Capes & Babes, a webcomic by Chris Flick

This particular post goes out to all the Unshelved readers who have visited the site, gone through my archives and have either left me e-mails or posted great complimentary comments here… THANK YOU!

I know many web artists will sometimes throw guest appearances into their strip in order to boost traffic or get mentioned on the other artist’s blog. But sometimes, that can backfire – especially if the guest appearance strip isn’t A level or if the guest appearance just seems to come out of nowhere. I have to admit, although I had always intended for Roy to visit A library while going through his “relationship journey”, it was only in the pencil stages that it suddenly hit me that it made sense for him to visit the Unshelved library.

For those of you who have taken the time to read through the (now) 200 strip archive, you have discovered that guest appearances in this strip are not a willy-nilly or random thing. But I hope you have also discovered that the guest appearances always have a purpose to the story line.

For example, look at the first panel in today’s strip. That’s the same piece of paper that Dewey gave to Roy in Friday’s strip. And going back even farther, Marc drank the Buffalo Farts that the guys from the strip Business Casual left at the bar. Which also led to Roy having to “pay” Marc’s bar tab.

What that means is that what I try to do whenever I have a guest appearance in the strip, they should mean something. They aren’t there JUST to (hopefully) pick up extra traffic. That’s always nice but if another character from another strip appears in Capes & Babes, they should have some kind of impact on either the story or the characters. At least that’s what I’ve always tried to do anyway.

And after reading all the archived strips, I hope you all agree I’ve done that pretty well so far.

Again, thanks for taking the chance, checking me out and being impressed enough to leave a comment or e-mail.

Sincerely,

Chris