Episode 107
If you are a new reader, you might want to subscribe to “Holiday Wars” as well as start reading it from the beginning.
FYI, Wallace didn’t slip on the dirty bathroom floor. Something else is going on.
Reminder: Starting next week we will update on Thursdays with “Tales of Holiday’s Past.”
For those of you who missed the original announcement on the blog, ToHP is an anthology series focusing on the supporting cast (everyone but Tegan).
The stories will range from all different time periods and genres. Each will either be character driven, mythos driven, or a mixture of both. You won’t need to read these to understand the main storyline, but there will be tons of foreshadowing and hints for not just what’s going on now but as to what is to come in Volume 2 and up.
Some of the stories will be done by our regular team, but we also have a lot of guest artist that are jumping on board (if you’re a webcomic creator and are interested in doing a story pop me an email at king (at) th3rdworld (dot) com.
Hi, there are some navigation problems. 106 does not lead to the ToHP page. Nor does it have the link to "last". The ToHP page does not go back to 106, nor does it have a link to "first". I've paged through everything else from the beginning and I think all the rest are working.
Great comic, btw! The idea of fables/gods/fairy tales needing to be believed in to survive, etc is also explored in the following places that you may already be aware of, but if you're not you might like to check them out (I'm thinking though that if you haven't read these, you might want to hold off until you're done with your own story because it would be hard to separate your own ideas from what you picked up reading them):
* Neil Gaiman (common theme in his work..there's some in Sandman, definitely, and American Gods is pretty much all about it)
* Fables (I read them as trade paperbacks that my library had, I don't know anything about whether it's still going as a comic book or what.)
* Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (There's a particular one called "Small Gods" that explores it in detail. The theme is also present in the other stuff in the series I think.)
Not an exhaustive list or anything, those are just the instances that come to mind.
Like I said, if you haven't read them yet, don't, but I think you'll really like them when you do.
I'm so excited that you're working this theme! I hope this goes a long way!
ToHP slightly bugged out the system. It's not Comicpress's fault it's that I went in Rambo style. I plan on letting the first comic launch next week and then stomp out all the problems then. The biggest issue to be honest is some of the problems depend on your operating system and browser. So even it if looks great to me on my Mac I have no way of knowing if its borked on internet explorer with a Windows user.
In terms of the other storylines… I've read all of the above. There are a lot of other stories out there that deal with similar themes. Of what you mentioned though I think Gaiman is my biggest influence. Not so much "American Gods" as the overall structure and how "Sandman" was told.
I've even gotten a few hate mails claiming I've ripped off "American Gods" and "Fables," but I've not really paid them much attention. "Holiday Wars" has tons of action, mythos, and humor but at it's heart it's angsty, which brings out a totally different tone than "Fables" or "American Gods." In both cases I'm not trying to do what either of those do, I'm just touching upon some of the similar themes.
Oh and checkout the "2011 and Beyond!" post on the blog. I talk about the future of "Holiday Wars" and where it is headed.
Well, I'm glad you're ignoring the detractors…generally I like to ask people like that to show us a link to their original story that doesn't use any idea from anything they've ever seen….Or just show us a link to anything they've done, ever, since they probably have nothing to show.
It's a great idea that is only going to grow the more people explore it. One of the great things about it is that it's basically unarguably true–the more people believe in Santa Claus, the more influence "he" (or "the idea of him") actually influences the world. That's part of what makes it such an awesome concept for a story, because there is an undeniable thread of reality in it all.
Keep up the
goodgreat work, and Illegitimum non carborundum!.mike