you shouldn't notice any difference, and you now have one less cookie stored in your browser. :-)

25 January, 2005. There's a couple more pieces of cool Fan Art.

20 January, 2005. Steve Jackson Games has opened e23, their new electronic publishing and downloading site. They have 150 roleplaying and gaming products ready for download right now. And why am I plugging this? Because I have two products there. One is the free update from GURPS Third Edition to Fourth Edition, and the other is a cool adventure for SJG's Transhuman Space roleplaying setting. Go check out the free sample and, if you like the look of it, buy the full adventure!

8 January, 2005. There's a new piece of fan art.

28 December, 2004. Websnark has posted his 2004 Shortbread Recipents for Bringing the Funny. Irregular Webcomic! gets two nominations, in the categories of Gag-a-Day and Madcap. I would have liked to have won a Shortbread, but the competition is really tough! What's more, in the Madcap category I was up against the irrepressible Casey & Andy, which took the coveted Shortbread. Congrats Andy, and to all the other Websnark Shortbread winners.

22 December, 2004. The Bug is now on the Supers cast page.

28 November, 2004. There are two new additions to the Fan Art page.

17 November, 2004. I've finally added Dr Ginny Smith to the Cliffhangers cast page.

25 October, 2004. Thanks to the people who responded to my request. I have my Athens pictures now.

23 October, 2004. Been to Athens? Want your photography featured in Irregular Webcomic!? I need a photo of Athens for an upcoming strip. Since I don't use photos without permission from the copyright holder, and I have never been to Athens, I'm asking for your help! What I need is a photo of some part of Athens, showing old architecture - waterfront with some water would be ideal, but the Parthenon or anything ancient is good. It needs to be pure scenery, not your friend standing in front of the Parthenon. And there needs to be as little post-WWII stuff as possible, preferably none. I can PhotoShop some things out, but I'd prefer not to have to erase a modern office tower...

If you have a suitable photo in digital format and want to give me permission to use it, please e-mail me at the address below, with ATHENS in the subject line.

21 October, 2004. Andy Weir of Casey & Andy has paid homage to Irregular Webcomic! with a special strip! He does one of my favourite webcomics, so go check it out.

26 September, 2004. Irregular Webcomic can remain apolitical no longer. I'm officially declaring my support for Allosaurus for President. Remember, U.S. readers: Vote early and vote often.

20 September, 2004. I've moved the poll from the navigation sidebar to the strip navigation box, because it allows me to put longer answer options without stretching the sidebar width.

16 September, 2004. Websnark recently posted a review of Irregular Webcomic! And not a bad review, at that.

13 September, 2004. US citizens: Unsure who to vote for in the upcoming election? Vote for Irregular Webcomic's officially endorsed candidate! Thanks to King Monkey for the fan art.

10 September, 2004. Poll 5 results are up. I'm amazed how many people out there think number theory is funny...

4 September, 2004. Sorry folks, there was a glitch in proceedings earlier today when the new strip (#586) failed to appear. This was caused by a file permission problem that I think happened because my ftp client aborted the upload process of the image file too early. Naturally, I got a lot of e-mails about this. However, if this sort of thing happens in future, really there is no need to e-mail me about it, because I check IWC first thing when I wake up and log in, and I noticed the problem and in fact fixed it even before I checked my e-mail. So you can all spare me the mailbombing. :-)

25 August, 2004. The results of the second poll are now available. I've decided to run polls irregularly, leaving a few days between one ending and the next one starting. I'll put another one up in a few days.

19 August, 2004. Well the first poll seems to have been a success, with Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs being declared the most popular character by a significant margin. Full results are here (also accessible from the navbar).

16 August, 2004. You may have already voted in the new poll (at the top of the blue navigation bar). This is experimental at this stage. I'll let it run a few days and see how it goes, then might run some more polls on various topics in the future.

23 July, 2004. Dean Stahl, artist for the Supers theme strips, has completed character portraits for the supervillains The Hippo, The Sea Dog, and Aqualich. Check them out.

25 June, 2004. One of those cool new features I mentioned a while back is now available. You can now search Irregular Webcomic! Yes, you heard me right, search. Over 500 strips fully indexed with complete dialogue. How many other webcomics let you do this? Oh, if it doesn't work for you, that's because you haven't switched to the new URL http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/ yet - change your bookmark now!

14 June, 2004. If you're keen-eyed, you may have noticed the shiny new URL in your browser's address bar. Yes folks, Irregular Webcomic! now has its very own vanity domain: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/. I've set up my server to automatically redirect your browser here, but you should update your bookmarks and any links you maintain, as eventually I'll pull the plug on the old address (and it's faster to load if you go straight to the new one). If you had the annotation cookie set on the old URL you need to reset it for the new one. The old one will vanish from your browser in 4 weeks when it expires.

10 June, 2004. For a while now I've been concerned that the bandwidth served by my site was pushing towards the limit of my webhosting plan, and I'd start getting charged US$10 a GB extra. Then I just had a look at my webhost (DreamHost) and saw they were having a huge sale on the plan two levels higher than my current one. So I signed up. The increased bandwidth will see me through the next year or three comfortably at my current growth rate. Of course, it costs a bit more. So two things:

  1. I've updated the donations page with the new expense and rejigged existing donations in advance to fit the new cost.
  2. I'm pimping DreamHost, because they give referral bonuses for anyone who signs up for webhosting with them by following the links I just gave, which will cut my expenses. So if you're looking for a webhost, check out their plans and current sale.
This new plan means I may also have the resources to do some cool new things with the site that I've been thinking about... Stay tuned.

9 June, 2004. A lot of people didn't like the new "URL for this strip" thingy at the top next to the strip number, and to be honest neither did I. And it wasn't really important for anything other than the daily updated IWC home page at / anyway, so I've moved it down to the navigation box for that and removed it from all other pages.

5 June, 2004. Dave Goeb has created a LEGO comic with a guest appearance by Death of Being Sat On By A Giant Frog. Check out his Time Cruisters Comic Book. Also check his new contribution to the Fan Art page.

3 June, 2004. I keep saying I need a scorecard to tell the Deaths apart. So I made one.

1 May, 2004. Irregular Webcomic! is the Featured Site of the Month for May at Pork Factor 9, which is, despite any indications to the contrary, G-rated and safe for viewing at work. If you like webcomics (and hey, you're reading this) and Muppets (and honestly, who doesn't?), check it out.

While I'm at it, IWC was also Number 12's Webcomic Pick of the Week for 8 April (scroll way down to see the review). I normally read this site every week, but trust it to pick my comic when I was away on vacation!

25 Apr, 2004. I've added Death of Being Ground By A Mars Rover Rock Abrasion Tool to the Death cast, and put a cool new theme crossover matrix in the cast index page.

19 Apr, 2004. I'm home from my vacation! I hope you enjoyed the strip while I was away. I had a great trip, but it's nice to be home again.

27 Mar, 2004. From 27 March to 19 April I am away on vacation. I have created enough strips in advance to last throughout this time, and they should keep updating automatically every day. However, if there is a web server reboot over the scheduled update time, then the script might not run that day. (This has happened once before, but I ran the update manually as soon as I discovered it.)

While away, I will not be reading or replying to any e-mail. Until I return, enjoy the strip!

25 Feb, 2004. I've just added Sallah to the Cliffhangers cast. This is significant because he's now the 50th regular character with a bio!

23 Feb, 2004. In the past week I've made some configuration changes on my server that should (hopefully) have been unnoticed by most readers. I've noticed an increasing number of people have been hotlinking the comic images on other sites, especially web forums and blogs. I asked nicely for people not to do this in the FAQ, because of the bandwidth load it causes. But I've been forced to get nasty by some people ignoring that request. Hotlinking to images is now disabled - all that will appear is a broken image icon. If you wish to show people a comic, link to the entire page and send them to this site. Thank you.

Note to anyone using dangermouse.net without the www. in front: I've fixed the problem you've been having seeing the comics for the past week. Sorry about that.

4 Dec, 2003. I've added new sections for Fan Art - the first piece of which I received the other day - and my LEGO® Wish List - for people who would like to contribute bits and pieces to the comic. [EDIT: Wish List has now been removed from the site.]

18 Nov, 2003. The new enhancement I've been foreshadowing has arrived! Crossover strips are now fully multi-themed. You'll notice the difference in the navigation for crossover strips, which now track all the themes involved in the strips. As a side bonus, the Nigerian Finance Minister, Death, and Shakespeare now score their very own themes.

15 Nov, 2003. I have quite dramatically modified the CGI script I use to display comics, in order to make future enhancements possible, although there should be no change in visible behaviour just yet. I've tested it a bit, but if you see any weird things - especially when using the navigation links - please let me know.

6 Nov, 2003. You'll notice the new navigation link style, which tells you the name of the theme for the current strip now. This is a prelude to an enhancement I've wanted to do for a while now, which will allow crossover strips to exist in more than one theme at a time. It will just take a bit longer to complete.

5 Nov, 2003. Donations are back online, to help me cover my ongoing web hosting costs.

31 Oct, 2003. I've enabled the viewing of annotations on the 5-strips-at-a-time pages. They should work with your annotation cookie the same as the individual strips. So now you won't miss out on annotations if you read multiple strips at once. And if you normally read 5 at a time and didn't even know there were annotations, you have a whole new world to explore! This change also allowed me to do some minor cosmetics on the page layout.

10 Oct, 2003. I've added William Shakespeare to the Miscellaneous cast.

30 Sep, 2003. Donations have reached the $250 target and someone has already donated enough to cover October's webhosting expenses. Donations are now offline until November. Thanks all!

28 Sep, 2003. Donations have reached US$244.77 - close enough to the $250 target for me to declare donations officially closed! Thanks to all who donated. (However, if you still want to donate, I won't say no. See the Donations page for details.)

26 Sep, 2003. I've added The Charity Collector Guy and The Nigerian Finance Minister to the Cast Pages.

17 Sep, 2003. Yay! It looks like the second new server move has been successful! I'm still looking at a few minor things, but I think everything is pretty much working properly now. The first new server I tried was a disaster, so I had to move twice within a week, and things were pretty unstable there for a while.

8 Sep, 2003. I am going to be switching web hosts some time in the next few days. This will unfortunately cause some disruption to dangermouse.net as DNS updates happen and I set up the site on the new server.

7 Sep, 2003. Donations are up to US$100! Thanks to the people who have contributed, listed on the Donations page. The $250 target is rapidly approaching, so send money now before you're forced to keep it! ;-)

5 Sep, 2003. You may have noticed the new Donate button. See the Donations page for details on why and how.

18 Aug, 2003. I've added new cast details for Wendy and Death. I've also updated the Star Wars cast page to include a bonus index of the Star Wars strips in movie chronology order.

15 Aug, 2003. Irregular Webcomic! is now proudly appearing in its first paying gig, Pyramid - The Best In Gaming. Yes, it's a subscription site - that's how they can afford to pay me for strips. And yes, strips appearing there are exclusive to Pyramid - you won't see them here.

Note this does not affect this site and the free strips at all. You'll still get a new, free comic every day! Pyramid subscribers get extra strips!

If you're interested enough in gaming to be reading Irregular Webcomic!, you might well be interested in subscribing to Pyramid. For only US$20 a year you get weekly articles on RPGs and other games, reviews, industry insider news, and exclusive Irregular Webcomic!s! A bargain!

14 Aug, 2003. I have updated the RSS feed so that it now includes the full HTML text of annotations, rather than just a link to the annotation page on my site. This should please people who wanted it, and also slightly reduce the amount of HTTP requests coming into my site (which is a good thing).

In other news, I've purchased myself a shiny new Nikon Coolpix 4300 digital camera, and have been using it to make some comics. It takes longer to do, but the photo quality is noticeably better than my old webcam. #199 and #201 are the first two strips to be made with the new camera.

22 Jul, 2003. Woo! All those people asking to be able to see the annotations by default can now use nifty cookie code to do so. Yay! Count me in!

I've added Erwin to the Cliffhangers cast page. And if you hadn't noticed, Cthulhu has also been added to the Steve and Terry cast page.

20 Jul, 2003. Woohoo! You can now navigate five strips at a time by theme. Next job is implementing cookies to you can choose to see annotations by default.

19 Jul, 2003. You may have noticed I've added cool new "by Theme" buttons to aid your navigation to different strips in whatever theme you're currently looking at. If you see any buggy behaviour, drop me a line. And yes, I'm working on five strips at a time by theme.

11 Jul, 2003. A few people told me they didn't quite understand the joke in #165, so I've added an alternative strip in the annotated version.

9 Jul, 2003. There's a new logos and banners page. I've also updated the "I Like IWC" buttons to use transparency so they look great on any coloured background.

8 Jul, 2003. You may have already noticed the cool new banner/logo/image/thingy in the navigation bar. Feel free to use it or the larger version to link to Irregular Webcomic! I'll produce more designs as I have time. If you're a graphic designer and have an idea for a cool logo/banner, let me know!

4 Jul, 2003. I've added Draak to the Fantasy Cast page.

2 Jul, 2003. Well, digital cameras turned out to be rather more expensive than I'd expected, so I'm going to wait a while on that. Maybe I'll get one with my tax return. Meanwhile, I realise the desk lamp lighting is harsher than the natural light I was using before. I'm still experimenting to get the effect right, and when the sun's out I'll forgo using it as much as I can.

30 Jun, 2003. I've bought myself a shiny new desk lamp, so I can make new comics any time of day, rather than having to wait until sunny afternoons for the right lighting. I'm also thinking of getting a digital camera, which would allow better quality photos than I get with my webcam.

29 Apr, 2003. I've added a snazzy new RSS feed for those of you who use such things. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you might want to check what RSS is all about.

20 Apr, 2003. I've restructured the directories on the server because the one directory I used to hold all the files was getting rather full. I think everything is working, but if you see anything odd like a broken image or missing annotation file, please drop me an e-mail.

5 Apr, 2003. You've probably noticed the new disclaimer below. No, I haven't been hassled by the LEGO® Group of companies. They have a very sensible online fan site policy, and I just want to abide by it.

23 Mar, 2003. The Archive page now lists all comics by theme, so you can find all the Fantasy strips, or Steve and Terry strips, more easily.

20 Mar, 2003. Yes, we're finally back online. The server was down for several days because of a power supply failure and subsequent fire. Hearty thanks to my sysadmin for working tirelessly to get the site up and running again. If you haven't visited for a while, you might want to check previous comics until you reach one you remember.

22 Feb, 2003. Annotations are now accessed from each individual comic, rather than all together on one big page. If you view a strip with an annotation, you'll be shown a link to look at the annotation.

19 Feb, 2003. Notice the new Annotations page, where you can learn more about particular strips.

8 Feb, 2003. If you haven't noticed, the Cast page has been updated to include the new characters.

5 Feb, 2003. If you have been using the URL http://www.dangermouse.net/cgi-bin/comic.pl to reach Irregular Webcomic!, please stop using it and use

http://www.dangermouse.net/ [since superseded by http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/]
from now on. I've set up a server redirect, so this will now work on all browsers without that annoying client-side redirect. And it's much easier to remember. Sorry about that taking a few days to get sorted.

31 Dec, 2002. Historical Note added later: Today is the day the first Irregular Webcomic! appeared.


My comics: Irregular Webcomic! | Darths & Droids | Eavesdropper | Planet of Hats | The Dinosaur Whiteboard | mezzacotta
My blogs: dangermouse.net (daily updates) | 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe (science!) | Carpe DMM (long form posts) | Snot Block & Roll (food reviews)
More comics I host: The Prisoner of Monty Hall | Lightning Made of Owls | Square Root of Minus Garfield | iToons | Comments on a Postcard | Awkward Fumbles
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This work is copyright and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International Licence by David Morgan-Mar. dmm@irregularwebcomic.net