El Goonish Shive BE

[hiddenSquirrel]

Bad updates, too emo... I agree on all these counts. Which is one of the reasons I'm posting here after I found this in my referrer list for EGS.

EGS now actually has a buffer and updates three times a week. The humor is being increased and the drama is being toned down. These are all the result of me realizing I wasn't actually making the comic I wanted to make. That, and it's somehow easier to be funny in color.

The larger breast size is a result of change in drawing style. The bigger mystery is why sneezing would suddenly result in such a thing, which suggests some changes are taking place.

[Cadell]

Huh, what are the odds of me finding and joining a site almost at the same time as someone of whom I am a fan?

Glad to hear that you are going back to your roots. Good luck.

[TroyXavier]

Good to hear as your comic was one of the funniest for a long time. I will be rechecking it out soon.

[sencho]

Ditto Cadell's and Troy's comments. Been with you from the start and am glad to hear you're going to where you want to be.

And now I have to wait until Wednesday to see if Ellen gets the easy route back, or has to deal with these new difficulties for a bit.

Update: Heh, reread the comic and see that it looks like she does. Oh well, the artist giveth the artist taketh away.

[opailopai]

And dan shive himself shows up at the process? I don't know why I'd always thought he must have lurked at sites like this all along simply because of the content in his series.

I have no complaints with whatever direction you take your comic man, it's your series. I even E-mailed you awhile back saying it was a great idea to shift to standard sized comic pages.

You can't make something this long without evolving with it. Also to the naysayers, if you think about it much of the early strips when you compare them to the more recent storylines come out alot like pipelaying, whether dan thought about what was happening later or not the tone was set that at some point later on stuff was going to be serious for atleast a little while.

It's a great case study of how sticking with one story for many years you can watch any artist evolve artistically. Look at the Manga Ah megami sama / oh my goddess, compare that first drawing of belldandy and keichi with stuff in the 30th volume.

[MadmanDarkHeretic]

The art in el goonish shive is pretty awesome at this point for a regular online comic.

The thing is, and he's clearly aiming to address it, it's art of things people no longer cared about that came so slowly that folks rationalized it would never get back to things they came there interested in.

Dan: Thanks for dropping by. Never fun coming to a forum and hearing a bunch of us ragging on your stuff, but pretty cool of you being professional about it. Most of us are those fairweather fans that'll come right back to it as soon as it is either funny enough or hits enough tfage anyway. Good luck.

[Kyrex]

These reactions are kind of bothersome... Like several of you here, I've checked EGS every day for the past several years (I think I started reading mid-Goo/blob arc) and it's never been an inconvenience for the update schedule to change. I check at least 25 webcomics every morning and it takes about 10 minutes out of my day (thank you firefox and the 'open all in tabs' option).

Agreeably, it would be nice to see the updates happening more often and at a steadier pace just because I really want to see what happens next, but what can you do? The poor guy is doing this for free while still maintaining a life. You absolutely NEVER complain about a webcomic updating irregularly when you are getting it for free.

-To those who pitched a fit about the drama about sexuality and the gay/bi characters, have you stopped to consider that it's a legitimate topic of discussion when the entire cast gets TG'd?

-To the rest of you who are somehow angry at or turned off by EGS because of the emo-ish drama, I remind you that the characters are teenage high-schoolers, and teenage high-schoolers tend to be emo sometimes.

-And the last group I have to address, which I do believe is lurking here in the subtext of several posts, needs to realizes the EGS was never that kind of comic, so pulling up your pants in anger isn't going to suddenly make Mr. Shive provide you with more fanservice. He does plenty already.

All of that being said.... Ellen's 'awesome bewbage' was a nice surprise and I'm really eager to see where this goes!
You've got to appreciate a comic that can turn BE into a plot-twist. That's really not easy.

[hiddenSquirrel]

Originally Posted by MadmanDarkHeretic

The thing is, and he's clearly aiming to address it, it's art of things people no longer cared about that came so slowly that folks rationalized it would never get back to things they came there interested in.

That's a little too broad a statement. It's true of some people, but the traffic to the site doesn't reflect a mass exodus of readers ^^;

[MadmanDarkHeretic]

Sorry for the hasty generalization there, Dan.

Edit: Quibbling Removed :P

At the end of the day though, I think I can easily agree that returning to updating is a good thing Go Dan.

[sencho]

Originally Posted by hiddenSquirrel

...but the traffic to the site doesn't reflect a mass exodus of readers ^^;

Sorry about skewing that stat, I'll try to cut down on my habit of visiting sites tons of times per day.

[Standard of Ur]

He is a damn good artist/webcomic'r.

[Test-0]

I've been checking out EGS for a very very long time now. Sadly, while I do visit it often, I don't really visit it for much reason any more. Used to like the story, but then it just got pounded into the dirt with 'ultra evil super power evil' and I lost any interest in the story for a very long time. Even hung in there for the party which, in it's self, took forever to even get to and end result was a bit lack luster then the build up to it should have been. Really, I just read it for the fun parts.

Same with the Wotch really. So many 'this guy is super ultra evil powerful can never beat him' bs that makes me just shake my head and leave the site for something else. :|

But it is good to see it's being worked on. Also good to see you actually pay attention to referrals, as this tells you the type of people that read the site mainly. Though I guess finding out that a site where 80 to 90% of the people that visit are just looking for boobs links to you is either a good thing or a bad one.