It’s Friday, or nearly so, and as such we have this week’s weekly endeavor into online-uploaded-and-digitally-consumable-comedic-visually-sequential-narratives, or otherwise known as, a webcomic.

(as always, click the thumbnail for the full-sized viewable version)

There’s actually a lot to talk about this week, with regards to this webcomic, from both myself, and Kilian - so if you’re interested hit the ‘Full Story’ tag below for all of the in’s and out’s and careless verbal ventings held therein ^__^

–and real quick, for anyone interested, we’ve added a new section to the Visual Stimuli (Galleries) where we will be uploading NR themed Wallpapers and other puter-worthy goodies for faithful Normalinauts to use as they will! To celebrate this new edition, we’ve created wallpapers (in all sizes) for the original ’splosion NR logo (featured in part as the top banner on the site) and a brand new(!) one with Kilian displaying the sexiness of uncooked bacon… or just bacon in general. Again, all sizes for standard wallpaper available, make sure to check them out!

New Wallpaper Section in the official NR Gallery!

[Kilian's bits are below - so feel free to scroll past my meanderings if your eyes desire a more intelligently written summation of thoughts]

It should be stated, well actually a couple of things should be stated, but firstly, it should be properly known that Normality Restored, or NR, as we lazily refer to it, is first and foremost about putting together a regularly updated webcomic. Meaning, that it has been mine and Kilian’s intention from the very beginning to do with this site, exactly what we’re doing in this post. Now, from time to time, obviously, we have veered slightly by a degree or two off of this central target of our intent, and have also used the site to talk about various things what interest us. And this is something that will not likely change, but I did want to make it abundantly clear that we are all about the webcomic first and foremost.

A little NR history.

For those that don’t know, and those would probably be a select few who were immediately or close to immediately involved in me and Kilian being introduced to one another, NR was started as a simple and fun experiment, mostly for Kilian to take the sheer joy and creative inspiration that he had gleamed from other (and legendarily successful) online comics, notably, Penny Arcade. Kilian loves him some Penny Arcade, and not without good reason. Penny Arcade is quite successful, not only because of some rather brilliant business-voodoo from one Robert K. but also because, at the end of the day, the entries are consistent, humorous, well conceived and executed, and most of all generally funny. So Kilian was essentially, not only entertained by the infamous webcomic duo’s thrice-weekly digital exploits, he was outright inspired.

So how did NR come about from this?

Well, Kilian, as many know has put in quite a bit of indentured slavery-time at some special Book Mines, also known as the the humongous-national-bookstore-chain, and it so happens, that my own life-partner, one APrilhead, works at the same one. APril knew Kilian long before I met him, and in her usual way, was happy to tout my own scribbles as being more extraordinary than they really deserve, and when discussions of Kilian’s love for Penny Arcade arose and his wispy-daydream-like-wish to one day do something similar arose in casual conversation, she dropped my name to him. What happened next was a meeting of the minds in veritable real world geographic dimensions, where Kilian and I came face to face. Needless to say we hit it off without a problem, and have been slowly scheming and developing Normality Restored ever since. We gave our own little ’soft’ launch, or opening, sometime during the summer of last year, trying different approaches, and focuses out for the site and the eventual comic, and for me, I got to spend quite a bit of time sorting out exactly how I wanted the strips to look (which I’m still working on in a more minor capacity). Later, roughly after the turn of the year, we more concretely made our debut with the site in an form closer to what you have now, and began steadfastly creating more webcomics.

During that time until now:

A lot of interesting, and at times, not so pleasant, things have arisen to distract us from our continued efforts here. Most notable among these, at least for me, since it seems to take me quite a bit of time to draw these things, were stress from work, and the abhorrently deteriorating environment that my ‘day job’ had embraced. It is incredibly unsettling to put a great deal of your heart and soul and dedication into something, especially a company, from the very beginning of its inception, only to have people turn around and try to take advantage, or simply shove you out. Such (in short) was the case with my own daily ‘mines’ detail. But, regardless of whether or not that situation has been sorted out proper or not, for which I’m not saying right now, I have personally been greatly inspired not only by Kilian, and APrilhead, but also to many a faithful Normalinaut, and Trickster and Grand Chase Knight who have been pushing for me to quit making excuses and to come back to where I belong, which is here, on NR.

To this end, Kilian and I began devising a plan for a much larger project to be housed here, and don’t worry, we’re still working on it, and it will NOT take the place, or attention away from the regular strips; but, we also began working in a much more focused capacity on the regular NR webcomics themselves. And you’ve probably seen comics come back in a more frequent, actual weekly version since then ^__^ and we’re very happy to be back.

But what about this week’s comic?

I’ll be giving some time over to Kilian to discuss this a bit more in detail specifically for the immediate inspiration, but first, I wanted to say a few brief bits about our own intentions and direction, because they do have something to do with what this week’s bit is all about. When we started NR, it was setup so that Kilian would be writing the strips and I would be drawing them. Now I’m not the worlds biggest expert on sequential narratives, let alone comedy, but I do have some actual experience with this sort of thing both in regular traditional print, and digital extra crispy. So we ended up collaborating quite a bit and still do, until we’ve worked the very concept and script of each strip into the finely molded and crafted pieces that you see here on the site. We ain’t perfect, we don’t claim to be geniuses, but I think it can be safely said, that not only do we take our craft seriously, but we’re getting better with every step we take. But, one of the concerns, when we’ve been looking at the webcomics we like (which for me is VGcats) and trying to see what we could do to garner some similar success, we found that they had a particular focus. Now out there, in the wide, scary digital expanse of the interwebz, when it comes to webcomics, they basically come in only a couple of flavors: furry (eek!), geeky, soap-operatic, dojinshi/manga/anime-inspired, and game related. Now there are other genres of course, but these tend to be the most popular, and a lot of works in this great collective pantheon fit into one or more of these categories quite easily. Which means, we had a slight problem with our own identity. We do fit most easily within the geeky section, since both Kilian and I and even our family members and close friends that seem to pop up in the strips, are all pretty big geeks, but we lacked a certain focus for the ground we would normally cover in the strips. Yes, Kilian is a booknerd, a veritable bibliophile (as is APrilhead and even my self to a certain extent) but we weren’t using that as a focus, and even though entertaining (at least to me, especially when it angers Kilian) I’m not sure our focus on our beloved futbol clubs was much of an attention getter either - so instead, we’ve been slowly, and purposefully shifting our focus to vid-games, related entertainment and associated pop-culture. Why? Well, we’ve both worked for vid-game companies (and no, neither of us are referring to retailers, as vid-game companies in this case) and even though we’ve lost much-valuable expendable personal time to waste on vid-games themselves (we’re dads! Scary I know >__>), the culture and the news surrounding them, if not particular titles themselves still hold sway over our interest. This is especially true when the products of this one industry begin extending and affecting other industries, even politics, and I think that that, is where our interest truly lies here.

So if you’ve noticed a slight shift to more current-affair, and game related settings for the webcomics, the above, might help explain where we’re coming from. Now, please understand, that this is not in any way to say that we will not be doing vid-game stuff exclusively, this is more about finding a firm foundation to stand on, so that when we do veer off in a different direction according to our whims, whimsies and obsessive-short-attention-span-fueled-wantings, we will know where to come back to for firmer ground, and you will know where we’re likely to head.

The plan is to turn NR into a full time job, make no mistake, it already feels like one, sans the paycheck, so maybe this slight focusing of our direction will help make that a reality… time will tell… and your money. Lots and lots of your money…

So, although, long, I felt that there were some things left to be said about the site, especially with some of the new visitors that we’ve been experiencing lately, and that we’ve actually never come out and said what we wanted to do with this site, or the comics. Essentially there has to be something more than ‘whatever we feel like doing’, because we feel like it, it’s our site, and we’re supreme controllers of its contents’ because even though that’s true to a certain extent, especially in actual execution of what we inevitably produce, relying on that sort of mindset for something like webcomics, will produce nothing more than the examples cited in the first 3 panels of this week’s strip, which is, a proud tradition.

We love you,

–Aleister

Mindless Self Indulgence - Revenge

So, yeah, what he said…

No, I’m kidding. You know I can’t give up an opportunity to talk out of my ass for a while. Though, I think that Gilgrim’s entry, while loving and thought out, is also long. And now my words are way down here, a bible’s length from the actual comic, so anyone surfing this way for comicly inclined entertainmentz is likely not even reading this far down. I mean, hell, if I were you, I wouldn’t read this. Shit, I don’t even want to read it and I’m the ass who’s typing it!

So, about this week’s strip. We have tried, unsuccessfully, for the past two weeks to get NR listed on joystiq’s Weekly Webcomic Wrapup because, honestly, we felt that we were at least on par with the comics they were highlighting. Two weeks, two rejections. Well, we didn’t receive an actual rejection, so much as we were simply ignored.

I think the above comic is evidence that we handled our rejection in a mature and adult manner.

And hey, we get it. We’re not making art over here…we’re not even making, say, pop-art. But I have to truly believe that the couple dozen strips we have done are at least no worse then crap like this, or this, or god help us, this.

I’m also going to take this opportunity to mention, again, that we have a Normality Restored facebook group where, if you join, I promise to give you a unique, and ultimately life fulfilling (note: guarantee of life fulfillment may be void in the contiguous United States, Canada, Guam, any of the seven continents on the planet earth, or, in fact, in any sector of this or any other galaxy) officer title. So, you know, think about how unfulfilling your life is now, and how much more “fulfilled” it could be.

Pulley - Cashed In

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.