Just finished rendering the first full panel with the outfits... check the current TopWebcomics panel incentive up there in the righthand sidebar. :D

That's because I put the wrong date on my newspost and it didn't show up with the link to the conversation in question. :P I don't really expect you guys to remember stuff that happened five years ago, I swear. Glad you enjoyed the page anyway!

(The conversation is here: http://sunsetgrillcomic.com/index.php?comic=20131... )

FRIENDS DON'T TELL FRIENDS TO MAKE A SECOND COMIC.

Also you guys have NO IDEA how bad this would be. I use 3D art for a reason.

...

...

Okay, I'll think about it....

Wow, I am so very late on this.

This is already partially answered in the World section, as wright1 kindly notes. As far as why people have to be so obvious, they don't *have* to, exactly, but it's... tricky. The development of bionics and prosthetics essentially stalled a few centuries ago when the technology to grow cloned limbs was developed and became a second-best choice; most of the market for such parts was being driven by people who wanted not just to replace but improve body parts, making themselves stronger, faster, better, et cetera, and weren't all that concerned with how they looked or how socially unacceptable they were -- mostly, the military and mercenaries. In some places, because of said improvements and a general cultural distrust of the superhuman, it's actually illegal to make bionics look too realistic. In others, like Kieselburg, it is merely very, very expensive (cheaper than getting cloned parts, but nevertheless, expensive.)

Attaching bionic parts also requires enough rebuilding of the existing body (to allow control of the new parts and support their weight) as to make later switching to cloned parts exceedingly difficult if not impossible. Thus, Fausto's choice.

In Ian's case there is a final complication. It is possible, if expensive, to get an arm and hand which look very nearly human and would fool all but the closest observers. It is *not* possible to get bionic eyes in this style. It's been attempted, but as mentioned, this is an atrophied science without a lot of time or money being put into it; under those conditions no one, so far, has been able to mimic the look of the human eye in a way that could fool anyone at anything but a great distance.Ian's obviously alien eyes are if anything an improvement over most attempts at human, which have fallen straight into the category of "fucking creepy."

Hope that helps. Sorry it's taken so long to get to it, I've had an unfortunate six weeks or so. :S

Ugh, yes, I know. :( A site revamp is on the books -- in fact one of my more aesthetically gifted collective-mates did a mockup for me which has been sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to have the time to implement it for... too long. I'll try and get at least some of the changes in place by fall, once I get caught up on my other crap.

Short answer: site ok, creator a bit broken.

Longer answer:

I was aware that I would be taking the month of April off. I had an anthology piece to finish for my collective, our busy season was starting at work, and I had two business trips scheduled -- there was no way I could keep updates going too. I posted as much to my Patreon and I *thought* I'd put it in the news post here, but looking at the page that was obviously some sort of hallucination of competence and I've unintentionally left you guys in the dark. *facepalm* I am so friggin' sorry.

As is unfortunately typical, I overestimated myself *and* underestimated how much crap was going to snowball. Not everything that happened in April was bad but all of it was both time-consuming and stressful; I finished my anthology comic Monday, two weeks later than I'd expected to, and am only just turning my brain to the main comic and what the hell I can do to get it back online. As is also unfortunately typical, if unhelpful, the stress is making me physical unwell, so I'm struggling to get the *me* back online too.

My tendency when I'm stressed is to cocoon -- even such non-threatening interactions as internet comments wear me out, once I'm past a certain point (luckily I have a husband to do the grocery shopping, or I'd have probably starved to death by now rather than risk two minutes' conversation with a cashier.) I also had an inundation of comment spam and didn't realize until I was cleaning out the moderation screen just now that there were a bunch of legit comments caught in there too, so that part at least was just a goof. :(

I have not abandoned you guys, but I have been avoiding you somewhat, and I'm sorry. My intention for the rest of this week is to get my head back in the main comic and start making pages again -- I have scripts for the next good while, so it is at least just a case of getting the art done. I hope to throw up some kind of filler and have some kind of scheduled return date by next week.

I'm sorry for the break in updates and sorrier still for the lack of communication, guys. The comic is coming back, and I will try to do better at filling you in on when and how.

Thanks as always for putting up with me.

Updated the appearances thingy (thanks for the reminder)... which is broken a lot, I really need to look at that code. *sigh* But yes, it looks like we really haven't seen Serena since 2014.

My comic is SO SLOOOOW

I am getting there. *wry grin* Life threw me a few more bumps in April -- lost an employee, lost a dog -- but things have smoothed out since then. My health isn't really improving, alas, but on the advice of a collective-mate in medical school I started taking vitamin B for stress and that does seem to be moderating my symptoms. I was able to finish the Sekret Project referenced above last week; this week was kidlet's last week of school, so I basically decided to take it off while figuring out... well, everything really.

I'm struggling to get my head back in the comic, but the breathing space has made me realize (again) how much I rely on scheduling and how vulnerable I am to the inevitable schedule failures. Not quite sure what to do with that knowledge yet. The good news is I have started having brainstorms, sketching out scenes, remembering why I wanted to do this darn story in the first place, and doing the Sekret Project as usual had the side effect of giving me a bit of an artistic skill bump as I tried out stuff I didn't dare to in the comic itself. I think I'm going to be able to get myself back on track, but I need to look carefully at the time I have available and realistically assess what I can do long-term, instead of making optimistic jumps and then feeling like a failure. I'm hoping to have at least a projected return date by the end of the weekend.

TL;DR; I am not dead. The comic is not dead either. We're just both suffering from a bit of a stress hangover. :) Thank you for hanging in there and being patient.

It's Gabie. We haven't seen her since, uh. 2009? And I intro her properly in the next page... but I thought I could sneak her in one panel here without being *too* confusing. Maybe not. :P

For the record, just below the comic there's always a "when last we saw..." feature that lists all the characters in the strip by name with links to the last page they were in. I do realize my cast is stupidly big and confusing, and I try to compensate....

Are they? Crud. (I've had kimchee, but it was homemade and came out of a mason jar. Didn't know there was such a thing....)

This is the same problem as above: I set up the kitchen a loooooong time ago, when I had very few props and wasn't paying a ton of attention. I'll see if I can't quietly replace those with a nice spice rack, which is what I was going for.

(As I remember, they're labeled "Containers01" by the creator, which is another problem. There's a lot of Japanese creators putting out great freebies, but the English name translations sometimes miss important details. :P)