Perceptive readers will notice that there is a change at the bottom of Monday’s strip, and we’ve decided to show a bit more of ourselves from now on. So, the full story:
The Daily Blink was originally created by myself, Chris Hanel, a few years back when I was writing for the Azerothian edition of Metroblogging, a network of websites dedicated to local pursuits for several cities around the world. Sean Bonner, the creator of Metblogs, was an avid WoW player and created a page for World of Warcraft, I think, as a comment that the game itself had become its own community and therefore merited such a site. As one of its writers for a short time, I took the opportunity to get a bit goofy and created a few spoof stories which I called “The Daily Blink”. I posted 3 or 4 before other shiny objects distracted me and my posting slowed and eventually gave way to other pursuits.
In January of last year, I started the strip back up with CP, my co-worker at the time. CP is a hilarious guy but is also very private: He doesn’t have a Facebook page nor has any desire to see his face plastered on the internet. We were happy to stay mostly anonymous, though people that knew us were aware that we were working on the strip. The Cosmopolitan cover, the first of our strips to be passed around the net a fair amount, was posted on my office door with great pride.
We took our hiatus, then started the strip back up a few months later. In November, however, our office closed its doors and CP and I parted ways. With a relocation looming and not being in our normal amount of contact anymore, our writing team was broken up.
So, with the philosophy of seeing one door closing as another door opening, I would like to introduce our new writer onto the stage, Michael Owen. Michael has been a friend of the strip for a good amount of time, and was a frequent soundboard for ideas late at night while working out writer’s block or looking for the perfect phrasing for a punchline. It was only natural upon needing to find a new partner that Michael be the guy. He’s currently in the Navy and has a technical job that entails far more responsibility than I will ever directly have myself, and for that he has my eternal respect (colored with a twinge of fear).
We have a lot of goals for the strip this year. First of all, we’re currently working on a site redesign, upgrading the current spectacle that was put together with the idea that nobody would ever really take a look at it in the first place. The Instance, WoW Insider and MMO Champion had other plans in mind, however, and now I can’t go any longer without trying to tidy up the place a bit, knowing how many people look at the site every day.
The second half this is not really quantifiable. We want to do “more” with the strip. We’re not really sure what that “more” is, just yet. We’re big Starcraft 2 fans — should we start doing SC2 articles along with WoW? I’ve done plenty of podcasts before, should we start one? We’ve joked about some funny T-shirt designs, should we start up a shop? It’s all very nebulous and exciting, and hasn’t really taken shape yet. We’re finally at a readership where some of the more ambitious ideas that we have are actually doable and worth scoping out. For example, it might actually be worth going and setting up a table at a convention, but as you might guess, we can’t exactly promise you character sketches… maybe we could set up a laptop and make people their own custom strips by downloading their Armory profile. That would actually be a blast, though probably not feasible. These are the conversations we have on Ventrilo at 2AM while working on the finishing touches of a strip. We will be continuing them for many nights to come.
So, to you, who has stuck with this strip throughout the past year, we humbly say thank you and hope that we can continue to entertain you in years to come, and bring all of you along as whatever it is we do here continues to evolve, refine, and grow.
