When I was little there was an anti-litter campaign in Hong Kong and they had these posters showing a pair of angry eyes, I guess to stare at people and shame them into not littering. I was reminded of those eyes as I drew the last panel. I guess it was a pretty effective campaign if I still remember it all these years later. I tried finding a picture of those original eyes on the internet, but no luck so far.

I love drawing armor. I have no idea why. It’s time-consuming and often rather repetitive, but for some reason I just get a kick out of it. A nice little battle scene is the perfect excuse to indulge in this weird obsession of mine. So this week, instead of working on this website, or finally getting some prints made, I went to town on the second panel.

Did I mention I love drawing armor?

Speaking of the website… at some point in the near future I plan to update various things on this site (I’m still running WordPress version OLD). Hopefully it won’t cause any disruptions to the comic, but I thought I should give you all a heads-up in case anything weird happens during the process.

Now back to drawing more armor…

Moral of the story: stay focused when someone with a giant knife is riding at you. Just saying.

The search for a new brush continues. As does my quest to figure out how to make and ship prints (lesson #1: things that look ok shrunken down to 800 px do not always look good when printed life-size) …

Some of you have known for awhile that I mostly use the same brush for all my drawings… and unfortunately the time has finally come to replace the good o’ chap. Parts of this page was drawn with a new brush – which I don’t like at all. I’ll be experimenting with brushes until I find one I like. Hope the quality of the comic doesn’t suffer… wish me luck

The old guy called it – the Yellow Turbans are back. And this time they’re wearing matching armor so you know they’re serious

On a completely unrelated note, that guy on the left in the middle panel ended up looking a little like one of my cousins. Coz – if you’re reading this, it just happened, I promise it’s totally unintentional

Of all the weapons in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel, Guan Yu’s Green Dragon Blade is probably the most iconic. Guan Yu and his Green Dragon Blade are so closely associated that this kind of blade-on-a-stick weapon is still known in China as the “Guan Dao” (“Dao” means blade). But it is also anachronistic – as far as anyone can tell, this type of weapon did not appear until more than 700 years later in the Song Dynasty. Also they’re not used much in actual battle – they tend to be heavy and were used mainly for strength training.

This page was harder to do than expected… I think I psyched myself out a bit because the oath in the Peach Garden was such an iconic scene in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. So I spent more time drafting and redrawing things than I normally do, and so this week’s update wasn’t finished till right before deadline. Which seems to be happening quite a bit lately

Oh BTW, I think I’ve finally figured out how to make Chinese characters show up right in the comments section. So if anyone (*cough*Mercy*cough*) is interested feel free to give it a try

Gah… another late finish this week. This time I have a good excuse tho – went to see “The Girl Who Played With Fire” with some friends The movie made me realize some Swedish words sound a lot like English… or is it the other way round?

Anyway, so now we finally have the three main characters introduced, and the pace should pick up again, or so he hopes

I’ve notice that once in awhile I’ll end up with a page where my favorite part is some minor thing that’s almost irrelevant to the “big picture”. Like this page for example, the little inn in the middle, which does nothing to advance the story, is actually my favorite panel. Sometimes I wonder if I had an editor if he/she would make me take something like that out. But I don’t have an editor, so HA!

Geez Louise this page took forever. Barely finished in time… but I kinda like how it turned out so i guess it was worth it To be honest I’ve been feeling a bit rusty since taking that long break between my first story and this one, but with this page I feel like I’m finally getting back on track. Hope I didn’t just jinx myself ;D

Btw, not that anyone’s wondering, but the name on the building in the first panel is the name of a restaurant that was near my house when I was growing up.