I have to take an unplanned hiatus for a few weeks guys.  I’m sorry this happened, but sometime this week the website should be gone for a few weeks.  I don’t know how long it’ll be down, but right now I’d guess about a month.  Keep an eye on my twitter or the RSS feed for when it returns.  I’m sorry for the hiatus.

In case you missed it on Monday, EA’s presentation at E3 ended with Bioware’s cinematic trailer (hopefully the first of a few) from their new MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. Either way, I’ve got it here for you to enjoy curtesy of G4.

I’ve been excited about this game since it was first announced (about six months ago) and while there wasn’t really any news-worthy info brought to E3 I will gladly take the trailer as amazing as it was!! Expect me to be playing this game the night it comes out! Bioware and Star Wars is just about the greatest combination since ice cream and oreo.

Hey, BlueCrew, we’ve got a new episode of the Chug-A-Freeze podcast with the creator of Soul Geek, Dino Andrade! Now, most of you have heard Dino (yes, heard, not heard of) because of his day job as a voice actor for games, anime, commericials and more! What you need to know Dino for though is Soul Geek- a fantastic community site for everyone to join!

If you haven’t heard of Soul Geek before, then this is the podcast for you! Seriously though, Soul Geek began as a dating site for we the geeky but has become so much more. It hosts forums, user art galleries, fan fictions, geek-news blogs, webcomics, and so much more!! While you’re listening to the podcast I really encourage everyone to go check out the site and make a FREE profile!

So, without further ado, here’s the podcast and thanks again to Dino for taking the time for this very fun interview!

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Well, I wouldn’t be much of a friend or a patriot if I didn’t take a moment on Memorial Day to congratulate Matt for his recent Commissioning Ceremony! Those of you who remember WTH might remember that Matt is a member of the United States Air Force Reserves, and has spent time overseas on duty already.

This month he received his Commission from the Reserve Officer Training Corps and later this year will be serving his first assignment as a Second Lieutenant! While I am going to miss him while he’s gone, I also couldn’t be prouder of the little guy!! Congratulations, Matt, and thank you and all our fine men and women of the Joint Services both past and present.

For those of you who might’ve checked out Monday’s comic when it first went up after midnight, then you’ll notice that I did repost with a pretty drastic change.  I wasn’t happy with how the comic had come out originally, I just didn’t plan the size well enough and it limited what I could do with the text.  That’s really the key, as it made the images and words not match up how I visioned them originally.  So, in classic Lucas and Spielberg style I’ve decided to use my Director’s cut and change the comic a bit.  It’s not a tool I want to use often, but I have to admit when I wrote out the first stories for BlueStar Blues this comic really stuck in my mind as a favorite, so I wanted to make sure it’s the best it can be.

Also:  hope you guys have/had a great holiday weekend!!

I want to welcome everyone that’s joined the crew here this week.  Whether it was by way of wanted poster or word of mouth, we’re always glad to welcome true pirates to our ranks!   Now, you may be asking yourself what benefits come with the pirate life.   Well, one of the best is a standard 3 day weekend!!  It’s part of the whole hiding low from the Royal Navy thing, you know.

So, with that in mind help yourself to some grub, string up a hammock, and hit the decks.  We’ll be laying low till Monday rolls back around.

Back to full force once more, BlueStar is taking off!!  POW!!

My move to St. Louis is done (for now) and as I’ve finally settled in a bit I’m getting back to what got lost in the shuffle:  making comics!!  So, BlueStar is going back to the Monday - Thursday schedule that it once was and I’m working hard to get a full sized buffer in place once more.

As for the Chug-A-Freeze podcasts, I have a couple in the bank that I just need to edit a bit more before they’re ready to go.  I’ll try to get them up later this week/early next if I can but the comics come first.

And now:  Star Trek.    It’s good.  It’s really good.  The cast was great, and the writing had those brilliant flashes of humor and emotion that you really need.  I wasn’t alive for the first Star Wars, but my Dad always told me about that feeling he had when he saw it for the first time.   I imagine that’s a lot of how I felt watching Star Trek this weekend.  It was exciting and captivating and it pulled me in from beginning to end and I literally tried to talk my friends into watching it again as soon as the credits started!!  It wasn’t the greatest movie ever, but it was (to me) an instant classic memory.

So, in case you don’t follow me on Twitter (shame on you) I thought I’d let everyone know the disaster that happened this weekend.  Woke up Friday morning and my computer was dead.  VH1 dead.  It was bad.  I had no clue what happened, as it happened while I was sleeping.  That always kinda sucks.

The good news is I have very knowledgeable friends like Brian Sparks who know everything about something.  Brian knows computers and technology stuff, and over the phone in less then 2 minutes he was able to tell me what was wrong, exactly what to buy, and how to replace and repair it.  So, as soon as I got a day off from work (Mon) I ran to Best Buy.  I was in the store 5 minutes after they opened!

Of course he was totally right, and now the computer is up and running again.  That’s the great news.  The not so great is that the problem is really just a short fix.  This is the third time my computer has crashed this year.  I’ve finally come to the conclusion I need to just replace the whole darned thing… which makes me sad since this is my first computer and I built it myself (with Brian’s excellent help) five years ago.

Still, no point in dragging out the poor thing’s pain so sometime this fall I’ll have to get a new computer.  When that time comes I’ll let you all know of course.

The side effect of all this mess is that I didn’t get a chance to scan or photoshop the comics at all this weekend.  That’s rough as it sets me behind pretty badly… most of my work on comics is done Friday-Sunday.  Fortunately I still had hands to draw with (no hooks yet, mates) but it takes longer to do the photoshop work then the drawing.

The plan right now, regretfully, is to let Monday go without a comic.  I’ll work hard today and get the rest of this week finished up like normal though I might be a few hours late each day.  I apologize in advance for that.  Starting next week though I’ll get going full speed once more.

Thanks for the patience everyone and I’ll do my absolute best to make it up to you!  I have some awesome sweet plans for the near future!  See you tomorrow!!

Not sure if everyone knew but yet another super hero movie came out this weekend.  I guess that’s great and all but I’m about burned out on the genre now.  This summer may honestly kill the super hero movie market for a year or two… just to many to see.  Iron Man, Hulk, Hellboy 2, Dark Knight, Hancock, on and on and on.

What I really needed was a change of pace… I needed a super villain movie.  Thankfully Joss Whedon provided that with Dr. Horrible.   If you’re interested in a comedic, super-villian, blogging, musical misadventure then grab it up on download.  It’s worth it.

Now, if you still need a little more internet movie fun I’ve got one more recommendation - and this is one that not a lot of people are familiar with.  Check out the flash video series There She Is!  This is a series of flash videos that are really very well made.  I’ve been a big fan for a while now and “Step 3″ of the series just came out!!  Don’t be intimidated by the Korean text - there’s a button at the top for English and the video’s have English translations in them.  The blue button directs you right to videos.  Check them out!

As for me, I’m going to watch the series finale movie event Avatar: Sozin’s Comet which I missed originally but was lucky enough to find video of thanks to some of my Twitter friends!

Okay, so Friday’s comic had brackets around the text and there were some questions to what that meant.  When you see the < > brackets it means the text has been translated from whatever language the character normally speaks.  I’ve seen this used in other comics and manga for people speaking foreign languages and in BlueStar Blues I’ll be using it to represent the use of alien dialects.

For now, the common rule is to think what someone from Earth (like Cody) would understand.  No brackets means he hears normal English, with brackets means it makes no sense to him.  This rule will come into play pretty soon.

It is a bit complex, and I’m sorry for that, but it was the best way I could think of to differ the two situations. If it’s not working like I intend or it makes no sense let me know.  Otherwise this is how I’ll be doing things.

I wanted to make sure that was clear before, say… Tuesday’s comic.  *whistles innocently*