Hello! Life's been busy lately. Hasn't it? For me it has, and you have to live with it. Things are going just fine, but updates will slow to two a week - Sundays and Wednesdays. How's that sound? Totally awesome, I bet! For me. Not if you actually enjoy this comic.

Things will still be updating, just two comics a week instead of three. Not that big of a deal, right? Please don't mob me on the streets.

So, here's the deal. Let's see if we can get Ratboy's Facebook Page up to 100 likes by the time I am planning on posting the 100th comic - March 12th, 2012.

If everyone manages to do it, I'll post a super awesome piece of art both here and on my DeviantArt page of an upcoming major character in Ratboy. If we don't have 100 likes when I post the 100th page, then you all will never know what it might be, because I'll never post it for everyone to see. I'm a vindictive asshole like that.

No, seriously. I'll probably make people pay to see it or something, like through the Donation Area Am I a jerk? No, I'm helping you for helping me! Win, win, really.

Helpful tip: A good way to accomplish this feat is telling other people to like the page!

So, yes, I realize the past couple of updates haven't had the same standards of art that I'm usually used to adhering to. Not that my artwork is particularly mind-blowing, I realize, but I'd like to think it's at least comptently done most of the time, and certainly isn't another bad anime fan comic drawn in No. 2 pencil.

I don't know exactly how many people read webcomics for the art alone (though, I would hope it's at least a deciding factor in some sense), as I've noticed a lot of people read, say gag-a-day comics or gaming comics or steampunk comics or something along those lines mostly. I don't think a lot of people specifically go looking for strechy-squishy cartoon fantasy gaming parodies all that often. So, ideally the style of art, at least, or the subject matter is a draw. Or even, more than that, people actually laugh occasionally.

But back to the art the past couple of days - you see, I got this new Wacom tablet for Christmas. I was crazy excited about it and jumped right in and started drawing - not realizing that it actually was a lot different than drawing with mechanical pencil and Micron pens. A lot different. It took some real getting used to, as a matter of fact, and I also posted some inferior artwork on my Deviant Art page (which, I have since removed said piece of art). So I spent the week practicing with this thing, and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Starting to... I did manage to finish this Princess Daisy/Nyan Cat picture, which I'm fairly pleased with.

So you'll probably see more and more leanings towards entirely digital art as the comic continues to progress. But if you have some huge preference of me doing handdrawn vs. entirely digital art, please feel free to email me your opinion, as I'm way too lazybusy to write a comment section for these blogs.

Good to be blogging here again. It's coming back to an old friend. And by that, I mean whatever, shut up.

I think one of my resolutions this year will not to be so abusive and cranky in these blogs. Good thing for me it's tradition to give up your new year's resolution in preparation for February starting.

So, I added this nifty Handy RPG Status Window under the comic on the front page and on each individual comic page. It really serves no purpose unless you don't pay attention or don't care, but it's cool, it makes the comic even more like an RPG. Just like mother nature intended a comic to be like. Ask Josh Whedon, it's what he wanted to do with Firefly. Anyway, it won't update all the time, but it will help you from having to read each character sheet every update in case something changes - it'll let you know what changes. I should probably have included links but too late. Or I could retro fit it, since I did retro fit it to all the comics already. Maybe I'll do that.

Maybe. No time to look back, 2012 is almost here. At least, it's a handy excuse right now! Har har.

As a side note, I'd like to point out that as the story changes, I will be occasionally updating all the character sheets on the cast page, in addition to adding characters as they're introduced to the story.

The changes might be meaningless or obvious, such as the fact Ratboy's HP Currently says 0 because he is dead, but characters may level up, gain certain attacks or other little things might happen.

So, I came across some old Ratboy comics I did in high school. Honestly, I don't really know precisely why I'm writing about this right now - I currently have zero intention of posting them, but it's curious to see how much things have evolved over 15 years. Which really means that it was pretty darn crappy. That's not a joke, seriously - this comic used to look like it was drawn by a 15 year old. Oh, wait, it was.

I'm sure all six of my loyal readers are actually a little curious to see these comics - like I said, I have no intention of posting them. Honestly, I did think about it, but this comic- this version of it- is still in its infancy more or less and really, that would be at best premature. What I'll like do it is save this - hold onto it for a while longer (provided my cat doesn't eat this too) and perhaps offer it as some sort of incentive; perhaps something along the lines of an exciting donation prize instead of the wallpaper I currently offer (which is awesome, by the way.)

So I guess keep checking in their, and don't get too mad that I spent an entire blog post teasing you.

So, yes, Ratboy finally dies. There you go. I hope you're all happy, he's deader than a deity in Nietzsche's eyes.

As such, I commemorate this occasion by adding Death to the cast page. Aren't you happy about that? Of course you are.

So I guess it's either going to get a little more interesting from this point out, or I'm just toying with all of you. See you next update!

Oh, hi. Didn't notice you there. How are you? Don't answer that, it'll make you weird.

Anyway, so I finally broke down and put those vote-for-me-on-this-list-of-web-comics things on my site. They're all to the left on the main page, totally check them out, guys. Please? By the way, not to put too fine a point on it - Ink Outbreak is a really good one that you guys should not only follow me on, but totally check out tons of other really awesome webcomics on. There's a treasure trove of them there.

So, that's it. New comic Monday. I got several compliments on the the current comic posted which is really awesome of you guys. Good to know when I do something right!

As for now, I have a party to get to, where I'm totally rocking a black mage costume I made. It's probably not a very well done costume, but it'll do.

I have two cats. They're really awesome cats. They really mean a lot to me and I wouldn't trade them or anything about them for the world. But one of them eats my comics, all the time. It's pretty common for cats to develop pica and I realize that, but my cat... well, he's really particular in what he eats that doesn't have much if any nutritional value for him. While, conversely, he's pretty much okay with eating any sort of cat food all the time and doesn't seem discriminate about that at all.

You see - he only eats paper. And paper that has my comics on it. It's... I guess I just don't know what to make of it. Usually he waits until they're scanned in, and today I found he had actually gotten ahold of a comic I did in high school, which was like a millions years ago or something (or like just over a decade or something MATH IS HARD SHUT UP) and was eating the cover sheet on it. Which isn't a huge deal, but, man, this has to stop, really. I mean, paper can't be all that great for him and he mostly spits it back out... but, come on, cat.

Sometimes, such as in yesterday's comic, I wonder if I get a little too whimsical or go too far in the gaming satire. Or maybe by that, I mean, too stupid, like with Pikachoochoo. Still, an electric mouse train thing would be kind of cool. And I actually like Pokemon quite a bit. Though I wish they'd release the last three so I can finally catch them all.

Other than that, I've made some tiny changes around the site. For those of you that use the archive, I put the comic name in the title of the A tag, so you can see that when you hover over it and not have to guess. You are welcome.