Tower of Comics
Sam is, of course, referring to Hazel's break-in during the Four-Finger Discount chapter. (And more specifically, her disabling of the surveillance system.
Our Tower of Babel story has finished! If you haven't already, you can now read the whole thing, from the first page to the end in one sitting. A few people have said they feel like the story ends on a cliffhanger, but we designed it more like it ends on a premise -- Minnesota taking on a personal mission that could be explored in future comics or games or what have you. I hope that happens some day, but for now, I'm pretty fond of what we did. (And I hope you were, too!)
-Sam Logan
Sam and Fuzzy Q & A: Patron Edition Got a question you want answered? Just drop me an email with "Q & A" in the subject line!
"Are you going to start a Patreon for Sam and Fuzzy?" -Christine
For those who don't know, Patreon is an interesting service that (among other things) lets webcartoonists and other online creators collect voluntary subscription payments from their fans. (The fans choose how much they want to pay.) Usually, the artist will offer to do extra things if they reach certain monthly fundraising benchmarks, and will also provide tiers of exclusive bonuses to the patreons who back at various levels. It's kind of like a kickstarter for ongoing projects. And it's pretty cool! Some folks I know are having great luck with it.
The truth, though, is that Sam and Fuzzy already functionally has patrons and reward tiers. Readers who just want to throw a couple of bucks my way nab my pay-what-you-want ebooks and digital bonuses. For people with a bit more to spend, I've got books and shirts for sale. For people who are a little more diehard, I sell original sketch-off art and small commissions... and for the megafans who want to contribute a lot, I do huge ones. I am lucky. Sam and Fuzzy supports a pretty broad array of stuff to buy, and if people are looking to "back" me at different levels, they've got lots of options.
Long story short: I may try Patreon down the road if I ever think I have a particularly cool thing to distribute through it! But for now, I'm just going to focus on making more pay-what-you-want ebooks and bonus packs, hosting more Sketch-Offs, doing more commissions, and making more books and shirts. (You guys seem to like all that stuff, so I'd be pretty dumb no to!)
"I, for one, was enjoying Tower of Babel. I'd never played the game, but the comic was interesting. Do you and Shannon have any plans to continue it in the future? Or is it a matter of Shifty Look owning the content/name/etc?" -James
We'd both love to do more someday. But unlike, say, Sam and Fuzzy, Tower of Babel is owned by Namco Bandai. They just hired us to draw a comic about it! We did create the new characters, but they're all derived from the old ones and are a part of that franchise now.
Who knows... maybe some day in the future Namco will want to make some new Tower of Babel stuff. But it's up to them to decide what they'd like to do and whether we'd be involved. We had a lot of fun playing in their sandbox, though. They gave us a lot of freedom and paid us well. No complaints!
"In this comic, Don Grrrbil mentions The Pit. Does he know the location and what it is? Is this why Sam is working with him? Is it just a coincidence?" -Justin
Coincidence! Don Grrbil is referring to the literal small pit that they throw the characters into in the next panel. It's some sort of ceremonial combat arena... not the legendary mysterious "Pit" referred to by the committee.
I may address the coincidence in the strip sometime. In retrospect, I should probably have called it something else to avoid confusion!
That's a wrap for this week, team. See you on Monday!
-Sam Logan
Shifty shifty
The penultimate update of Tower of Babel goes live later today! These comics were always intended as a single self-contained "season", but if things had worked out a little differently we probably would have done a follow-up season later this year. Alas, as you may have already heard, the ShiftyLook project as a whole is being wrapped up, which means no new seasons of any of their comics for the foreseeable future. So for now, it looks like Minnesota's adventures will be confined to this one story. We're pretty proud of it, though, and I hope you enjoyed reading it! The final strip arrives on Friday.
Also on Friday: we return with a new Sam and Fuzzy strip and a new round of Q and A. (If you've got a question you'd like answered, just pop it in an email with "Q and A" in the subject line.) See you then!
-Sam Logan
