Guestbook - 201 messages.

Comments about the comic? Here's your chance to express yourself: Sign the book.

thebanzai - 19:00 03 Nov 2003

There's something that hits the nerve on this comic! Bad weather, a city in the middle of nowhere, lonely geeks..

Where's the book??

The comic is based on a novel that went by the same name. The english version is under way and you'll find the original, finnish version here.

jutanu - An offer (2.42/03) - 00:03 17 Oct 2003

heh heh

z - Does it finally happen? (1.41/03) - 07:47 08 Oct 2003

Horrible font.. Please, change it if you can.

After trying out atleast 20 different fonts, Komika was the best candidate to replace the previously used Comic sans, which again caused some bad blood among font extremists. I hope you can live with this change :)

Jhakwe - 16:04 26 Aug 2003

Three thumbs up for the Norwegian Borg! The only fact that lowered his credibility was the fact that a true evil Norwegian death-metal band never takes a world-tour ;)

Then again, no Norwegean death-metallist assimilates everything he gets his hands on, or run Linux-based database server :)

We'll hear more about Mark's past in the episode to come.

Doc - 15:35 16 Aug 2003

Too much beer and too little sleep? Maybe so, but I'm quite sure that Simon blinked his eyes in episode "Not the G-word"... Have you added some animation to the series, or should I go back to bed?:)

If you take a closer look, you'll notice that the strips are either in JPEG or PNG format, thus creating animated panels is impossible at the moment. I'd go for the "back in bed"-option. :)

Doctor L. - 13:15 03 Aug 2003

(What the heck should my nick be in english..)

Have you ever thought of translating the original ICCL story (the novel you mentioned before) into english? I think that non-finnish ICCL fans would also like to read it. Especially (is there such a word?) now when you mentioned it.
Although the novel is somewhat different and more real-life (no borg:) and I don't know can it be translated without some serious changes.

Whew, writing in english is difficult for us finns. I think I also majored the "bad english"... (In Finland we have this term "tankero-englanti", but I think it can't be translated in any other language.)

-Doc

I've thought about the translation, and it's under way. You know, the comic is actually somewhat dependant on the translated version. When I first started to think about all the details in the comic, I soon realized I just couln't place it in Finland as the original novel (most of my readers don't even know where this reindeer-ridden country is! :).

About the same time, Rook (the brilliant guy who checks my grammar in the strips) started to work on the translation, and we had several discussions about where should we place it. After giving the world map one serious look, the outcome was clear: the only place we found that had exactly the same climate as Finland was Canada. And so we started to adapt all the details there. And as you said, it can't be translated word-to-word, but the goal is to keep its spirit while some details do change. For example, the visit to Lapland became a visit to the Yellowstone and so on.

I originally wanted to place the story in the UK, but Canada was the only real option. I just had to have something from the UK, so I made Deirdre British. And if you're wondering where's her british accent, try living 15+ years abroad and you'll come to understand it :-)

The final translated version of the novel will appear in the Extra menu some day.

Philpem - 10:03 01 Aug 2003

In your reply to SunIce's message, you said you thought the quality was "already poor". I don't agree at all.
Maybe it's an artist's obligation to say "my work is crap", but although ICCL isn't up to the same quality as, say, "GPF", it's certainly in a class of its own in terms of storyline quality. Never have I come across a comic that has this good a storyline (except maybe Brent Bowser's "Carried By The Wind").
I've seen plenty of comics that start a storyline in one comic, then don't bother continuing it. Comics like "Kevin and Kell" tend to be good for the daily laugh, but the rest of the comics in my browser's Hotlist all pick a storyline and "run with it". Those are, IMHO, the better ones.

About my comment on the poor quality; the thing is that until now, I have *NEVER* tried to draw humans before. At this point, you better check out this link to see what I mean. Looking back at the original ICCL prototype strips, I've taken some huge steps in the graphics but then again, I could always do better.

The storyline again works as the original novel. I can't remember if I told this anywhere on the site, but the comic is based on a novel I wrote back in 2000. I borrowed some of the characters from it, like I did with the idea of creating one big story arc out of several smaller ones that are still usually self contained. And like in the original novel, the comic isn't stuck where it now is - I have no problems at all making big changes that effect the whole remaining story. I think you'll get the idea after we've done with this years christmas/new year special :)

SunIce / Kaisa - 01:51 23 Jul 2003

I almost came whining that ICCL should update more often.. but of course I prefer something nice a bit more seldom to everyday crap. And absolutely, this comic is "something nice". Drawing style, maybe a bit weird humor, characters etc. I like it a lot. This came straight to my "read regularly"-list. More, more, more this kind of art! (Same thing as with your texts ;)

(Oh, bloody hell, my English is crap. Eli sarjakuva on siis mahtava, kiitos! :)

You know, I'd just *LOVE* to make ICCL 7 days a week comic, but atleast at the moment that's impossible. Releasing more strips per week would degrade the (already poor) quality, and the 3D backgrounds would have to go. Even the current twice a week schedule seems hard to keep up sometimes.

Anyway, glad you like it, and to your horror I can now reveal, that my next book-sized text release is ready for the proofreading and spell checking.

Philpem - 00:14 11 Jul 2003

You're right - the links do look much
better in red. Now they match the red
banner at the top :)
I also like the little operating system
GUI bars and borders around the strip.
Especially the Acorn RISC OS ones :)

I've received most of the window frames from my readers. Originally there were only two: the red Crux-theme from my primary workstation running Linux and the red winhose window frames from my graphics workstation. The RISC OS frames were donated by my IRC-buddy Nex. I'm still open for new window frames, especially from MacOS X.

Philpem - 09:32 10 Jul 2003

Wow - nice comic. There's only one
thing I don't like - in my browser,
the links on the Feedback page are the
same colour as the normal text. IMO
they should be a different colour so
you don't have to keep moving the mouse
over the text to find the links!
Thanks again - and keep up the good
work - the storyline is really
starting to get interesting ;)

I think you're right about the links. I made them red so they stand out better from the normal text. I hope it helps.