Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Production Edition
Got a question you want answered? Just drop me an email with "Q & A" in the subject line!

"Is there something wrong with the Sam and Fuzzy site? Most of the site still works fine, but when I try to access the main page itself, I get the following error message:

Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: "bad_httpd_conf"" -Mark

A couple weeks ago, we had a server problem that caused people to see that message. It was only up for a few hours before I fixed it. But unfortunately, some people's browsers have cached that error page location, and keep displaying it instead of trying to reload the working version of the front page.

If this is happening to you, all you need to do is a hard refresh of the front page. In most browsers, this is done by holding shift or control while pressing the refresh button. This will force your browser to check for the latest version of the front page instead of displaying the error page.

Every week, I hear from a few people who are still experiencing this problem! I wish there was something I could do on my end, but alas, it is out of my hands.

"What was your inspiration for Devahi as a character? Was there someone she was based off of or a role you wanted her to play? How has your perception of her changed as the comic's progressed?" -Wes

I created Dev because I wanted a sort of surrogate character for new readers who were plunging into Sam and Fuzzy for the first time with the Fix Your Problem volume. Because Dev was a newbie, she had a lot to learn about NMS and the complicated history of its various staff members, and through her, new readers could learn as she did. (Meanwhile, older readers would relate more to the perspective of the "informed" older characters, and enjoy the humour that resulted from injecting an outsider into the mix.)

That's a very... functional reason to create a character, though. I wanted her to be an interesting character in and of herself, too, lest she wind up as little more than a walking exposition generator. So I wound up imbuing her with a lot of the "young person trying to figure out what they want to do with their life" themes that I used to explore with Sam in the earlier days of the strip. I thought it might be interesting to contrast her with the current Sam, who has grown to be very sure of what he should be doing, and see what it brought out in each of them.

I really like how Dev turned out, and it makes me happy to see fans who feel the same. She's a lot of fun to write, and probably one of my favorite characters in the strip's history.

"What kind of scanner do you use? Any particular brand you're partial to? My lady is in the market for a new scanner and she happens to particularly like working with ink. Any tips?" -Josh

The truth is, if you are doing the kind of scanning I'm doing (2-bit, 600 dpi black-and-white lineart scanning, that is), pretty much any modern scanner can do the job. It's kind of astonishing, really. At the moment I'm just using the one built into my printer. A couple of times, I've considered buying a huge oversized scanner so that I don't have to scan my comic pages in two pieces, but to be honest, I'm not sure where I would put it!

I imagine scanner quality is much more important if you are scanning full colour artwork or photos! But since I never really do that, I don't have much advice on that front.

That's a wrap for this week! See you on Monday, team.

-Sam Logan

2013

Happy New Year, everyone! Today we return to Fangs for Nothing, and more specifically, to Sam and Rexford. Is it time to learn a bit more about the Committee and the pit? I think it probably is!

2012 was a pretty big year for me. Eleven months ago, I started doing comics full-time... and I'm thrilled to report that, nearly one year later, that's still what I'm doing. So I think today is as appropriate a day as any to offer my sincere thanks to all you readers out there for your continued enthusiasm, encouragement, and support (moral and fiscal). You are helping me to live the dream, guys. I promise I will live it as well as I can, by drawing the best comics I can draw.

-Sam Logan

Book Club Winner

Belated congratulations to David Mountney, the Book Club member who won the original cover line-art for Sam and Fuzzy Under the Influence! And a big thank you to everyone else who picked up a book. You're all winners to me.

Today's comic began it's conceptual life as a "new year's predictions" strip, and is the last strip in our brief break of holiday-themed nonsense. We return to our "Fangs for Nothing" storyline on Wednesday. See you then!

-Sam Logan