Who makes this comic? Why does it take so long?

We get a lot of e-mails asking when the next issue is going to come out. We've been getting these e-mails since the day after Issue 1 was released. This is very flattering, and the amount of positive feedback we've gotten for producing NYC2123 is far beyond what we expected.

I just want to clarify a few things, so that our readers understand why the comic doesn't come out as often as some of them might like. This comic is made by two people. One person writes the comic and the other person draws it. That's it. There are no assistants or interns or caterers. These two people are brothers, who have full time jobs, one in advertising and one in marketing. These two people spend a lot of time at their jobs, and can only work on the comic when they are not at the office. These two people live at opposite ends of the U.S., so sometimes it is hard for them to talk to each other about the comic as often as they would like. These two people have certain expectations about the quality of the comic, and they do not want to release content that does not meet their expectations.

We have tried very hard to put out one issue a month, which has been our stated schedule all along, and so far we have hit those deadlines. But we can only do so much given that we have regular jobs, and we hope you'll understand and be patient as we work to put out the next three issues.

If you really love the comic a lot and have a big pile of money you would like to give us, we will quit our jobs and work on it full time. Just let us know via the "contact us" page.

Thanks again for reading and for all of your support.

Issue 3 Source Files Posted

What more can I add that the title doesn't already say? You can get the Adobe Illustrator files here. Now git mashin' (or translatin').

Message Board for Translators

There are a number of fan translation projects happening, and we thought it would be nice if people working on those projects had a place to talk to each other. If you're working on a translation or would like to, check out the translation message board.

Free Software for PSP Image Sequencing

We've written a couple of posts (here and here) about the problems associated with properly ordering images for comics and other sequential image-based content on the PSP. A brief summary of these problems can be found below, but the upshot is that I decided to stop complaining and write some software to help solve the problem. Behold: PSPImageSequencer. If you are one of the three people on the planet creating comics for the PSP, this might just save you a lot of time and frustration (it saved us some of both on Issue 3 of NYC2123). I'm not really a programmer by trade, but this is very simple stuff. It's open source (GPL) and all that, but since it's written in VB.NET I guess most hackers will think I'm lame. Sorry.

Here is a longer description of the problems PSPImageSequencer was designed to solve:

Most PSP users are aware of the fact that when jpg images are transferred to the PSP, they are displayed in reverse chronological order (newest image first). To be more specific, the PSP looks at the "last modified" timestamp on each jpg, and displays them in reverse chronological order according to this timestamp. So when you flip through a folder of jpgs on your PSP, you are going to see the most recently modified file first, and so on down the line.

One problem for publishers of comics and other sequential image-based content for the PSP is that it makes sense for them to name their files in a machine- and human-readable sequential manner, such as 01.jpg, 02.jpg, 03.jpg, etc. However, if you name your images in this fashion, and then need to go back and make a change to 02.jpg, then 02.jpg will be the first image a user sees when she starts flipping through the images on her PSP. Unless, that is, you go back and save out all of the files again in the correct order from whatever application you are using to create your work. And that is a pain in the arse.

A second problem for publishers of sequential image-based content for the PSP is that not all archiving tools play nice with one another. We have seen numerous cases of jpg sequences that have been properly time stamped when they go into a zip archive, but come out the other end with incorrect timestamps. This has to do with lots of arcane stuff about how files are sorted within the archive itself, and how certain inflation (unzipping) tools (such as the Windows XP inflation tool) feel free to modify the timestamps on files as they are pulled out of the archive. So, for example, a zip archive created by WinZip, will, under certain circumstances, be inflated by the XP inflation tool in a manner that causes the files to have improper timestamps, thus causing them to appear in the wrong order when viewed on the PSP.

In summary, we thought it would be nice to have a tool that (a) looked at all of the jpg files in a directory and re-timestamped them according to their names and (b) zipped these files into an archive that could be reliably inflated by any inflation tool.

The PSPImageSequencer does this. If you use it, let us know what you think.