Happy Christmas, guys! Holiday travels are keeping me a tad busy at the moment, so regular comics are on hold until Monday. But fear not: for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day a goofy animated GIF! It has 2 whole frames of animation, which is probably as good as 2 whole comics, right? It is a gift that will keep on giving.

Have a good one.
– CC

P.S. this is completely unrelated to today’s comic, which is a completely original idea and definitely not a reference to anything, but did you know that the infamous stage music from Sonic 3’s Ice Cap Zone has been traced back to a previously-unreleased 80’s pop track? Because it has been. And it is amazing.

Woo, another story down! This caps off the arc that’s been branching out from Final Quest Saga since way back in July (!).

It also leads us right to the doorstep of the climactic chapter of World 2 – a story we I like to call Another Castle.

Worth noting: I use “World” instead of Book or Chapter to divide up the larger meta-arcs in the strip. (Because video games!) World 1 covered Rog meeting Kevin and becoming a mini-boss; World 2 covers the ~200 strips of Rog’s journeys with the Badnix that followed.

What does it mean for that arc to end? Well, suffice it to say that crazy, game-changing stuff is about to go down. A BELOVED CHARACTER WILL DIE! Or maybe a hated one. Maybe nobody dies. Maybe the dead will rise, I don’t know. We’ll have to read and find out.

Anyway, I’ll probably hold off on starting Another Castle until next week, but I’ll be posting more fun stuff in the interim. Remain vigilant, dear readers!

-CC

So, today’s comic (which may or may not involve Arika fusing with the Monopoly man) is basically done, but there is this one killer panel and it’s taking much, much longer to finish than I expected. I’ll see if I can get it posted very late tonight, but more likely it will have to be pushed back to Monday.

Thanks for being patient with the schedule hiccups! These past few months have been pretty crazy for me.

-CC

Charlotte Nidd – Arika’s mother, and the boss of Ghost World – has returned to the pages of Badnix for the first time in, like, a year! And she comes bearing callbacks to some older strips. Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we?

• When Rog’s team was just getting off the ground, Charlotte used her influence to help stifle dissent from the other bosses.
• She then twisted Rog’s (proverbial) arm to get him to hire Arika, explaining in vague terms that the Badnix would be under her protection.
• Not too long after that, some previously unexplained mysterious lights bailed out Rog and Arika when the latter was rappin’ on death’s door. Bet you thought that was just a random sight gag, huh? NOPE! Each and every punchline and one-off joke from a year ago might yet turn out to be a plot point! REMAIN EVER VIGILANT!

…in all seriousness, it might seem like that reference is coming out of left field, but I did know exactly what those lights were when I threw them in the strip! I’ve been waiting for ages to make that connection. Originally, ethereal lights and other ghostly aid were supposed to bail Arika & co. out of trouble in the Cave World & Bug Mafia story arcs, but those bits felt distracting and I wound up cutting them. And then World 2 ended up running, like, twice as long as expected, so this callback ended up being way more obscure than intended. Oops.

Well, hey, at least I’m not a DC/Marvel comics writer. Those guys whip out references to stuff that happened ~50 years ago without breaking a sweat.

Excelsior!

– CC