Contents

Generalities
Paonia Pawns in General
What's in a Name, part 1: Paonia Pawns
What's in a Name, part 2: Mek
Paonia Pawns: The Art
Paonia Pawns: The Story
Update Schedule
Paonia Pawns: It's a long way there...
Paonia Pawns: Two paths diverged...
Readership

Plotline Commentaries
Paonia Pawns Mini-Adventures
Volume I
Chapter 1: Two Characters in Search of a Plot ... and a Cast
Chapter 2: Oops
Chapter 3: Dreams and Other Catastrophes
Chapter 4: Patterns in the Stars
Chapter 5: Four Horsemen
Interlude: After Armageddon
Volume II
Chapter 6: All Hallows Eve

Miscellany
Scary-Go-Round Idol

Paonia Pawns in General

Welcome to the Paonia Pawns Running Commentary section.

I felt that there were often things I wanted to say about particular strips, or scenes, or plot issues and I thought they were important enough to say somewhere other than at the bottom of a strip in the Archives that might easily go overlooked.

What's in a name, part 1: Paonia Pawns

Back in the early 1990s, I read somewhere (can't remember where anymore) about an author of western novels who had set all his stories in a fictional territory, and later state. It seemed like a good way to do my Bad Bears stories which I had orignally set in Colorado. But I didn't know much about Colorado and didn't want mistakes in the details to distract readers from the story. So I grabbed a book of historical U.S. maps and decided the right time period to add an extra state. Then I grabbed a map of the US and draw the outline of a typically-squarish western state. One corner fell on the town of Paonia, Colorado and I immeditely knew I'd found the name for my new state.

Of course, I never finished writing any of the Bad Bears stories (which concerned eight teenaged fans of the bad 'The Bad Bears' including Brady Savage and Stephanie Beaver) so Paonia languished away in the recesses of my mind and my desk. Until I started my webcomic. I had some concerns about the trademarkability (is that a word?) of "Pawns." I realized that this strip would fit nicely into the Paonia universe, and that it might even give me the chance to save some of my characters from the Bad Bears stories. Leslie, Bobbi Jo, Brady, and Stephanie all survived.

The Pawns portion of the name had a dual meaning. The characters were shaped like pawns and were also pawns of the Players.

What's in a name, part 2: Mek

Back in high school, I played D&D (this probably comes as a surprise to no one who's ever met me) and I DMed for a group who were notorious for straying from the logical path, making it nearly impossible to run any pre-written modules. So I would always end up writing my own. In one of the modules, they went up against a vampire named Count Mekulius. Through their typical random meanderings through the module, they managed to let him escape. For the rest of the campaign, I never let them forget this, having him pop up from time to time to taunt them, always having some elaborate escape planned out for him. The players stopped referring to me as the DM and started calling me Mekulius.

When I got my first email address (back in 1983!!!) I used Mekulius, and have used it for many subsequent email addresses. When I got my first website, I used it again. Paonia Pawns lived at Mekulius.com for the first year of its life and has recently returned here.

In the spring of 2001, I usually spent my Sundays watching NASCAR while hanging out in a chat room with South Park fans. One of them, whom we all call Uncle George, had the worst time typing Mekulius. One day he got so frustrated he decided to call me Mek. By the end of the chat, everyone was calling me Mek and it soon stuck. Now many of the people I met through South Park call me Mek even in person.

Paonia Pawns: The Art

The majority of Paonia Pawns is drawn in Windows Paintbrush.

OK, are you all through fainting?

I know, I know. It's a crude tool from an evil empire. But it is effective, it's free, and I've spent years figuring out how to get it's quirks and bugs (or 'features' as MicroSoft calls them) to work for me.

Besides, I happen to *like* pixel-editing.

And when I need an effect that would be difficult/damn-near-impossible to achieve in Paintbrush, I have PhotoShop and some free online texture libraries to fill in the gaps.

The character art is constantly in a state of evolution. When I started, the characters had no eyebrows, no noses, no necks, had arms and hands only when they were doing something with them, had animation-style thick black outlines, and looked like chess pieces (specifically pawns). They come a long way, and they still (I suspect) have a ways to go.

Paonia Pawns: The Story

Where does the story of Paonia Pawns come from? That's a good question. I'm glad you asked that. Next question.

But seriously, the story comes from more sources than I could likely identify. One of the main sources is plagerism. I plagerize myself, constantly stealing ideas from previous stories, finished or unfinished. Phobia, the Four Horsemen, the All-Pattern, Paonia, Leslie & Bobbi Jo and Brady & Stephanie, the world-hopping (Chapter 2) and ghost story (Chapter 6) adventures, and many more, all started in other stories. In fact, the Four Horsemen (Chapter 5) is stolen from my South Park fan fic, which is in turn stolen from my unfinished "Apocalypse Riders" Novella, which stole its Paonia setting from my "Bad Bears short stories.

I also find that my characters often have very strong opinions about the direction that their story takes. Sometimes, all I have to do is come up with the characters and the settings and start wrtiting and the characters will supply the plot as they go along. (And even this idea is explored in the disjointed, abbreviated, Chapter 1.)

Update Schedule

When I started the strip, I decided that I didn't want it to be another of those with a grand plan for multiple updates per week and then lots of excuses if/when life got in the way. So I decided I'd go with one strip a week, and on Saturdays when if I didn't have it done the night before I'd surely have time to finish it before midnight. By the end of the first weekend, I had ten strips drawn, and, convinced that I could keep a decent lead, I added Wednesdays as a second update. I was working 1-9 on Wednesdays at the time, and even though I knew I was going to be leaving that job very soon, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

As my birthday approached, I was up to a 9 week lead, so I celebrated my birthday by adding a third update (Mondays). Even though I rapidly built my lead back up, I was on the verge of a cross-country move and a job search. By October as the 100th strip approached, my life had settled back into a routine, routine enough that I wanted to add another update. Monday thru Thursday made the most sense, and that was the plan, but I didn't want to give up Saturdays, my original update day. Well I went with Monday thru Thursday starting with #100, but I kept Saturday ... as the update day for Paonia Pawns Mini-Adventures.

To celebrate the one year anniversary of the strip, I added Fridays. With six update days a week, it's taking longer to build up (and maintain) my lead, so I don't see Sundays being added anytime soon.

UPDATE (1 Oct 2006): Paonia Pawns will officially become a daily strip tomorrow. The main storyline will run 7 dyas a week. The Mini-Adventures will be on hiatus until I finish drawing #3 (Snowball's Chance) at which point it will go online, also daily, giving you two strips a day for about a month. Then the Mini-Adventures will go on hiatus again until the next one is finished, and so on.

UPDATE (May 2007): I dropped back down to a Mon/Wed/Fri schedule earlier this year because I was tired of arguing with my girlfriend over the amount of time I spent drawing the comic. Since I wasn't willing to give either of them up, I compromised and (temporarily) dropped to a 3-a-week schedule.

Paonia Pawns: It's a long way there...

So how long will Paonia Pawns run? I have quite a few chapters and mini-adventures still waiting ahead for Marcus and Keri and the rest of the gang. What does "quite a few" amount to? I'm figuring they'll still be here with new stories to tell into at least 2010, and possibly longer provided I'm still having fun.

(It's a Long Way There is the name of a song by the Little River Band.)

UPDATE (May 2007): The new update schedule (3-a-week) coupled with the additional Chapters I have in mind, should push the life expectancy of Paonia Pawns well into 2014, and probably further.

Paonia Pawns: Two paths diverged...

When I first started writing Paonia Pawns, I had a much different idea of what type of story I was going to be telling. I was initially going to be a three-arc story of the pawns versus the players. Chapter 1 represents about a quarter of what would have been the first arc. Before the first ten strips were online (and with about two dozen strips drawn), an event in my life forever altered my idea of where the strip was going.

...more to come...

Readership

How many people read Paonia Pawns?

Well, I'm not really sure but I recently (August 2007) monitored the hit counter (which I only added to prove to a skeptic that there were ANY readers) and when I subtracted out my own visits to the page found 33 hits in a one week period. Since the hit counter filters for unique hits within any 24 hour period that means somewhere between 5 (nearly daily) to 11 (MWF) readers. Personally, I like the idea that my readership has finally reached double-digits. Thanks for reading!!!

Paonia Pawns Mini-Adventures

When I decided to move Paonia Pawns from 3-updates a week (Mon/Wed/Sat) to 4, Monday-Thursday made the most sense, but I didn't want to give up Saturdays, since that was my original update day. About the same time, I began to feel like I had been neglecting Marcus and Keri, the strips' two main characters. So I created the Mini-Adventures to address both problems. The first Mini-Adventure I wrote (The Trouble with Mummies, which I wrote in a single day) was actually the second to appear, because I was trying to tell them in chronological order, based on what gap in the main storyline they were filling.

Second Date (Mini-Adventure #1) is based on a comment that Keri makes in Chapter 2. She says that being with Marcus on Aztec World is better than either of their first two dates. However, we only saw their first date. I just figured that enough time had passed that they must have had a second date.

The Trouble with Mummies (Mini-Adventure #2) takes place during the week (near the beginning of Chapter 3) that Keri and Zoe and Phun are researching the alternate Earth (New Paonia Earth) that the cast ended up on at the end of Chapter 2.

Snowball's Chance (originally scheduled as Mini-Adventure #3) shows us some of what Jimmy was up to while his friends were on their outer space adventure (as seen in Chapter 4).

Mall by Myself (originally scheduled as Mini-Adventure #4) takes place during the first weekend of Marcus and Keri's Senior Year of High School, right before the start of Chapter 5.

These four, plus another unscheduled Mini-Adventure, have become Interlude: Campfire Tales (which follows Chapter 6). This part of the Running Commentary will probably move/disappear when that happens.

The Dragon's Tale (originally scheduled as Mini-Adventure #5) became part of Interlude: After Armageddon.

Chapter 1: Two Characters in Search of a Plot ... and a Cast

Chapter 2: Oops

Chapter 3: Dreams and Other Catastrophes

Chapter 4: Patterns in the Stars

Chapter 5: Four Horsemen

Back in college, I started writing a novella called "Apocalypse Riders" which told the tale of a group of college students who unwittingly unleased the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and then set about stopping them, at a very high price. I had quite a few pages written and the entire thing outlined in great detail but I moved on to other projects that had a greater hold on me.

Years later I was running a South Park Fan Newsletter and to entertain my readers, I wrote the occassional fan fic. The longest (over 60 segments, published daily) and most ambitious was the Four Horsemen of South Park which stole many of its ideas from my abandoned novella.

A couple more years passed and I've now stolen the idea again and turned it into the longest (262 strips) and most ambitious chapter of Paonia Pawns.

Every chapter before this one played into it and nearly every chapter that follows is in some way effected and/or foreshadowed by the events of this chapter.

It was a lot of fun writing and drawing this story but even I'll admit that after 262 strips Iwas ready to move on to the next story.

Interlude: After Armageddon

Volume II
Chapter 6: All Hallows Eve

Guest Strips

My first ever guest strip came less than a month after Paonia Pawns premiered. Amber and 10er put out a call for guest strips for their 6x9 College and for some unknown reason they liked mine enough to use it.

Time passed and I heard about the Webcomic Hurricane Relief Telethon and I submitted this strip. Before sending it in, I tried to come up with some humor or even social commentary, but the scope of the disaster (and the fact that I have friends who grew up and still have family in the area) just made it too hard to think clearly.

John Allison, over at the always-enjoyable Scary-Go-Round, held a contest called Scary-Go-Round Idol. Since Scary-Go-Round was one of the very first webcomics I started reading, I couldn't resist entering. Here is my entry and some of the working files I created for it. My entry didn't make the cut (I probably should have used more than four panels) but here it is anyway.