Hello Again!

I yet live, and have been known to check in here from time to time. Today is one of those times! Good to see everyone still active.

So, recent news. I just completed a deployment to Kosovo for the KFOR peacekeeping mission on behalf of NATO. Now, when I went to Iraq in 2004-2005, I had a lot of "down time" to work on stuff, and I assumed it would be much the same for KFOR. Boy was I wrong! Back in Iraq I was a line platoon Combat Engineer, and we had periods of frenetic activity and no down time, and also long periods of absolutely nothing with a lot of empty space.

In the years since then I switched to Intel, and that meant that even if there was nothing "interesting" happening, I still had a lot of daily tasks and duties. I ended up with almost no "down time" at all, so my hopes of getting a lot of "Empires" stuff done came to pretty much nil. I barely had time to keep up with the BOHICA Blues comic, which was directly related to the deployment.

My original BOHICA Blues comics focused on the character of Joe Rock, who I used as a means to express what I went through in Iraq. But when I switched to Intel, I didn't want to change Joe-- I wanted him to stay as a Combat Engineer. Instead I used his wife, Juni Okuda, to explore Intel-oriented humor since I really didn't have much for her to do otherwise. I didn't want her to be an afterthought or token, and I noticed at conventions the incredible amount of young women who were interested in comics (very different from the perception I had in the 90's). So I wanted a (hopefully) approachable female character that might appeal to that audience. Meanwhile, I could continue my Combat Engineer humor with Joe.

So BOHICA Blues: KFOR is basically a sort of spin-off featuring Juni, and I continue to create comics in that setting.

As for Empires? I intend to pick that up again, feeling a bit salty that I didn't have more time for it while I was deployed, but I continue to develop aliens and ships and stuff for the setting. In a few years I will be able to retire and devote substantial chunks of time to my project and start producing stuff for real.

Anyhow, that's that for now and I hope y'all are having good times.