The Wild Banana

Webmaster Larry has been hard at work building yet another puppet and he needs you to vote for it so he will win the contest he entered said puppet in. Sorry I meant ‘with’in.

Folks, thank you for the tremendous outpouring of supportive comments. I want to take some time and answer as many questions and dispel many of the rumors that were posted here, rather than address them individually in the long column of comments for 666.

First: Discontinuing this comic because I can’t make money.
The amount of effort that I expend to put up the comic three times per week was far outpacing the monetary return. Contrary to what you might think, they best way for webcomic artists to make money from their comics at the present time is to print books and sell the collections. That’s where the big I-can-quit-my-day-job money is. Without that resource available to me the best I can do is dice sales and the occasional T-shirt. Quite frankly it is not enough. Make no mistake: I have many, MANY more models in my work room than I would have had without sponsors that paid me in store credit, so I cannot say that I did not ever benefit from the comic.

B: Games Workshop shut me down.
Not quite true. Don’t blame GW for this, I was the one who decided to use their IP. They are well within their rights to allow or not allow any use of their property. I was hoping that since Turn Signals has always been an advocate of Games Workshop and their products that a mutually-beneficial arrangement could be made. That did not happen. If someone at GW wanted to make it happen tomorrow I would be all ears, but for now I’m moving on. They let me live for almost 6 years when they could have really shut me down any time they wanted to and for that I must thank them.

3: Kren and Frep are dead.
As anyone who has read Turn Signals knows, no one is really dead, no matter how badly they are obliterated, atomized, shredded, or vaporized. I have plans for them, and Cavendish, and everyone else, assuming I can get Games& off the ground.

Delta: I am getting Games& off the ground.
True. It was supposed to pick up where Turn Signals left off, but that has not happened yet. I am not a computer genius like Webmaster Larry and I still need to sit down with him and work out all of the web page, WordPress, and ComicPress bugs that I am currently staring at. I’m hoping I have entertained you enough that you will point your eyeballs at my next comic but I know that statistically I cannot bring ALL of you over to a new and different webcomic, but I hope that some of you will join me and Keenan, Eric, Klak-Nor, and Reg over at the game store. Keep checking here for updates that will direct you there shortly.

V: Turn Signals is going away:
Nope, it will be here as long as I keep paying Dreamhost, which I intend to do for the foreseeable future. So the archives will exist for as long as you wish to paw through them. I’m trying to figure out a way that ComicPress will randomize comics and show a new one every day, but I’m not sure it’s capable of that function yet.

Well, I’ve got some drawing and some computating to do… SEE YA!

Hey folks, the mug is up on ebay. If you would like to view the listing click here. Please browse all you want.

While on a recent vacation I was torn away from the Vindicator model I was building on the community dining table to paint pottery at Studio 12 in Avon NC. It is a fun place, if you vacation in the Outer Banks you should go there and paint pottery like I did. But I digress. I painted the mug shown below. It is a one-of-a-kind piece (so far) and will never be duplicated (exactly.) On Monday it will be up for auction on ebay and the link will be here somewhere. If you fancy an oversized coffee mug with a Space Marine chapter logo on it, and a snazzy red handle, then check back here on Monday.

Yes folks, I applied progress to the website over the weekend and broke something. Now ComicPress will not let me upload any comics. I’m working on it…

and there’s no new update. My weekends are getting too short as I was left with too many things to do and not enough time to do most of them, including draw a new comic. You have all been very patient with me while i try adjust to this working for a living thing and I sincerely appreciate it. There will be comics tomorrow, I promise.

Webmaster Larry and I threw down over two days last week. If you recall the first game we played back in 2008 then you remember that I accidently cheated by bringing more points than Larry and we played to a draw. In this last epic, two-day struggle it was Larry who cheated (accidently he alleges) when he gave one of his Tomb Spyders a particle whip. He mumbled something about confusing the particle PROJECTOR with the particle WHIP. He blasted one troop squad down to four models and vaped my Predator and generally did a bunch of damage, and we did not discover his error until the game was nearly over. He was also taking armor saves, with the same Tomb Spyder, against my powerfist Terminators, something I should have caught, but did not.

Anyway, (alleged) cheating aside I managed to claim one objective and, since he forgot to move his intact, and unthreatened, warrior squad from around a building on to an objective, the other two remained unclaimed. In his defence Larry thought the game lasted 7 turns instead of the 6, like I thought, so when I announced that the game ended, and that I had won, he said that he was planning to move them next turn. Well, after reading some “rules” in the “rule book” we found out that I was incorrect and we should have been rolling for game length starting on turn 5. But see, whereas Larry was cheating, I just forgot (allegedly).

Great fun was had by all, even though there was much cursing and throwing of things when Larry could do nothing to hurt my Terminators and failed many we’ll-be-back rolls. HA HA!

The Astro-Mag, link right over there ->, has published their fourth issue. The reason you should care is that it’s full of 40k articles, fiction, pictures, tactica, and exclusive Turn Signals content provided by yours truly, a four-comic story arc that you will not see here. So go over there and download Issue 4 AT ONCE!

I am trying to find out why the shopping kart in the Dice-Mart always appears to be empty when you go to buy some excellent dice. I’ll keep you posted.

Keeping you posted: It seems to be working again today (3/19) so give it a whirl if you need some dices.

Many things have contributed to the lack of a new comic for today but suffice it to say that you are witnessing the beginning of the end for Turn Signals. Since I am losing my job and health benefits, with no immediate prospects, I finally got off my duff last week and inquired about what I would have to do to get Turn Signals into a book for you all to purchase to possible alleviate some of my family’s financial stress. This is what I received back:

“So, in the case of TSOALR we’ve been very happy to let you put your web
comics up as a bit of fun. However, we can’t let you make money off of
what you’re doing because of the legal precedent it could set.

So, I’m afraid there’s just no way for us to allow you to sell TSOALR
prints. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. It’s not that we don’t
like what you do, it’s just that for various commercial reasons we’re
unable to grant you permission to make commercial gain from what is,
ultimately, selling GW-owned imagery.”

I had hoped for better, but had no evidence to believe that it would be. I have reached a point in this endeavour where the effort to put up the comic is far outpacing the return, at least monitarily. Losing one’s job can tend to put things in a different perspective and I realize that my efforts must now be directed more toward supporting my family than supporting my ‘bit of fun.’ As Webmaster Larry said the other day “that shadow was always there” and i knew it too. So for now the comic wll continue, I owe my advertisers that much at least, but it will be ending and some time soon. I’m hoping to continue with web comics, with a fully marketable property, and I’m hoping that when I find it some of you will come read it. Anyway, TSOALR will be back on Friday. See you then.