Yeah, the daily comics are here!!! One thing I noticed between this site and the GoComics site, the color red is not showing up in Lupin’s or Tommy’s tie. May be it is my computer?
Not to worry! I changed that, and it should update on GoComics shortly! Lupin and Tommy’s shirts were not reading as “tuxedo tee shirts” very easily, and so I went in and made them a little more “tee shirt-like.”
This is actually much, much easier! I’ve saved my workload each week by about a full page! And pacing myself is already giving me a lot of energy to get ahead. I have not been able to get ahead even a day in almost a year and a half–and now I’m 2-3 weeks ahead! For the first time ever! It feels really good.
Congratulations. You do a lovely job and we love your work. (ps I have been buying a copy of the book here and there to give. My mother (who loves cats) got a copy last week).
That’s what I was hoping would come out of networking at ComicCon. I understand that most comic strip authors get and stay a bit ahead so if something happens there’s no break. Seeing the first short strip, I have great hopes! And other comic strips have succeeded in having significant story arcs in short strips.
Wonderful Georgia! Is this the new format to take you forward to a daily strip? I love it! (and would love to read it daily). Wow a closet with a window how unique!
Hello everyone! Today is the first day of the online daily strips, as I continue to try and get the comic ready to pitch to newspapers! This would not be the first ‘daily’ comic that would appear in newspapers, because I thought it might be easier to begin the daily strips online right where we left off! If it feels a little new and strange, please give it a few strips to warm up. You’ll see soon that the comic is still very similar, the “serving sizes” are just a little different. Rather than two giant helpings each week, it’ll be a BCN broadcast every day, at a steady pace!
I am hoping to get to a point technology-wise in a couple of days where the daily strips will automatically update here too, the same way they do on GoComics. Full transparency: I am still teaching myself this and there is a learning curve. We all know I am not great with computers and the only thing I can promise about this site is it will never be perfect or run smoothly, because it is just me updating strips in between nap times and bed times and any other times the kids don’t need me. GoComics will always be the more dependable site, because they do this professionally, and that is why I am so happy to be syndicated there.
One thing I am uncertain about now are the notifications when there is a new strip… There will always be a new strip now, and I’m the kind of person who does not want seven emails from a website every week telling me the same thing. To automate the notifications, I would have to keep the link just a link to the site itself. (This is because the link to each strip is not created until the strip posts, so I can’t create the notifications in advance, and if that sounds confusing, YES. Thank you, yes it is, and here is some of the trouble with notifications now). I may decide not to send out daily notifications, as the strip begins to update dependably every day. It would be a good thing, it would mean it’d be certain there would be a strip every day! Right? This is my thinking.
In the meantime, SEE YOU TOMORROW!!! And Wednesday! And Thursday! And Friday, Saturday, Sunday! And all next week, and the week after that!
We will try to pitch it to as many as possible! When we get closer to the pitch, I may ask readers to let their local papers (I love that yours is actuLly called that) know that they would like to see Breaking Cat News in the comics! That will help me very much!
Also! Do not adjust your set, I did change the site a little bit! I took away the calendar on the left side of the screen, because the daily strips are wider than the old strips. Unexpected bonus: Now all of the older strips are bigger, and hopefully details are easier to spot!
If this messes the site up for anyone, or you can’t get the strip to load now that it is wider, please let me know! There may be some delay, because it is bigger and this site is a little slow, but if it can’t load at all, I need to know that.
Yeah for daily strips! Personally I have no objections to daily notifications as it’s a good reminder but whichever way you go I’ll learn to cope with 🙂
Yay! I love the tuxedo tees!
I also love already that I can curl up in the mornings with a cup of coffee and my gocomics app before the kids wake up and my favorite internet kitties are going to be right there, every day. ☺
Keep up the awesome work, all of us fans adore Breaking Cat News any way we can get it.
This is amazing! <3 I love the daily strips. Will there be the larger ones on Sundays, and do you happen to know which newspapers may carry BCN at this moment in time?
There will be larger ones for Sundays, yes! And this is part of getting the comic ready for newspapers. We have not begun to pitch it to papers yet, but we’re working toward that!
Yes! With the help of my editor, I created a font of my handwriting! (There’s a site called ‘Fontifier’ I used that is pretty great). Hopefully this will make the comic easier to read, and I can finally spellcheck for the first time ever! I’ve never explained this here before, but I transpose letters a lot. The Man has read all of the comics over before I’ve posted them, in case I’ve mixed up my letters. Using is very helpful, and takes a little more stress away, because I don’t have to worry that I’ve switched any letters around.
Dyslexia, mild to severe, is often associated with creative genius. So now we know you are guilty on both counts. I sentence you to life with unimaginable success and popularity
I thought the font had changed somehow. Glad to know I’m not nuts! It has all the characteristics of her normal writing but it still looks a bit different – maybe more uniform size and spacing??? Can’t quite put my finger on it.
So glad we’re invited to this party🎉
Lupin and Tommy wearing same ‘T’ shirt, both with the same impeccable taste – ‘tho Puck and Elvis do look very handsome
So, it sounds like a good idea to simply unsubscribe from the email notifications as they’re not needed–we know there’s gonna be one here, we just don’t know exactly when. Except, of course, I’ll miss getting emails from the cutest intern around.
It’s finally dawned on me that I may not be pronouncing “Lupin” correctly. Does he use “Loo-pin” like lupin (lupine) the flower, or is it “Loo-pon” as in ‘Lupin The Third’.
I feel bad I may have had the little fella’s name wrong.
I’ve been so excited for the daily strips to appear! I know you’ve been worried about how people will react to the changes but I admit that hasn’t bothered me in the slightest. First, I trust whatever you come up with to be great. Second, I’m just happy to get a regular dose of the boys and crew. Whenever you publish a one-off drawing on Facebook or Twitter, I’m thrilled every time. Every. Time. BCN just makes me happy. So, to have it every day is a win in my book. 🙂
The boys everyday! Yahoo! Mr Bunnyfoot celebrated by lying down on the Kindle and refusing to move until he had absorbed it all. Not a bad thing for a ” wanna be reporter”
Prepare for another 200+ comments! The tuxedo tee shirts are bolder now with sleeves dark banded; figured out Lupin had one on before, now he’s Tommy’s twin, a pair of party animals!
I haunt this web page until it updates, don’t rely on email notices since his Excellency Elvis stopped sending them out.
Looks like an auspicious start for the “Dailies” ! You seem to be taking advantage of the short format’s offering of the facility to tell a quick, “Stand-Alone” strip – either self-contained or, part of a longer, multi-strip arc over a week or more. More opportunities for different uses of your creativity to involve and entertain your viewers. I’m sure the resulting ‘toons will keep us all in stitches/trepidation/tears, just as you always have. Thanks for this new & different/same as always exposition of your brain and heart…and your wonderful, beloved characters. Hugs for all (except Elvis – a paw-shake will perhaps be acceptable for him ?). Bob C.
Congratulations on the daily strips! I hope that it won’t cut into too much time with the Baby and the Toddler. Your comics are a big hit with my kids (11 and 8 1/2) and they love the book. Even though I’ve told them that it’s “mommy’s book,” it still disappears into their rooms for days/weeks at a time. Good luck! JoAnn
1. glad to hear you can plan ahead with your strips which will hopefully be less stressful. don’t want to sound like a mom but am relieved to hear you’ll be able to better pace yourself. as much as we love the cats we care about you too so sounds as though the daiy strip is a win-win for everyone.
2. showing up on kindle just fine.
loving the boys fancy tee-shirts
Congratulations on the daily comic strips! Elvis, that old leg biter is back in the bedroom, guarding the coats, and Puck and Lupin are ready to greet dinnerguests. Can’t wait to see who all is coming to dinner!
Hooray!! I was pleasantly surprised it was painted!! I dunno why I thought they would be just black & white!!
I did think you’d start with Elvis and Puck interviewing Lupin for BCN. I’m sure I remember you mentioning that as a beginning story line. I know eventually though their origin stories will be told! 🙂
You might have mentioned this somewhere, but I haven’t been online much. I wanted to say that I thought it was AWESOME you were under Calvin and Hobbes for ComicCon!! BCN often reminds me of C&H with the whimsy, power of imagination, and sense of wonder.
Thank you, Tia!! And that may still happen once the strip is ready to launch into papers. These daily strips continue right where we left off, I thought that would be an easier transition to the new format.
Nah, anchors don’t have microphones, those are for reporters. Anchors have overhead boom mics and whatnot. Or at least those mini-microphones that clip to the lapel.
Hi Georgia. Long time reader, first time poster. I too want to congratulate you on going daily. I did enjoy waiting a few days for the next part of the saga, because when that day arrived, I knew that it would be a great story line. Now we will have a great story line EVERY DAY! Thank you for all the juggling that you did in the past to give us this wonderful story.
I don’t do it while writing, but I transpose letters all the time while typing (especially a space and a first/last letter of a word, but also in the middle of a word). I like to joke that I type exactly how I speak, transposed letters and all.
I vote for keeping the daily notification! People can always unsubscribe if they’re silly enough to wish it. You should be able to automate the process if you just do http://www.breakingcatnews.com (although that probably won’t help with the “This just in… the People are having a dinner party!” line, so maybe not. Maybe somebody can write something that’ll pull it from metadata or something? I dunno.
But yeah… I vote to keep it. Unless it becomes to onerous for you, and then dump it. I’m sure nobody will be TOO upset if you decide doing it every day becomes too much work and stop!
Maybe a weekly update that gives all the strips? Probably wouldn’t be much less work than daily, but you could do it all at once instead of every day, which might make it seem like less work?
Alas, I really have no idea how to do that, unless I clicked through to each and copied and pasted 7 links, which might get a little time consuming. :/
If I do keep them, it would be a link to the site to keep it working through automation, as each strip would create a new link and in the middle of the night there would be no way to add them.
I’m sure there are ways to do it, but the less I can do on the computer, the better. Each time I send out the notifications it’s about 20 minutes to update the list, get the template edited, and send them all out. I’m really hoping I can figure out how to automate them!
Congratulations to you… and to all of us, because we now get to see the boys every day, and that’s something to celebrate!
Just when I think you can’t get better, you draw a crossed-arms, eyebrow-arched Lupin, and he is magnificent. What an expression! That just may be my new favourite “portrait” of him.
Welcome to the dailies!
I am asking for help. My Breaking Cat News is going to my Junk folder in Hotmail, no matter how I try to change the settings so it will go to my inbox instead. Does anyone know how to fix this? Even though I can fetch it from Junk, it doesn’t deserve to go there! It is a wonderful strip!
Congrats on hitting the dailies! The boys sure have enough personality to shine through the shorter strips. I can just hear Elvis saying “Well OF COURSE someone needs to guard the Coat Room. If nobody did, there wouldn’t be any cat hair on the coats to let the Other People know their coats belonged to US now.”
Pam and I looked forward to each new strip because as people owned by cats we understand and enjoy them! Now we get them daily! We wish you great success and know you will have it.
Have you ever considered putting the adoption one on a poster? (The one all about adopting) I would love to get that one and give it our local humane society to put up.
Hello Bob and Pam! It is a poster, actually! There should be a link to the right of the screen, all the way at the bottom to Topataco, where that print is being sold as a poster! And thank you so much for asking!
Hi Georgia. It’s gorgeous. But Lupin was leaving me unsettled and it took me a second to figure out why: His arms in the panel where they’re crossed. They seem too long and too human and not at all Lupin (I didn’t intend for that to rhyme) and the ‘shoulders’ are peculiar.
It may be his little shoulders–I was trying very hard to make it apparent he is wearing a little tee shirt, instead of a full tux. Never fear, that won’t be a new design on him 😉
I am a person who absolutely hates change, so as excited as I was for you to finally get a little relief from the hard work of keeping us all happy, I was also very worried about what a daily, smaller strip would mean. Whew! All that worry for nothing. The daily strip is as high quality as the original format. Congratulations! Change really can be good;)
Thank you, Sue Ellen! I am one of those people myself, and so I kept bracing myself for folks to worry–and I worried about how I could get the strip to the point where it would be ready to go daily! I’m really excited that it is here though! Thank you for sticking with me, it will be a good time!
Congratulations! BCM is a wonderful comic story, one of my very favourites, and you deserve every one of the kind words people are posting about it. Good luck!
To know I am going to see the boys every day is wonderful. Today’s strip is so cute. Georgia, you have made me very happy. I say forget the email notification. I have found that it comes much later than when the comic shows up. I go to gocomics right away just after midnight. I have that website, as well as BCN setup on my Kindle’s most visited sites. That’s so much easier than typing in the address for each. Or, one could bookmark them. All in all, you will be making each day of the week a special one.
The first daily strip is a smashing success! The updates are great, too. Thanks for giving us more cat news to love every week. I joined the bandwagon only recently, but I’m a big fan – rereading strips from the start. I’m glad the new format is working well for your family life, too. By the way – I ordered your book (a signed version!) and can’t wait until it arrives!
So excited that BCN is now a daily! Congratulations Georgia!
I am looking forward to seeing how things develop. It is going to be such a treat to follow the adventures of these crazy kitties every day. Definitely a big reason to smile!
And for those unsure about the new format/how the stories will reveal themselves in this new “shorter” strip, all I can say is;
Without change, there can be no growth or moving forward. Embrace it and remember, we are all paper towels.
Gee Georgia your earlier response about the daily strips was great … it will be there Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday! Thought you were channeling Howard Dean! Loved it! You are so great. It just needed a joyful yell at the end!
Hi, Georgia! I hate to be a downer, but if you don’t mind some (hopefully constructive) criticism: I think the new font needs a LOT more work. 🙁 I know it’s meant to be based on your handwriting, but it looks both too artificial and too sloppy, all at once.
For example: repeating letters (the Ns in “dinner”, the Ps in “inappropriate”, etc) are obviously identical to one another — which hurts of the “handwritten feel” you’re going for. Meanwhile, the letters don’t all line up on the same plane — look at “inappropriately”, where both of the As tower over most of the other letters (even the Is, which should be taller since they have a dot), and the T drops down below the plane. It looks like the word was assembled letter-by-letter from different sources, like a ransom note.
Also in that same word, the Ps, the Rs and the Ts *all* have different slants to their vertical lines. P is straight up, R does this \ , and T does this / . Most people’s handwriting leans one way or the other, not both at once.
All these plane breaks and varied vertical slants make the text look artificial, not smooth like handwriting — these aren’t things that someone writing by hand would do. These are computer-generated inconsistencies that only show up when you place individually-created letters next to one another.
(Other examples: your Os are pretty tall too. And the Ys, which have very high “bottoms”, don’t match up to the lower dots at the bottoms of the exclamation points. Again, not something that someone writing by hand would do so consistently.)
Also, most of your word balloon text is left-justified — all the words smoothly lining up down the left border regardless of how long they are — whereas if you were doing them by hand, you’d probably think to center smaller words like “completely” over larger words like “inappropriately.” (Sorry to pick on that one word, but it’s a good example of lots of things!)
Another (much less obvious) problem is that the thin line weight of the letters doesn’t match the thick line weight of the balloon borders, which adds to making the letters feel “fake”. And I think the letters might be slightly “blacker” than the balloon borders too.
I don’t mean to be picky — you’re only on Day One of this font, after all! But it took me right out of the reading experience, and I thought I’d share my impressions. Hopefully you take all this as constructive. 🙂
There’s lots that can be done to tweak “handwritten fonts” so that they look more natural. (For example: create TWO versions of each letter, slightly different, so that when you type repeated letters like “diNNer” or “dreSSed”, you use one of each version and they don’t look obviously duplicated.)
Hopefully your editor has some experience with font creation and can help you massage the font a bit more. It’s okay, but it could be SO much better — and I want your strip to have the best! 😀
Keep up the great work, and thanks for reading this!
Thank you, Jeph! It is a work in progress, and 2-3 “alternating letter” fonts are planned, so that I can pick from different several versions of letters as I go. This is the first attempt, it will evolve!
Hooray! I should have figured you’d already be on top of it. Thanks for the response to my super-long message (yikes), and good luck with tweaking everything to perfection! Can’t wait to see what the future holds 🙂
You should have seen my first font!! I played with it for… Well, hours, ha, one weekend, and at the end it came out so rigid and exact, it weirdly looked a lot like ‘Comic Sans’! My editor gently backed me off getting it quite so precise, and it’s finally really close to being like my handwriting–but I’m still getting the spacing and where it lands settled. It’s improving though, I promise!
Well I found no problem with the font but maybe because I was FOCUSING MORE ON THE CATS! After reading Jeph’s comments, I went back and looked at the printing and saw nothing distracting. I have a background in art including print work so I’m not an amateur in this field. But, everyone has their opinion and their opinion counts. That’s what makes this a great country.
I agree. The font is clear and easy to read. Judging by the quality of most handwriting I’ve seen in the last thirty five years, schools have not taught penmanship for at least that long, and most people’s writing, whether printing or cursive, is atrocious, at best. Calligraphers and other artists may well be the last bastion of clear handwriting, at least in this country.
As a font, tweaking the spacing MAY be good. However, a careful look at most hand printing will reveal the same inconsistencies in spacing. The exceptions are classically trained architects and draftsmen/women—rare species indeed.
Finally, this is a comic, and the text should never interfere with the art, only compliment it. So many otherwise good comic artists overwhelm their art with text, ballooned or otherwise. Wisely, Georgia never does—her pictures convey paragraphs.
When I was in elementary school in the Eighties, they didn’t call it “penmanship” but we did learn handwriting and how to do so legibly. My father’s suspicion regarding the decay of legibility of handwriting was tied to scribbling notes in high school and college – they spend all this time getting you learning to write clearly and well, then make you scribble so fast to keep up with the notes that the taught Good Habits get overridden by Bad Habits.
I agree, Linda. I didn’t find any ginger distracting with the font. Personally I quite like it actually. But as you said, to each their own.
As long as the stories keep coming, I will be a happy camper!!!
Congratulations on the daily strips success Georgia! I love it & looks like everyone else does also. Big thumbs up! Those tux tee’s are cute! You like to dress up your boys and I am wondering if they have these in their kitty closet. 😸
YAY congrats Georgia I love this strip! I will enjoy the dailies as long as this strip is around.
Yeah, the daily comics are here!!! One thing I noticed between this site and the GoComics site, the color red is not showing up in Lupin’s or Tommy’s tie. May be it is my computer?
Not to worry! I changed that, and it should update on GoComics shortly! Lupin and Tommy’s shirts were not reading as “tuxedo tee shirts” very easily, and so I went in and made them a little more “tee shirt-like.”
I didn’t realize Tommy was in a t-shirt, all I noticed was the lack of his amazing ruffled tux
You can tell on Lupin because his arms show. A little harder on Tommy
Can’t wait to see how The People arrive to this party!
Do you know you can see strips on BCN early on gocomics? I also got the first comment!
They’re so cute in traditional layout!
Sorry, I didn’t see the other comments when I posted.
Yay! i will get to see my boys every day now. Georgia, when do you find time to do all you do?
This is actually much, much easier! I’ve saved my workload each week by about a full page! And pacing myself is already giving me a lot of energy to get ahead. I have not been able to get ahead even a day in almost a year and a half–and now I’m 2-3 weeks ahead! For the first time ever! It feels really good.
Congratulations. You do a lovely job and we love your work. (ps I have been buying a copy of the book here and there to give. My mother (who loves cats) got a copy last week).
Awesomeness! It’s good to be ahead! 😊 These traditionally formated strips whet the appetite for the next strip even more! 😺
That’s what I was hoping would come out of networking at ComicCon. I understand that most comic strip authors get and stay a bit ahead so if something happens there’s no break. Seeing the first short strip, I have great hopes! And other comic strips have succeeded in having significant story arcs in short strips.
Good job Georgia. Just keep on keepin’ on!
Ray
Wonderful Georgia! Is this the new format to take you forward to a daily strip? I love it! (and would love to read it daily). Wow a closet with a window how unique!
‘Coat room’ likely means ‘guest room’ or similar, not ‘closet’.
Hello everyone! Today is the first day of the online daily strips, as I continue to try and get the comic ready to pitch to newspapers! This would not be the first ‘daily’ comic that would appear in newspapers, because I thought it might be easier to begin the daily strips online right where we left off! If it feels a little new and strange, please give it a few strips to warm up. You’ll see soon that the comic is still very similar, the “serving sizes” are just a little different. Rather than two giant helpings each week, it’ll be a BCN broadcast every day, at a steady pace!
I am hoping to get to a point technology-wise in a couple of days where the daily strips will automatically update here too, the same way they do on GoComics. Full transparency: I am still teaching myself this and there is a learning curve. We all know I am not great with computers and the only thing I can promise about this site is it will never be perfect or run smoothly, because it is just me updating strips in between nap times and bed times and any other times the kids don’t need me. GoComics will always be the more dependable site, because they do this professionally, and that is why I am so happy to be syndicated there.
One thing I am uncertain about now are the notifications when there is a new strip… There will always be a new strip now, and I’m the kind of person who does not want seven emails from a website every week telling me the same thing. To automate the notifications, I would have to keep the link just a link to the site itself. (This is because the link to each strip is not created until the strip posts, so I can’t create the notifications in advance, and if that sounds confusing, YES. Thank you, yes it is, and here is some of the trouble with notifications now). I may decide not to send out daily notifications, as the strip begins to update dependably every day. It would be a good thing, it would mean it’d be certain there would be a strip every day! Right? This is my thinking.
In the meantime, SEE YOU TOMORROW!!! And Wednesday! And Thursday! And Friday, Saturday, Sunday! And all next week, and the week after that!
Please keep the notifications! Seeing BREAKING CAT NEWS show up in my work Inbox totally makes my day – I’ll be lost without it!
I agree!
It’s a pleasant surprise in my day!
Please don’t break or eliminate the RSS, either.
(As if I have a right to ask — you’re just awesome. No worries if it’s not feasible.)
Never fear, I have no idea how to do that! Hahaha!!! (And I promise not to, if I ever find out!)
I think knowing on Facebook that you have posted is enough😊
can you pitch it to the local newspaper (that is it’s real name!) and the coast reporter those are the only two newspapers where i live!
We will try to pitch it to as many as possible! When we get closer to the pitch, I may ask readers to let their local papers (I love that yours is actuLly called that) know that they would like to see Breaking Cat News in the comics! That will help me very much!
There’s one thing improvable, Longer occasion strips.
Hi Georgia I love the the look of the daily! And very glad to see everyone every day.
Also! Do not adjust your set, I did change the site a little bit! I took away the calendar on the left side of the screen, because the daily strips are wider than the old strips. Unexpected bonus: Now all of the older strips are bigger, and hopefully details are easier to spot!
If this messes the site up for anyone, or you can’t get the strip to load now that it is wider, please let me know! There may be some delay, because it is bigger and this site is a little slow, but if it can’t load at all, I need to know that.
An improvement in my book — thanks!
Such a good Monday. Congratulations on your daily strip. Just love the boys.
Elvis in the coat room is not surprising. Is he asking how “they get in here”.
And another strip tomorrow. Yippee.
Can’t wait to see what the party is about.
Yeah for daily strips! Personally I have no objections to daily notifications as it’s a good reminder but whichever way you go I’ll learn to cope with 🙂
Congratulations on the milestone! BCN is now a morning necessity, right up there with coffee!
Thank you, Anne!
Yay! I love the tuxedo tees!
I also love already that I can curl up in the mornings with a cup of coffee and my gocomics app before the kids wake up and my favorite internet kitties are going to be right there, every day. ☺
Keep up the awesome work, all of us fans adore Breaking Cat News any way we can get it.
Thank you, Nicki!!
This is amazing! <3 I love the daily strips. Will there be the larger ones on Sundays, and do you happen to know which newspapers may carry BCN at this moment in time?
There will be larger ones for Sundays, yes! And this is part of getting the comic ready for newspapers. We have not begun to pitch it to papers yet, but we’re working toward that!
And a new font!
Yes! With the help of my editor, I created a font of my handwriting! (There’s a site called ‘Fontifier’ I used that is pretty great). Hopefully this will make the comic easier to read, and I can finally spellcheck for the first time ever! I’ve never explained this here before, but I transpose letters a lot. The Man has read all of the comics over before I’ve posted them, in case I’ve mixed up my letters. Using is very helpful, and takes a little more stress away, because I don’t have to worry that I’ve switched any letters around.
Lysdexics of the world, untie!
I do that sometimes when i type.
Dyslexia, mild to severe, is often associated with creative genius. So now we know you are guilty on both counts. I sentence you to life with unimaginable success and popularity
I thought the font had changed somehow. Glad to know I’m not nuts! It has all the characteristics of her normal writing but it still looks a bit different – maybe more uniform size and spacing??? Can’t quite put my finger on it.
So glad we’re invited to this party🎉
Lupin and Tommy wearing same ‘T’ shirt, both with the same impeccable taste – ‘tho Puck and Elvis do look very handsome
You have a window in the coat room? Only kidding. I know Elvis is back in the bedroom.
So, it sounds like a good idea to simply unsubscribe from the email notifications as they’re not needed–we know there’s gonna be one here, we just don’t know exactly when. Except, of course, I’ll miss getting emails from the cutest intern around.
It’s finally dawned on me that I may not be pronouncing “Lupin” correctly. Does he use “Loo-pin” like lupin (lupine) the flower, or is it “Loo-pon” as in ‘Lupin The Third’.
I feel bad I may have had the little fella’s name wrong.
It is “Loo-pin.” 🙂
WooHoo! I had it right!
Thank you very much.
OMG what did we do to deserve dailies?!?!?!?! !!!!
so excited for these! thanks georgia!
Daily BCN reports !! Hip hip hooray !!!!!! 😺
“The only thing I can promise about this site is it will never be perfect or run smoothly”.
And quite right too. Who needs perfection? As a certain trio would attest, you’re only human.
Thank you, Lee!
I’ve been so excited for the daily strips to appear! I know you’ve been worried about how people will react to the changes but I admit that hasn’t bothered me in the slightest. First, I trust whatever you come up with to be great. Second, I’m just happy to get a regular dose of the boys and crew. Whenever you publish a one-off drawing on Facebook or Twitter, I’m thrilled every time. Every. Time. BCN just makes me happy. So, to have it every day is a win in my book. 🙂
Thank you, Megan!!
The boys everyday! Yahoo! Mr Bunnyfoot celebrated by lying down on the Kindle and refusing to move until he had absorbed it all. Not a bad thing for a ” wanna be reporter”
Prepare for another 200+ comments! The tuxedo tee shirts are bolder now with sleeves dark banded; figured out Lupin had one on before, now he’s Tommy’s twin, a pair of party animals!
I haunt this web page until it updates, don’t rely on email notices since his Excellency Elvis stopped sending them out.
Yay for daily strips! Love Elvis and Puck in their formal get-up. Is it just me or does Lupin look like he’s ready to DJ the party in panel 2?
Looks like an auspicious start for the “Dailies” ! You seem to be taking advantage of the short format’s offering of the facility to tell a quick, “Stand-Alone” strip – either self-contained or, part of a longer, multi-strip arc over a week or more. More opportunities for different uses of your creativity to involve and entertain your viewers. I’m sure the resulting ‘toons will keep us all in stitches/trepidation/tears, just as you always have. Thanks for this new & different/same as always exposition of your brain and heart…and your wonderful, beloved characters. Hugs for all (except Elvis – a paw-shake will perhaps be acceptable for him ?). Bob C.
Oh, yessss-now Lupin has his arms folded, the ironic little hipster! First I thought he was pointing into the camera lens at Elvis.
Congratulations on the daily strips! I hope that it won’t cut into too much time with the Baby and the Toddler. Your comics are a big hit with my kids (11 and 8 1/2) and they love the book. Even though I’ve told them that it’s “mommy’s book,” it still disappears into their rooms for days/weeks at a time. Good luck! JoAnn
1. glad to hear you can plan ahead with your strips which will hopefully be less stressful. don’t want to sound like a mom but am relieved to hear you’ll be able to better pace yourself. as much as we love the cats we care about you too so sounds as though the daiy strip is a win-win for everyone.
2. showing up on kindle just fine.
loving the boys fancy tee-shirts
Congratulations on the daily comic strips! Elvis, that old leg biter is back in the bedroom, guarding the coats, and Puck and Lupin are ready to greet dinnerguests. Can’t wait to see who all is coming to dinner!
Hooray!! I was pleasantly surprised it was painted!! I dunno why I thought they would be just black & white!!
I did think you’d start with Elvis and Puck interviewing Lupin for BCN. I’m sure I remember you mentioning that as a beginning story line. I know eventually though their origin stories will be told! 🙂
You might have mentioned this somewhere, but I haven’t been online much. I wanted to say that I thought it was AWESOME you were under Calvin and Hobbes for ComicCon!! BCN often reminds me of C&H with the whimsy, power of imagination, and sense of wonder.
Thank you, Tia!! And that may still happen once the strip is ready to launch into papers. These daily strips continue right where we left off, I thought that would be an easier transition to the new format.
Is Lupin missing his microphone?
Nah, anchors don’t have microphones, those are for reporters. Anchors have overhead boom mics and whatnot. Or at least those mini-microphones that clip to the lapel.
Catastic!!! So happy to see
Excited to be part of this day in history!!
Hi Georgia. Long time reader, first time poster. I too want to congratulate you on going daily. I did enjoy waiting a few days for the next part of the saga, because when that day arrived, I knew that it would be a great story line. Now we will have a great story line EVERY DAY! Thank you for all the juggling that you did in the past to give us this wonderful story.
Thank you, Michael!
I don’t do it while writing, but I transpose letters all the time while typing (especially a space and a first/last letter of a word, but also in the middle of a word). I like to joke that I type exactly how I speak, transposed letters and all.
Haha!! I like that!
I vote for keeping the daily notification! People can always unsubscribe if they’re silly enough to wish it. You should be able to automate the process if you just do http://www.breakingcatnews.com (although that probably won’t help with the “This just in… the People are having a dinner party!” line, so maybe not. Maybe somebody can write something that’ll pull it from metadata or something? I dunno.
But yeah… I vote to keep it. Unless it becomes to onerous for you, and then dump it. I’m sure nobody will be TOO upset if you decide doing it every day becomes too much work and stop!
Maybe a weekly update that gives all the strips? Probably wouldn’t be much less work than daily, but you could do it all at once instead of every day, which might make it seem like less work?
Alas, I really have no idea how to do that, unless I clicked through to each and copied and pasted 7 links, which might get a little time consuming. :/
If I do keep them, it would be a link to the site to keep it working through automation, as each strip would create a new link and in the middle of the night there would be no way to add them.
I’m sure there are ways to do it, but the less I can do on the computer, the better. Each time I send out the notifications it’s about 20 minutes to update the list, get the template edited, and send them all out. I’m really hoping I can figure out how to automate them!
Congratulations to you… and to all of us, because we now get to see the boys every day, and that’s something to celebrate!
Just when I think you can’t get better, you draw a crossed-arms, eyebrow-arched Lupin, and he is magnificent. What an expression! That just may be my new favourite “portrait” of him.
Welcome to the dailies!
Congratulations Georgia on your first daily strip! It’s a winner, with many to follow I’m sure.
XOXOXO
I am asking for help. My Breaking Cat News is going to my Junk folder in Hotmail, no matter how I try to change the settings so it will go to my inbox instead. Does anyone know how to fix this? Even though I can fetch it from Junk, it doesn’t deserve to go there! It is a wonderful strip!
Congrats on hitting the dailies! The boys sure have enough personality to shine through the shorter strips. I can just hear Elvis saying “Well OF COURSE someone needs to guard the Coat Room. If nobody did, there wouldn’t be any cat hair on the coats to let the Other People know their coats belonged to US now.”
Thanks Georgia! A daily ray of feline sunshine every day?!? GREAT!
A few weeks ago GoComics sent me some copies of the ‘Breaking Cat News’ book to sign! Now those copies are available for sale here, if you’d like to purchase a signed book! https://wonderword.universaluclick.com/products/breaking-cat-news-autograph
Got it! Yay, thank you! And thank you for bringing us the party that is Breaking Cat News!
Daily BCN??? I am in heaven!!! And don’t the boys all look handsome in their tuxedos!
Love that there will be daily strips!
Maybe the boys should ask Sir Figaro for fashion help; tuxedo cats always dress to impress (both my cats are tuxedo cats)
Pam and I looked forward to each new strip because as people owned by cats we understand and enjoy them! Now we get them daily! We wish you great success and know you will have it.
Have you ever considered putting the adoption one on a poster? (The one all about adopting) I would love to get that one and give it our local humane society to put up.
Hello Bob and Pam! It is a poster, actually! There should be a link to the right of the screen, all the way at the bottom to Topataco, where that print is being sold as a poster! And thank you so much for asking!
Hi Georgia. It’s gorgeous. But Lupin was leaving me unsettled and it took me a second to figure out why: His arms in the panel where they’re crossed. They seem too long and too human and not at all Lupin (I didn’t intend for that to rhyme) and the ‘shoulders’ are peculiar.
It may be his little shoulders–I was trying very hard to make it apparent he is wearing a little tee shirt, instead of a full tux. Never fear, that won’t be a new design on him 😉
I am a person who absolutely hates change, so as excited as I was for you to finally get a little relief from the hard work of keeping us all happy, I was also very worried about what a daily, smaller strip would mean. Whew! All that worry for nothing. The daily strip is as high quality as the original format. Congratulations! Change really can be good;)
Thank you, Sue Ellen! I am one of those people myself, and so I kept bracing myself for folks to worry–and I worried about how I could get the strip to the point where it would be ready to go daily! I’m really excited that it is here though! Thank you for sticking with me, it will be a good time!
Congratulations! BCM is a wonderful comic story, one of my very favourites, and you deserve every one of the kind words people are posting about it. Good luck!
BCN, too. *ugh* talk about needing a spell check!
Thank you, Kathy!
To know I am going to see the boys every day is wonderful. Today’s strip is so cute. Georgia, you have made me very happy. I say forget the email notification. I have found that it comes much later than when the comic shows up. I go to gocomics right away just after midnight. I have that website, as well as BCN setup on my Kindle’s most visited sites. That’s so much easier than typing in the address for each. Or, one could bookmark them. All in all, you will be making each day of the week a special one.
I just ordered a signed copy of your book. Thanks for the heads up.
You’re welcome! Thank you, Linda!!
Whoo! Horizontal daily format!
The first daily strip is a smashing success! The updates are great, too. Thanks for giving us more cat news to love every week. I joined the bandwagon only recently, but I’m a big fan – rereading strips from the start. I’m glad the new format is working well for your family life, too. By the way – I ordered your book (a signed version!) and can’t wait until it arrives!
Thank you, Michelle!!
So excited that BCN is now a daily! Congratulations Georgia!
I am looking forward to seeing how things develop. It is going to be such a treat to follow the adventures of these crazy kitties every day. Definitely a big reason to smile!
And for those unsure about the new format/how the stories will reveal themselves in this new “shorter” strip, all I can say is;
Without change, there can be no growth or moving forward. Embrace it and remember, we are all paper towels.
Gee Georgia your earlier response about the daily strips was great … it will be there Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday! Thought you were channeling Howard Dean! Loved it! You are so great. It just needed a joyful yell at the end!
1
When I re-read this , with Lupin and Tommy pointing in to the air, I think of SNL’s Two Wild and Crazy Guys. 😄
That is perfect, ha! That’s pretty much how they are behaving.
Puck in a tux is great!
Hi, Georgia! I hate to be a downer, but if you don’t mind some (hopefully constructive) criticism: I think the new font needs a LOT more work. 🙁 I know it’s meant to be based on your handwriting, but it looks both too artificial and too sloppy, all at once.
For example: repeating letters (the Ns in “dinner”, the Ps in “inappropriate”, etc) are obviously identical to one another — which hurts of the “handwritten feel” you’re going for. Meanwhile, the letters don’t all line up on the same plane — look at “inappropriately”, where both of the As tower over most of the other letters (even the Is, which should be taller since they have a dot), and the T drops down below the plane. It looks like the word was assembled letter-by-letter from different sources, like a ransom note.
Also in that same word, the Ps, the Rs and the Ts *all* have different slants to their vertical lines. P is straight up, R does this \ , and T does this / . Most people’s handwriting leans one way or the other, not both at once.
All these plane breaks and varied vertical slants make the text look artificial, not smooth like handwriting — these aren’t things that someone writing by hand would do. These are computer-generated inconsistencies that only show up when you place individually-created letters next to one another.
(Other examples: your Os are pretty tall too. And the Ys, which have very high “bottoms”, don’t match up to the lower dots at the bottoms of the exclamation points. Again, not something that someone writing by hand would do so consistently.)
Also, most of your word balloon text is left-justified — all the words smoothly lining up down the left border regardless of how long they are — whereas if you were doing them by hand, you’d probably think to center smaller words like “completely” over larger words like “inappropriately.” (Sorry to pick on that one word, but it’s a good example of lots of things!)
Another (much less obvious) problem is that the thin line weight of the letters doesn’t match the thick line weight of the balloon borders, which adds to making the letters feel “fake”. And I think the letters might be slightly “blacker” than the balloon borders too.
I don’t mean to be picky — you’re only on Day One of this font, after all! But it took me right out of the reading experience, and I thought I’d share my impressions. Hopefully you take all this as constructive. 🙂
There’s lots that can be done to tweak “handwritten fonts” so that they look more natural. (For example: create TWO versions of each letter, slightly different, so that when you type repeated letters like “diNNer” or “dreSSed”, you use one of each version and they don’t look obviously duplicated.)
Hopefully your editor has some experience with font creation and can help you massage the font a bit more. It’s okay, but it could be SO much better — and I want your strip to have the best! 😀
Keep up the great work, and thanks for reading this!
Thank you, Jeph! It is a work in progress, and 2-3 “alternating letter” fonts are planned, so that I can pick from different several versions of letters as I go. This is the first attempt, it will evolve!
Hooray! I should have figured you’d already be on top of it. Thanks for the response to my super-long message (yikes), and good luck with tweaking everything to perfection! Can’t wait to see what the future holds 🙂
You should have seen my first font!! I played with it for… Well, hours, ha, one weekend, and at the end it came out so rigid and exact, it weirdly looked a lot like ‘Comic Sans’! My editor gently backed me off getting it quite so precise, and it’s finally really close to being like my handwriting–but I’m still getting the spacing and where it lands settled. It’s improving though, I promise!
Well I found no problem with the font but maybe because I was FOCUSING MORE ON THE CATS! After reading Jeph’s comments, I went back and looked at the printing and saw nothing distracting. I have a background in art including print work so I’m not an amateur in this field. But, everyone has their opinion and their opinion counts. That’s what makes this a great country.
I agree. The font is clear and easy to read. Judging by the quality of most handwriting I’ve seen in the last thirty five years, schools have not taught penmanship for at least that long, and most people’s writing, whether printing or cursive, is atrocious, at best. Calligraphers and other artists may well be the last bastion of clear handwriting, at least in this country.
As a font, tweaking the spacing MAY be good. However, a careful look at most hand printing will reveal the same inconsistencies in spacing. The exceptions are classically trained architects and draftsmen/women—rare species indeed.
Finally, this is a comic, and the text should never interfere with the art, only compliment it. So many otherwise good comic artists overwhelm their art with text, ballooned or otherwise. Wisely, Georgia never does—her pictures convey paragraphs.
When I was in elementary school in the Eighties, they didn’t call it “penmanship” but we did learn handwriting and how to do so legibly. My father’s suspicion regarding the decay of legibility of handwriting was tied to scribbling notes in high school and college – they spend all this time getting you learning to write clearly and well, then make you scribble so fast to keep up with the notes that the taught Good Habits get overridden by Bad Habits.
I agree, Linda. I didn’t find any ginger distracting with the font. Personally I quite like it actually. But as you said, to each their own.
As long as the stories keep coming, I will be a happy camper!!!
Ginger? How the heck did my phone turn “anything” into “any ginger”???
Congratulations on the daily strips success Georgia! I love it & looks like everyone else does also. Big thumbs up! Those tux tee’s are cute! You like to dress up your boys and I am wondering if they have these in their kitty closet. 😸
Love the daily strip. Tuxedo T-shirts..Yay 🙂
Ooooh! This is going to be fun!
Because I shared the two I bought, at least two more of your first books were bought by friends! Yay!
Yay! Thank you, Jill!