UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

6 thoughts on “542 – Catching Up”

  1. Keith

    Some friction, but yeah. IRL, I’d like these two…they should have kids. 😉

    1. Dawn

      I might have to draw out what their kid would look like. First thought is that their kid would look like Ongo Gablogian from “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”

    2. Scarsdale

      He’s pushing 60, she’s maybe 30, more likely less. Chuck is most likely shooting blanks, and besides, he’s talking to her like a baby sister than a love interest.

  2. ConcordBob

    It is really hard to have a favorite character, as there are so many good ones. But I think Rosa is my favorite. Chuck is a good accomplice in sneaking work, but not much for romance. Uugh.

  3. Otaku

    I mean, if they don’t have at least an inkling of what’s going down, I’m actually disappointed in Clearstream. If anything, I’m starting to wonder if they caught on and realized “Wait, we can use this.”

    Because of course they can. 😉

  4. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    I’m way ahead of you – I’ve been waiting for you to catch up. From November 2020:
    I would hope for nothing less – her and Chuck have the potential for a great deal of positive mischief.
    Speaking of which, I received the email notifying me that my order for the NSFW “Chuck and Rosa Finally Do It” (age verification required) limited edition hardcover is going to be delayed due to the pandemic. I think it’s really cool that you’ll be adding some additional stretch goal goodies when it ships – thanks for all your story and art.
    As for the inscription, ” We owe it all to you ” will be sufficient.

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542 – Catching Up
Posted on April 9, 2025 by Dawn

August is the cruelest month…

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Clint
Don’t let T.S. Eliot fool you with his excoriation of April; in the webcomic world, indeed, the online content world as a whole, April is pretty sweet. It’s August and its partners in crime, June and July, that sneak up on you every year and sucker punch you. The worst is probably the first time you experience it, if you’re the kind of person who monitors your traffic counts as a sign your audience is growing. Yes, various counters will tell you various things, but when you’ve been on the rise and then you suddenly see an across the board dip in people looking your way, and that dip keeps going and going from week to week, you’ll get that sinking feeling in your stomach and wonder just what it was that you did wrong. You did nothing wrong. To paraphrase Chinatown: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Summer.” It’s the Summer Slump, and it’s a phenomenon that’s been known about by webmasters for years. The kids are out of school, people are going on vacation, and basically, a lot of folks just plain decide they have something better to do than read webcomics, no matter how gripping the cliffhangers you dangle before them are. Hell, if you look into it you’ll find out it’s not even just the web, television viewership also drops during these months to the point networks hold their new seasons of shows until Fall. This is such a recurring thing that some wecomic creators take a page from the TV and are known to just put their comics on hiatus until Summer ends. Others use the time to experiment with layouts or otherwise do risky business with their sites before the “crowds” return, figuring anyone loyal enough to stick around during slump time is also willing to cut them some slack if there’s a temporary breakdown. As for us, we’ve mostly been holding the course, especially because this year June and July weren’t as bad as they’ve been before. But August? August looks so far to be shaping up as nasty as ever, so it’s probably time to see about some overdue updates. Of course, August in the Los Angeles area also happens to be when it gets so hot it’s really hard to motivate to do anything except lie around in the path of as much air circulation as possible. The upside you have to keep telling yourself is that eventually it will get cooler, and school will start up again, and you’ll see a lot of familiar faces returning, eager to see how the story has gone since they last checked in. That’s also perhaps when you might find out that they really have abandoned you, but so far Dawn and I have always found September to be the time everyone comes back from “reverse hibernation”, perhaps dragging a few friends along as well. Summer slump is just something all online creators have to deal with, unless they’re too big or too small to notice. For us here at the Ranch there’s no avoiding it, so we slog through the heat and comparative lack of feedback/commentary until we reach that cool breeze that heralds the migratory return. That,  or maybe next time the slump rolls ’round we should look into doing an ad blitz in places like Australia.