December 31st, 2008: "Welcome!"

[Citi]

Posted by Rob:

On behalf of all of us here at Remedial Comics I would like to welcome you to our site. I hope you find the journey worthwhile. My name is Rob. I'm the creator/writer of the web comic "Remedy" and I'll serve as the ringmaster to this circus. I'll be guiding you around the site and providing a bit of context as our story progresses. For the things that go right, you have the staff with all their hard work to thank; for the things that go wrong you can pretty much blame me.

We want your business and we want you to stick around for awhile while you're here, so we're launching with six Remedy comics and thirty Sentimental Horde comics on day one. Since this first "intro" blog is a bit long we're going to stretch it out over the span of the six Remedy comics. So if you're inclined, please read the blog after each comic. It will be informative if not entertaining.

My partners in crime here at Remedial comics are as follows: Jason Kirckof is not only the excellent artist who gives life to my delusions in the comic Remedy; but he is also the creator/artist of our companion comic here at the site, Sentimental Horde (but more on that in a minute). Without him there would be nothing here to see.

Chadm1n is our senior tech monkey, and I spout that term of endearment with a sense of awe over what he can make a computer do. It took me four hours to find and change a text color in our forums' CSS page the other night and I had to ask him for help at least three times (and managed to turn every letter of text on the page to an eye burning, pee yellow by accident but I fixed that). Without Chadm1n there would literally be no site.

Although Chadm1n can slop Java script like few others, he needed help in the layout department and for that we have Curt to thank. I think he probably wants to kill me by now but I have things mostly the way I want and that is in large part thanks to him.

Lastly our head forum mod Citi rounds out our crew. He helped set up the boards faster and with more style than I had any right to expect. In the forums he will serve as watch dog and tour guide to those of you inclined to interact with us and each other. If you need something and I'm not around he's the man to ask.

Over the next few weeks we'll be adding more and more functionality to the site. I think, any time someone starts off on an endeavor like this they have dreams of waltzing into their fully furnished and completed virtual home, with nothing leftNext I'd like to direct your attention to the comic navigation buttons on the right of the comic pane. I'm a huge fan of web comics. But one thing I noticed in comic after comic is the necessity to scroll whenever I wanted to read older comics. That's ok for one or two comics, but when you have an extensive back archive it can get old pretty quick. I didn't want you to have to scroll to read our comic: ever. So Curt came up with the brilliant placement of these buttons. They will allow you to travel from comic to comic and (hopefully) never scroll more than you absolutely want to. First, Back, Next, New and Random should always be there; right at the side of your screen, waiting to help you explore our comics (although we may have a little work to do on functionality at launch we'll get to it soon enough).

Now below the comic pane you'll find Home (which takes you to the front page with the newest comic and blog), Store (where you will find the cupboards mostly bare for the moment but that should change soon and if you think of something you might like to buy, please let us know in our forums), Archive (which allows you to explore older comics and blogs), Extras (where we will be offering things like wallpapers, icons and other free gimmie's), Community (which is a direct link to our forums), FAQ (there are a few with some interesting background on our comics, store and the site in general) and lastly About Us (which is literally about us folks here who run things on the site in case you were planning on stalking us or boiling our bunnies).

That pretty much sums up the comic pane with the exception of discussing the comics themselves. to do but turn on the TV and start living life. In truth, like moving into a new home, we have some walls to paint and a bit of unpacking to do before we'll be satisfied with our new digs.

To start off though, I'd like to give you a bit of a virtual tour of things the way they are right now. First and foremost you may notice that the Remedy comic is clickable. We've done something a little different with our comic. Chadm1n has created a flash viewing box that will scale the comic to as large as your screen; up to some very ridiculous sizes. For some folks this may simply make the comic easier to read. For others, and it is for these folks that I came up with the idea, it will allow you to appreciate the art and story a bit more fully than the standard comic size. It isn't something you have to use. The comic itself is perfectly serviceable at its normal size. But if you like the art and/or appreciate the tale, I think it really ads something to the experience of reading the comic.

Remedy is the story of Artur Siedleski; an aging vigilante with a super powered cat. But this isn't a story about a super hero. This is not an action comic; though there will be action. This isn't a story about an office manager, which is what Artur does by day when his mask is off; though we will be visiting his place of employ. This isn't a comic about music; though Artur has been known to rock the piano with his girlfriend/singer and small band. Mostly this is a story about an ordinary man called to live an extraordinary life. And make no mistake, it is a story. The continuity level is high because first and foremost my aim here is to tell the story; three panels (or so) at a time. Because of that there will be some comics that are very funny, some that are very sad and some that (despite my best efforts) won't seem to have a definite ending (until the next comic comes around). I'll do my best to lay each little three act brick as carefully and craftily as I can, but what I want you to remember is that I'm telling a story and sometimes a tale takes patience. But it's usually worth the effort.

Sentimental Horde by contrast is a comic designed with the chuckle in mind. There is a story there as I can attest; Jason likes a good tale as much as I do. But Sentimental Horde is far less continuity dependant and therefore may be more to your liking if continuity is your enemy. Sentimental Horde has actually been around before. So if it seems familiar to you that may be because you've seen it. What we are in fact doing is offering the back archive of all the Sentimental Horde strips (well over a hundred) by slowly adding them to our archive at a pace folks new to this excellent comic can digest. If you have a taste for Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft or just like a good joke; Sentimental Horde may just be for you.

Remedy will update Monday Wednesday and Friday with a new comic and blog. Sentimental Horde will update at Jason's discretion. Our main focus is Remedy, but I know Jason plans on adding to the tales of his wayward goblins and I look forward to reading them. I hope you do too.

Next I would like to draw your attention to this blog content pane. You will notice several buttons here. Blog, Music, Movies, The Tube, Books, Gaming and the Web. These areas of content allow us to let you know what we are listening to, watching, reading, playing and surfing. I can't speak for the other guys but I'm pretty opinionated; and I look forward to discussing my reviews with you on the forums. If you ever want to suggest something to us, well there are places in the forum to do that as well. Mostly this place lets us relay our thoughts on popular culture to you and the forums let's you fire back. It should make for some interesting discourse. I'm particularly excited about our "Web" feature which will allow us to shine a light on interesting web sites that we waste our time on; including other web comics.

Next we have our Twitter pane below the blog pane. This is a bit of a stretch. I doubt a purer ego trip exists on the web. Essentially, registering with Twitter allows you to shoot 140 characters worth of mundane minutia at everyone who follows you. I understand you can even set it up to receive these smoking hot updates on your cell phone. So if you want to know what I'm eating for lunch or when I'm having a bad hair day I implore you to follow my Twitter account. I need all the confidence boost I can get. You can follow all the inane things we have to say either collectively here though the site in the Twitter pane (aptly titled "Twits"), or you can "follow us" on the Twitter site. My account name is RemedialRob. Chadm1n has the screen name Chadm1n. Jason can be followed by JKirckof, Curt is the junkfoodchef, and lastly Citi is MenZ33. Down the road we may explore the possibility of adding a community member to our Twits pane; a "Twit of the week" if you will. But right now you're stuck with us.

The rest of the site should be fairly self explanatory. We have our advertising (if you want to advertise on our site you can discuss it in the forums or check the site FAQ for more info), our Paypal donate button (should you feel so inclined - hey this is expensive stuff we're doing here!) and footer with yet more links. Generally speaking the site needs IE 6 or 7 or the latest version of Firefox. You will also most likely need Java Script and Flash as well. Sorry but if you aren't using one of those browsers and programs you are in a pretty low percentile and since we're just starting out we need to play the percentages. Should you have any questions or technical problems with the site though, please let us know on our forum and we'll see what we can do to address it.

Otherwise, thanks for stopping by, I hope to see you often (at least three times a week), please visit our sponsors and once again, welcome. We will provide, so you can consume. With luck we'll have a long and happy partnership.