I just can’t go on with it any more.  I’ve grown up and moved on.

That being said, I’ve got a new project in the works. Zombie-spit.

I got an email a couple days ago from my comic compatriot Jarrett Osborne of The Pursuit of Mandy and Some Day Hero.com.  He was asking me how to get rid of an infestation of spam comments on a site.  I explained that he’d have to activate a spam blocker then manually delete the aforementioned spam.  What I didn’t realize at this point, was just what he meant by infestation.  Luckily, I have admin access to his site, so while I had some down time, I went to check it out… and I realized just what a problem he had… ALMOST 200,000 SPAM COMMENTS!

Now, wordpress lets you mark these suckers as spam manually, but only about 20 at a time, and it takes like 20 seconds or so to do each page…  OUCH.

Luckily, Jarrett isn’t the first person to ignore his website for a while.  After a quick google search, I found a solution that involves using phpMyAdmin and a simple SQL query (in jarrett’s case, two actually) that really helped out a lot, so I thought I’d better post it. Here’s the link: How to Mass Delete Unapproved WordPress Comments

Hopefully, in the future Jarrett will keep a better eye on his websites, but at least there is hope for anyone who hadn’t realized the importance of activation AKISMET and managing spam when administrating their sites.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything.  It’s been a while since I’ve drawn a JPTM comic too.  I’m fixing the former now, and hopefully, the latter will eventually change. I’m not going to give any dramatic announcements or bold promises of content any time soon, but I will say that I have recently been thinking a lot about my comic, and I’ve been starting to draw the characters again, as well as working on a few new ones. I’m just posting now to let the few RSS subscribers and other random comic reading wanderers know that JPTM is not dead, and neither am I.

In the mean time though, let me give you all some updates regarding what I’ve been up to. First off, as some of my more dedicated readers and fellow cartoonists know, I work as a graphic and web designer.  It’s been a cause of some embarassment that the company that I work for, Smart Marketing, and advertising, marketing, and web and print design firm operating out of Chandler Arizona, has gone website-less for the majority of the 3+ years I’ve been working there. What can I say though… It’s like a mechanic who drives a broken car… We were building other websites and marketing other companies too much to have time for our own stuff.

As you might have guessed by the link about, we’ve finally changed that.  We also set up a website for a client of our who offers auto repair and maintenance out of Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe, AZ, amongst a number of other sites I don’t feel like linking to right now.

Basically, I’ve been doing a lot of logo design, SEO, programming, and graphic design for quite a while now… and making a living doing it.  You know what all this work made me realize?  I really miss cartooning.  Not just drawing, not doing freelance illustrations or comics for corporate clients, but I miss doing my own work.  I miss weekly (if sometimes late) postings, I miss interacting with readers, and I even miss the mental effort of constantly combing through my life and experiences (sometimes desperately) for any material I can use.

I’m not giving a date, but I will say, I’m coming back.

This past week I made another visit to Comics Coast to Coast, in an attempt to convince Justin Thompson that not only can he or anybody else set up a comic website, but that it’s also a worthwhile endeavor. I’m not sure if I was successful or not.

Having set up and altered a comic press site or two (or a bunch, and sometimes dramatically altered them) I did my best to help Brian explain as many of the nuts and bolt of setting up a site as we could, and I think we covered a lot of ground. That being said, if any would be cartoonist/webmasters out there have any questions, feel free to ask. You can email me at jim (AT) jetpacksandtimemachines.com

Worth already blogged it, but I thought I might as well confirm it.  It’s now official, The Panel Mammals are no more.

What it really comes down to, is that I just don’t have the time to give the PM site the attention it needs and still produce comics.  From now on, my only concern is JP&TM, and anything outside of that will have to wait.

For those of you who might be at a loss and looking for a new comic conglomerate site to keep an eye on, you can always check out Tall Tale Features, where there will probably be some familiar faces.

Yeah, I know I said I was going to hopefully get production rolling in April… And I know that it’s may now… Whoops.

It also looks like the wait is going to be even longer now too. For one thing, Tyler Martin is getting ready to roll out a new version of ComicPress ! I’m sort of waiting until that gets out of beta so that I can grab it and set up a new JP&TM site (and there’s going to be a bit of a format change coming up for JP&TM as well.)

The other hold up is that I’ve decided it’s time to quit screwing around… I’ve decided I’m going to really up my game by focusing much more on my weakness (my writing) in an attempt to bring JP&TM to the next level. I’ve already begun the writing process, and I’m working out the conclusion to the kite storyline now, and hopefully as time progresses I’ll be able to get my writing on level with my art.

Unfortunately, between the new site design, the re-launch of the panel mammal site, and this writing re-focusing are all going to delay and slow down my comic production (that and my day job) so I can’t give an accurate timetable of when I’ll be back for sure. One thing I do know though, is that Jarret Osborne is planning on launching his new feature Someday Hero in late june, and there’s no way I’m going to let him return to cartooning before I do!

I’m not dead… I’m just really busy right now.

Just so everyone knows, the basic plan is as follows:

1. Tweak a comicpress 2.1 setup and update wordpress to the latest version on the JP&TM site.
2. Get some writing done.
3. Return to comic production.
4. Set up the new mammal site.

That’s about it.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any solid ETAs on any of this yet.  I’ve got to talk it over with the other guys… but I’m guessing the panel mammals will wait to relaunch until Jarrett is totally ready to go and hopefully, I’ll be returning to production in early april some time.

That’s right… A Sabbatical.  Unfortunately, Jetpacks and Time Machines has to go away for a little bit while I focus more on working for a living and other such things.

This is not a permanent goodbye or anything… Fred, Adam, Serial and all the rest will be back, but I’m not sure when.  Hopefully it will only be a few weeks.

I’m not really conquering the internet, but one thing I did just do is set up an account at comic sherpa for JP&TM… Not that anyone needs to go there to check out the comics in the smaller format (unless for some reason you have a problem with the larger JP&TM’s), but I’m just letting everyone know – I’m on sherpa now.

Of course, if anyone wanted to go there and submit feedback about how awesome JP&TM is… Feedback that the administrators over there end up getting a copy of… Well, I wouldn’t have a problem with gaming the system a bit. (Not that my plan is syndication or anything, but I might not be adverse to an eventual move up to gocomics – at least to check it out…)

I just wanted to let you all know that christmas day (or maybe a couple days later, depends on how much time I have) will be the last JP&TM comic of this year. Comic Production will resume on January 8th. I know, it’s a long time, but the fact is, I’m going on vacation after christmas, and I just won’t have time to get my comics pre-posted, what with the holidays and all. That being said, nobody worry… Jetpacks and Time Machines will be back after this break stronger than ever (which seems to be the case after I take some time off.)

Thanks for reading!