Happy Halloween 2014.

Wishing all readers of Babayka-Lives a massive Happy Halloween this year. Hope you all have a good one. Hope you enjoy this special Halloween Gif made just for the occasion. You can also find a copy of it on the Babayka-Lives message board, where you are also very welcome to post any Halloween greetings or spooky Ecards of your own.

I myself am all stocked up for the next few days (as you can tell by the photo below… bonus points if you can name all three horror dvds?) I’ve got booze, spooky movies and cupcakes (and maybe a copy of Zombie Tramp the graphic-novel, if it turns up before the weekend.), so I’m all set for Halloween 2014.

And don’t forget on Saturday page 62 goes up on Babayka-Lives this weekend. So if you want something spooky to read this Halloween, drop by and check it out. Find out the fate of Alina, as Kevin Moon closes in. Things get tense this Halloween on Babayka-Lives.

Back To Moon.

Tune into Babayka-Lives tomorrow as we rejoin Kevin Moon as he looks for someone to take his bad mood out on… but who does he find?

Here’s a little preview of the first panel to get you in the mood. I have a soft spot for this shot. I like it so much I almost used it as the image on the backcover of the graphic-novel. It’s strange how Moon became the star of both the front and backcover in the end.  It was both a case of happy accident and poor planning, I guess.

Also, if you’re planning on treating yourself and getting something spooky to read this Halloween. May I recommend Brides Of Babayka the graphic-novel. It’s the perfect time of year to snuggle up with a good creepy book. Plus the graphic-novel comes with exclusive pin-ups not available anywhere else. Find out what the Brides are hiding in the room at the end of the hall before the rest. Invite Babayka into your home this year and give yourself a real spooky Halloween.

Back Online.

After two plus weeks of being without internet, I’m very pleased to say it looks like I’m back online.

While internet woes may be incredibly frustrating, they don’t tend to make for very good reading, so I won’t go into major details (I’m sure you’ve all got internet provider horror stories of your own, anyway, am I right?) Just to say I’ve been having massive problems with an internet company Kevin Bacon’s very fond of, but I’m not anymore. Also, hell is trying to sort out a very technical server problem over the phone to an overseas call-centre, while being charged a ridicules amount of money for every minute you’re on the phone to them. I’m not sure how that’s even legal? Many times it felt like I was unwittingly in some bad comedy sketch. I still don’t really know why my internet was down, only that it was something to do with their servers (even though they went out of their way to try and make it look like this wasn’t the case.) All I know is the problem went away Sunday night, and I really hope it stays that way.  

Looking on the brightside, I’ve been online for around ten years, and this is by far the worse internet problem I’ve ever had in that time, and I still managed to get my web-comic updated. True, page 58 was 48-hours late, but still… it’s nice to know when such major setbacks do come along, there are ways around them. Kind of seems like sod’s law that such a massive internet problem would hit me after only ten months in after launching a new web-comic, but at least now I know there are ways of dealing with them when these problems do pop up. A big thank you to everyone who kept checking in. I’m very much hoping my recent internet problems are behind me now… but we’ll see.

I’m really glad I’ve got back on the internet just before Halloween. Checking out people’s Halloween related artwork online is a big treat for me every year, and I would have been very sad to have missed it. Being a horror comic-book artist, I like to try and do a Halloween Ecard image every year, even if sometimes it’s just a sketchbook one. I’m very pleased to say I’ve all ready done something for this Halloween. This years one will be a little different is all I’ll say, though. Watch this space, folks. If anybody else out there also does Halloween Ecards, please by all means feel free to post them in the Babayka-Lives message board on Halloween if you like. I’d love to see them.

As a bit of a thank you to those who did keep checking back and reading Babayka-Lives during these dark last couple of weeks, I thought I’d post this bit of artwork below as a thanks. It’s a character sheet drawing of a new character from what will (hopefully) be Babayka: Book 2. I’m not going to say if she’s a new Bride or not, but (fingers crossed) you should be seeing a lot of this girl down the line.

Temporary Life Via A Dongle.

Sadly and annoyingly my internet went down last Thursday night, and has still yet to come back to life. I think the problem is something to do with my internet provider’s servers, so I’m gonna be spending a large part of this week trying to get that sorted, and getting myself back online. Thankfully, after a couple of trips out into the rain today, I did manage to buy an Internet Dongle, so I can still put up this week’s instalment over on Babayka-Lives, and write this blog post to let people know the deal. My apologies for being 48-hours late in updating my web-comic this week, but I’m sure most people reading this will have their own internet provider horror stories and understand.  

The plan is I’m not gonna be online a lot this week unless my internet provider suddenly gets their act together (I’m not holding my breath), but hopefully there’ll be enough GB juice left in my dongle that I’ll still be able to post this week’s page on time over on Babayka-Lives this coming Saturday as normal, and if worse-comes-to-worse, the following Saturday, too. So unless my dongle fails me, Babayka-Lives should be ok in updating in the coming weeks.    

I will be sure to return any\all correspondence when I do get back online at some point, so a big sorry to anyone currently waiting for a reply from me. I promises I will get back to you as soon as I can (there’s something about the internet that makes some people think it’s ok not to reply to correspondence… I promises I’m not one of those dicks. I always make a point of replying to all non-rude, troll-free, nice messages from people, and will do so as soon as I can.)

I’ve got a nasty feeling this ain’t one of those internet problems that’s gonna go away over night, sadly, but I will be back at some point (even if I have to change internet providers.) As I say, I will try and make sure my current Internet woes don’t mess with the updating of Babayka-Lives too much, and will do my best to make sure there’s still something new to read every Saturday.

P.S. I think ‘Dongle’ is my new favourite word.

Level One.

Was reading this article on the cruel brilliance of the first level of Resident Evil 4 over the weekend. As someone who recently had to replace a lost copy of Resident Evil 4 last week and has been playing it again lately, I found this article rings very true.

I would never claim to be a gamer these days, as I neither have the time or the money for it, sadly. That said, I still have a massive soft spot for the Resident Evil franchise. Not that I’ve played any of the modern ones. The last one I played was when I bought a copy of Resident Evil 5 for this very laptop I’m typing on right now, and then soon discovered it wasn’t powerful enough to handle it. (Although I enjoyed the little I did play when I could get it to work.) The newer games seemed a bit too Matrix-y for me, from what I’ve seen. I also watched the fifth Resident Evil movie the other day, and just couldn’t get into it. I get the feeling the newer Resident Evil games\movies swapped survival horror for Matrix style leather outfits, high kicks and  unlimited ammo machine guns and explosions.

I’m also a massive fan of going onto youtube and checking out the mods people have done for Resident Evil games (Cammy White in Resident Evil 4? You’re crazy, internet... Actually, isn‘t Cammy also owned by Capcom? Plus she‘s a secret agent. Would it really be so weird to see her in a Resident Evil game...? probably.) I’ve also got a soft spot for Left 4 Dead mods too, even though I’ve never played it.

Babayka-Lives Message Board.

When I first started Babayka-Lives in very late 2013, the only comments I got were just bucket-loads of spam. To stop this ungodly wave of evil spam, and because I was also a little worried about spoilers from people who had read the graphic-novel getting posted under the web-comic, I turned the comments off. There wasn’t enough pages posted yet to really warrant any real comments anyway, so I didn’t feel like anyone was missing out. But that said, it’s not unreasonable that people might want somewhere online to leave their comments\thoughts. So with that in mind, I’ve started a Message Board for readers. After nine-months and 56-pages, it feels like the right time to open it up to the public again.

I’m just giving it a few months trial. I’ll try it throughout the remainder of 2014, and if it doesn’t get any action, or becomes unmanageable, no biggie, I’ll just delete it and we’ll reboot to how it was before. I’m gonna treat this new message board as an experiment. I am very aware that forums have been known to go bad (I.e. Spam, Trolls, etc) and have to be hacked off like a recently zombie bitten infected limb, but I’m giving it a try anyway. I’ve been thinking for a while it would be nice to have somewhere off-site where people can gather and intermingle. If it doesn’t get uses and it’s not something people want, I’ll just retire it in the new year.

So to sum up, if you’ve been wanting to comment on Babayka-Lives, or maybe interact with other readers of this web-series, here is your chance. Just head over to the web-comic and you’ll see there’s a brand new link in the header-bar. Follow it and click on the Babayka-Lives: Comments\Thoughts\Feedback thread and have your say.

Weekend Reads.

Here’s what I’ll be reading this weekend. Doing some homework, as it were.

Speaking of things to read over the weekend… tune into Babayka-Lives tomorrow when Julian’s bathroom attacker is revealed (I’m very aware that last sentence sounds a bit suspect…)