Alternia Comics' purpose is to entertain and inspire. We aim to make larger-than-life heroes relatable and human without losing any of their majesty to show our readers that anyone, at any time, can choose to be heroic.

News

Optinomicon Returns
2010-02-16 15:02

I may be posting this a bit prematurely, but I've just posted Optinomicon Chapter 12. This marks not only my return to active involvement with the site, but also the last of my Optinomicon buffer.

I've recently quit my soul-crushing retail job and should have some free time in the coming weeks to get more of a buffer ready for my impending move.

It seems like I'm always moving. This will be the fifth move in as many years, and the third crossing state lines. I'm headed back to the Pacific North West, Seattle area this time.

In the next few days I'll be posting the first in a series of journal entries from Ian MacKellen's After the Collapse incarnation, Ian the Unbroken. You may have read about Ian in his Character Introduction short story. The journal will pick up where the story left off and hopefully provide some insight in to the state of mind of a recent Unbroken (mindful zombie).

-Karak
Fits and Starts
2009-11-29 17:35

So, due to turbulence, the website has seen some neglect. To what few readers we have by this point, we apologize. Our primary members have been:

-Recently returned from a tour of duty overseas

-Struggling in this new economy to find a job

-Busy with school/work/out-of-state visits

Thus, real-life unfortunately intruded upon our dream here.

However, We are not giving up. This week will see whole new updates for your regular serials, as well as some new world-content articles.

Thanks for sticking with us. Alternia Comics may not be solid-set, yet, but we ARE here to stay.

Oh, and Happy Holidays.

--Alarin--
NaNoWriMo
2009-11-01 23:26

I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month again this year, and I'm posting the novel-in-progress online as I write. You can follow it at karakwrites.livejournal.com. It's a sci-fi story about humanity's steps toward the stars and is tentatively set the Ex Machina universe, though I wasn't thinking about that when writing this morning, so it's much closer to present day real world than anything else...

And a final note, this is a very rough draft. I expect it will be pretty bad and I may not actually finish it. I won't post it on the site until it's finished and polished.

-Karak
Cutbacks
2009-10-06 11:00

So what with the economy the way it is ...

... actually, I meant that as a joke, but the economy probably has a lot to do with this.

The writing team at AC is a bit tapped, and other concerns have us pulled in numerous directions. As such, we are slowing our short-story postings to the level of "occasional." Worry not! Your favorite serials will continue every other week as normal, and hopefully this will give us time to make better, more polished short stories for you all.

Also, we will start posting more articles: world information, gaming material, character sketches, and the like. The strict schedule had us scrambling pretty hard for short stories, so this should give us breathing room to diversify our content.

Stay inspired, and thanks for reading.

--Alarin--
A theme, it seems!
2009-09-15 00:42

As you might notice, Monday's story serves as a decent introduction to the race of Unbroken within After the Collapse. With a bit of late-night creativity, Karak and I just made this into a sort of pattern.

Tuesday's post should give a good feel for Crossworld, affectionately dubbed "the world without continuity". As anything can - and does - happen within that world, do try not to get too confused as the world shifts around a discussion of time travel.

Wednesday's post will also deal with time, but in this case it will touch on the way time passes for a mind on the net in Ex Machina. There's a reason they'll call themselves the Minutemen, as you'll soon see.

And if we're clever, and maybe lucky, we'll be able to introduce you to a peculiarity or two of Mystic Frontiers and World of Heroes on Thursday and Friday. But if not, be sure it is only because other stories demand their place before we can restrict them to this theme we've started.

Enjoy the week!

-MayaMaia
Vacation
2009-09-08 11:29

It seems we've taken a bit of a vacation around here. Alarin's time was double booked up to and through the Labor Day weekend and he was unable to find the necessary moment to upload his stories.

As for me, I was busy, but not quite as busy. I have no excuse other than sheer procrastination. I've made it a habit to wait until the hours before midnight to write the story that's due, and especially this last weekend that policy has backfired on me.

This coming weekend in a local anime convention here in Denver: Nan Desu Kan. If you're going, feel free to say hi if you spot me. I'll be in costume as Templeton Sledmeir (picture courtesy of Paul Sizer). Alarin is elsewhere, so you'll have to wait to see Elson Dowring in person. I should have updates queued before the convention, so you should still have your regular dose of fiction here.

-Karak
Fixes
2009-08-31 23:04

So, earlier this last weekend Alarin suggested I make some minor changes around here, mostly renaming "Long Story" to "Serial" wherever it showed up. This was all well and good until I changed something behind the scenes and messed up the World views that list the most recent Serial, Short Story and Article for each world (the links along the top of every page).

Because of the way I had those set up, and the nature of the change, the Serials section disappeared from those pages and the serialized stories were showing up in the Articles section.

It's all straightened out now, but I feel like a doofus for not catching it earlier.

Meanwhile, we're starting to run up against the end of our backlogs. I don't know about Alarin, but I'm having a devil of a time keeping on top of the near-daily writing deadlines. Of course, reading The Salmon of Doubt doesn't help much either.

*WOOSH!*

Look, there goes another deadline!

-Karak
Regular Updates
2009-07-25 10:29

I went a little overboard with the updating after Tesla's birthday week, and kept posting things daily until yesterday, Friday the 24th of July. Instead of one week of constant updates, you got two. Hooray for you!

But now we'll settle in to the planned five day a week story updates, and possible random updates on the weekends.

Monday continues the story of those wacky kids in their crazy underground habitat: Colony Beta.

Tuesday is another part in the continuing Adventures of Templeton Sledmeir and Elson Dowring.

Wednesday we'll check in with Em and Varrow in Optinomicon.

Thursday is the next installment of The Tiger Prince.

Friday is the next part of Derrick Lucious's story, Sparks That Fly

Next week is short stories, so your guess is as good as mine right now for what we'll post.

-Karak
Happy Birthday Tesla!
2009-07-10 14:51

In celebration of Nikola Tesla's birthday today, we here at Alternia Comics are kicking off our regular content updates. New stories every day for the next week After Friday the 17th we'll slow down a bit to our normal schedule:

After the Collapse Mondays
Crossworld Tuesdays
Wednesdays Ex Machina
Mystic Frontiers Thursdays
World of Heroes Fridays

Serialized stories (novella or longer, posted a chapter at a time) will alternate weeks with short stories. All serials one week, all short stories the next.

Character information and maps and other articles will update at random throughout the week and on weekends.

Enjoy Colony Beta Chapter 1 and look forward to more of The Astounding Adventures of Templeton Sledmeir and Elson Dowring tomorrow.

-Karak
IRC is back and regular content is forthcoming
2009-07-06 12:59

The irc chat is once again available on the website, thanks to the folks at thinstack.net.

Starting 10 July 2009, regular content updates will begin. If you're itching for to find out what happens next in The Astounding Adventures of Templeton Sledmeir and Elson Dowring, or wondering what will happen next in Colony Beta, or what wacky hijinks the World of Heroes gang is up to, your wait is almost over.

And do feel free to peruse the Interactive Introduction to Alternia to find out a bit more about what each world is about.

-Karak