Atop the Fourth Wall: September 2013

Well, time again to see what's coming up in the next two months and general other updates!

More details under the cut!

Schedule of Upcoming Episodes
10/7 – The Thing from Another World: Climate of Fear #1-2
10/14 – The Thing from Another World: Climate of Fear #3-4
10/21 – Spider-Man: Crossfire
10/28 – Surprise Review and the Finale of the "Ghost of the Machine" storyline.
SECRET ORIGINS MONTH
11/4 – Showcase #4
11/11 – Tales to Astonish #27
11/18 – Showcase #22
11/23 – POTENTIAL EXTRA EPISODE
11/25 – Journey into Mystery #83

As always, the reviews are subject to change, but obviously there are a few things to discuss. Yes, as always, I'm keeping the storyline finale's review a secret until it hits. And we've got Secret Origins Month and while currently I don't plan on doing a team book this year, that might change - the ones I decided to do this time were to get us speeding forward for a few other things for next year (COUGHAVENGERSCOUGH). That being said, if something gets replaced, it'll probably be one of the two Showcase reviews if I decide to end up doing a team book instead. You probably also noticed the potential extra episode. The date should be significant to any Doctor Who fans out there. Given it's the 50th anniversary and I've recently been made aware of several certain Doctor Who comics, I MIGHT try to do an extra review on November 23rd, but no promises.

Storylines
Which brings us to an important thing to talk about concerning future storyline stuff. Some of you may have felt that the Ghost of the Machine storyline was too short, especially after last year it took up pretty much all of the summer through to February. Well, it has come to my attention just how stressful and how much extra work doing storylines really is to me, especially when trying to get side projects finished. As such, I'm going to try something different for the next year or two.

Previously, storyline finales occur in mid-February in honor of when I started the blog. Instead, while I will continue to try to do a double feature in mid-February, storylines will end in October in honor of when the videos started and because, well, Halloween. And indeed the next two storylines I have planned will continue to be horror-themed and I look forward to trying out some new stuff that I've been hinting at. I think the thing that's killed me in previous storylines was that I'd try to do a double feature AND a storyline finale, which just was too much for me to do alone, especially now that I'm adding more people to the cast besides myself. Longbox of the Damned, while strenuous to do 31 additional videos, are actually fairly easy to put together considering how short they are and because I have such a head start on them, so October SHOULD be easier on me as long as I can continue to plan ahead (all but one or two scripts of the Ghost of the Machine storyline were written well in advance). Storylines will take a back seat until 2014 after this one ends, giving me time to complete some other projects before I try to push forward another one.

The name of the next storyline will be announced once "Ghost of the Machine" concludes.

Batman 1966 Crossover with Blockbuster Buster

Can you believe I completely forgot to put this up on the blog? And because I didn't want it to get lost in the shuffle of upcoming Longbox posts, here's the crossover and the bloopers from it!

Aaand bloopers and behind-the-scenes pictures!

Lightbringer
Well, it's finally time to just do this: I am releasing Lightbringer to the public domain.

I've been reluctant to do this for a while, partially out of a desire to go back to it, partially because a friend of mine said I shouldn't in case someone else gets it big and starts making money off of it, but I can't sit and wait for that to happen. If no one's working on it, then nothing will happen with the character. I started Lightbringer because I was an angry, opinionated 17-18 year-old who really wanted to make comic books and saw webcomics as the best way to do that. I was a crappy writer and a crappier artist who didn't understand how a lot of comic books actually WORK, but it got people interested and excited to some degree. I tried to keep up with it as my interests and focus shifted towards more criticism instead of writing and my schedule became much more hampered by other projects that I needed to do in order to get money, but the passion just isn't there like it once was.

I still wanted to do right by the character, especially since the artist at the time, Sergio, still wanted to work on it, so I asked people if they were interested in writing and I got plenty of submissions... which I never found time to sit down and read. I'm glancing through most of them now, mostly because I feel bad that I never got back to these people. It's my own fault for opening the floodgates when I wasn't ready for it, so my sincerest apologies go out to all the people who submitted pitches or were really enthusiastic about it. I hope you still are and are trying to do interesting things with your own writing and artwork. And hopefully now you'll have the opportunity to do so with Lightbringer if you so desire with my full blessing.

Now what does me releasing it to the public domain MEAN exactly? Well, it means the character and the pages that I produced (you'd have to check with the other artists' themselves for permission to use their artwork, since I'm only releasing MY work into the public domain) are free to be printed, reused, and altered by people any way they see fit. If you want to create your own story and use all the characters in Lightbringer with it, even horribly mutilate them as some kind of catharsis for hating me for some reason and then print it for money... yep, that's completely within your right. If you want to tell new stories with Lightbringer and the characters, you're free to do so as well. That being said, once YOU create something with it, that's yours to do with as you see fit. No one else can reproduce YOUR work with the character, since you've basically created something new and original by your hands. It just means that if someone else wants to make their own interpretation of the character, they can do that, too, as long as the work they're doing with it is their own.

What does that mean for the actual Lightbringer webcomic page? Eh, probably just going to leave it to die on its own if it hasn't already. By this point, Sergio has long since moved on with his own work, including his current webcomic Thirteenth Child, so he probably won't be available to work on it if you were still hoping to do so.

I'm still proud of what I did with Lightbringer, even though most of it is bad. It taught me new tools to use in art programs, the harsh criticism I received helped get me on track for producing slightly better stuff and, at least, taught me more about the medium and eventually into criticism as a profession. A lot of ideas that I have for Lightbringer's future I may end up using in Atop the Fourth Wall itself, but otherwise if you ask me about some of the stuff I had planned or at least ideas I had, I'll answer them.

Still, I'm hoping that some of you out there will produce something more with it than I ever did and I wish all of you the best of luck. ^_^

Revolution of the Mask
Speaking of comics I'm actually still working on, believe it or not Issues 3 and 4 of Revolution of the Mask are DONE. Completed! Fully! Sooo, why am I not posting a link to them yet? Mostly it's because I haven't figured out where to put them. Brain Scan Studios seems to have all but dissolved, meaning I can pretty much put them anywhere, but I wouldn't mind hearing some suggestions where I can send them off, especially if I wanted to have physical copies, since that's something a lot of people have expressed interest in. I'm still proceeding with Revolution despite everything else and I hope you enjoy the direction where things go in the next two issues.

Longbox of the Damned
Longbox of the Damned begins tomorrow at 7 AM and continues every day through October!

History of Power Rangers
Because of the change in storyline stuff, I'm going to have free time starting in November to work on History of Power Rangers again, so hopefully we'll have a new episode to cover Operation Overdrive come November/December. As always, no promises and things may end up delaying me for one reason or another. This one's going to be a slog, anyway, I can assure you.

Youmacon
I WILL be attending Youmacon this year! Right now I'm just waiting on final confirmation of stuff, but my hope is to have a big damn celebration this time, since I'll be celebrating Atop the Fourth Wall's 5th anniversary! If things go according to plan, I'll have giveaways, a fun game or two, Q&A, and a few other things I'm thinking up to do for the big celebration. And if things don't go how I'd like, well you'll get a live show, at least.

Youtube
I'm going back to Youtube!

WAIT! WAIT! Before you post anything, let's get some things out of the way that I'm sure you're going to be asking.
-NO, I am NOT leaving ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com or Channel Awesome.
-NO, I am NOT leaving Blip.
-NO, I am NOT posting new episodes/videos on Youtube.

Here's what's happening: people have been uploading my videos without my permission to youtube for quite a while. This steals revenue and potentially new fans from me that could be obtained through youtube if they were coming to TGWTG, the blog, or my Blip channel. However, people DO go to youtube for the videos for legitimate reasons, primarily that there's something in their browser/connection speed/advertisements/flash player/etc. that causes issues with them trying to watch it on blip. I am sympathetic to this, but there's not really much I can do seeing as I am not the man who programmed Blip's players nor do I know anything about programming or computer fixes in general other than doing Google searches and hoping I don't break something.

For all these reasons, I've decided to start uploading videos to my youtube page again. HOWEVER, ad revenue that I get from Blip is still more than I get from youtube and thus is my primary source of income. And because I need to eat and have a place to live, the focus of my videos will still be on Blip. Basically, my youtube page is going to become my syndication channel. Starting tomorrow, I'll begin uploading last year's Longbox of the Damned on a daily basis and then following that History of Power Rangers and older episodes of Atop the Fourth Wall (the first 20 or so episodes are already on there) will begin appearing weekly (thinking of two old episodes per week until a certain point, then weekly to make sure they're not up simultaneously). Older Atop the Fourth Walls may end up getting edited slightly if a legitimate copyright claim IS made, but I'll try to make it seamless or if it's like end credits music I'll just replace it with the theme song. Videos WILL be monetized over there and no, I do not know if the "Skip Ad" button prevents me from getting revenue, same as for Blip videos (I've never had a Skip button appear on Blip ads, myself).

What's kept me from doing something like this in the past is copyright claims. Youtube is filled to the brim with Bots that patrol youtube, look for a screenshot or something from a copyrighted movie/tv show/song/etc. and flag it for removal regardless of length or Fair Use for the purposes of a review. From experience with talking to LittleKuriboh and his issues with trying to keep Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged on youtube that trying to deal with it can be a stressful process that keeps you from getting actual work done. And in my case, this IS my job and I don't want to spend all day fighting robots. However, what I've heard is that if you join a Youtube Network, then copyright claims cannot be made by a Bot - it has to be by an actual human being. This is how Angry Joe, Cinemassacre, and several other channels that feature copyrighted clips operate and it seems to be going well for them.

As such, I have joined a Youtube Network. I don't know if they want to announce my joining yet, so I'm not saying what network it is until they give me the go-ahead. However, because I'm going to start uploading videos again tomorrow, I felt it a good idea to let people know that this is happening.

The Channel is this one: The Tubes of You Link

And if anyone can let me know how to change the username for it (Reuisu is an old handle of mine and I'd prefer to make it something like AT4W-Official or something), please let me know.

Also: I won't be following comments on youtube pages. Moderating the blog's comments makes sense because I get an e-mail that ensures I can read every one and I try to follow TGWTG comments for at least a week when a new video goes up there, but it's impossible for me to keep track of so many when it comes to youtube, as well. And let's face it: Youtube's comment sections will be a hive of scum and villainy the likes of which no one has seen before, so I say if you want to comment to me, bring it over to here, Tumblr, or twitter.