This is not going to be themed. Just various looks at what I'm doing, a swift trot by the various things I'm currently interested in.

I finally figured out what the name of my character Mindmistress' supercomputer stood for. I had already decided on VICKI as the name for the computer---since it was to stand the same relationship to Mindmistress that Nike did to Athena...and Nike's Roman name was...Victoria...it seemed fitting.

Yet I couldn't figure out what it stood for...the "K" kept on defeating me. Because I was mentally thinking of words that started with a "hard" k, like kick. Then I thought of---knowledge.

Then it fit together.

VICKI stands for:

Virtual
Intelligence
Computer
Knowledge
Interface.

That angelic face in the picture is the hologram/intelligent agent/A.I. called VICKI.

How much longer before I do anything with Mindmistress---as in publish her out on the web? Well, I've done two out of the three parts I wanted finished before anybody read it. I'm about at the end of the "action" sequence, sort of an "in media res" beginning. I've done the first part of the "origin" sequence. I just need to do the "transformation" sequence. The pages are done for that, are drawn, but not colored, or lettered.

Then I have to figure out who still gives a lot of free web space. This would eat up a lot of space, quickly.

I'm doing something a little different from many webcomics. A lot of them download the images as one huge .gif. I'm instead going to seperate the panels on the page with hspace and vspace html tags. Since web pages are roughly half as tall as the average comics page, I'm not putting more than four panels per page.

After I get through with those three sections---without which it wouldn't be a very satisfying story---I'll embark on the next story arc. (I've actually drawn at least one page of the next story.) I have already developed roughly three opponents for her...

I had pretty much put it on hold while concentrating on Mindmistress, but I'm starting to add sequences to PATHS OF DARKNESS again. I never wanted to abandon it, but I had to choose one or the other for a while. Now I can concentrate on both, I think...

Could there be any meeting between my comic strip character, Mindmistress, and some of my other literary but fantastic characters, such as Hourglass or Dr. Darkness or the Changeling?

Sure. But not right away, and not anytime soon. She doesn't even live anywhere near. I'm still deciding where she lives, but I want to place her in a large Southern city like Atlanta.

As usual, I've been reading. I've finished rereading all the Stephen King novels I had, and finished Poul Anderson's OPERATION LUNA, about his otherworld where magic has taken the place of science, and his heroes, a witch and werewolf husband-and-wife...and their world's space program.

I'm now reading GENESIS, Poul Anderson's last story. After I'm finished with this, I'll read STARFARERS. That'll make three novels of Anderson I've never read before, a rarity. I usually devour anything by him that I can find.

Also, I'm being trained in two new platforms at work. It's a full life and a merry one.

Meanwhile, I had a little free time---don't ask when, I know it doesn't sound it, but I did...and I went out to my favorite webcomic, bar none, the wonderful BRUNO---and did something I've never done before.

I read all the archives. All of them. I was a relatively latecomer to BRUNO, and had no idea how much history was involved, how she's evolved over the years. How real he's made her...a living, breathing, interesting character. The sequence with the ghost of the kid of the writer she's living with was especially good. (Don't believe me? Look through it. I won't tell you where it is, though...)

It also depressed me. Here Baldwin is doing beautiful, magical work with human interaction, and I'm proposing putting superheroics of a sort as a continuing series. Most webcomics, even those that have Satanist chickens like GOATS or other superheroes just to laugh at, like BOBBINS, are more adult than that.

Still, I want to do it. I don't know why. Hoping to breathe some life into a beloved, but cliche-ridden genre, I think...

Wish me luck.