Thus begins "Campaigns," and my long-running practice of titles with multiple meanings.

"Campaigns" is a term from role-playing, military strategy and politics, all of which have applications here.

This sequence was a good idea for an opener. Since Kath is the antagonist for most of this story, we have to go the extra mile to pull the reader into her perspective. But I'm not satisfied with the results.

The poem needed improvement even after Sara Cole's sharp feedback-- it should have invoked Chaucer more clearly and been more entertainingly amateurish, even if that meant making it twice as long.

I asked for an illuminated manuscript to show how Kath thinks, and Jason gave me "art by person who can't draw." Illuminated manuscripts are usually poor at visual storytelling, and Jason's all about the clarity. Usually that works to the story's benefit, but not here: the words should be telling the story because there's no way the art can do so...

...UNLESS we scrap the whole sequence and replace it with a flashback, running as counterpoint to a fully Chaucerian narrative. That coulda happened. Would have meant taking three pages instead of one, though.

The lettering is better than the worst of the last chapter's, but that ain't sayin' much. There is a missing apostrophe, and it "wont" be the last. A bug in QuarkXPress gave me problems with the apostrophes for years: just try to ignore them.

FatKat, oddly enough, is a reference to /Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew,/ which I've always cited as an influence. That influence is felt in /Fans'/ character tropes: the geek hero, the quiet, meditative martial artist, the cynical reporter, the overmuscled loose cannon. The only ones who show no CCAHAZC influence are Tim and Kath, the most "drawn from life."

UPDATE: It kills me to say this, because it was always a point of pride with me that FANS never missed an update when it was running... but coding problems and my travels have forced me to put the feature on a brief hiatus. It will return on August 6, after which time-- I swear to you on the blood of my ancestors-- it will update daily, seven days a week, until the final strip is done.