I KNOW! It's kinda spooking me too, I kept thinking it was just gonna break when I started putting new pics up, but no. The old site definitely needs a tune-up, but she still runs. :)

Infected yes -- plenty of signs, alas, though not all for Himself, and not predictably. Mountain people aren't immune to the frenzy but they are a reliably suspicious lot, so there were always a few heartening battered redneck pickups with Biden stickers. I didn't quite go as far as a yard sign myself, you gotta nominate Warren for that, but it was close.

(We aren't a dairy farm area, though, not any more. There were 80+ dairies in our county when we moved here in 1987. Now there's three. It's not an excuse for the shitty way rural America often acts and votes, but yeah, the decline thing is unfortunately very real, at least here.)

I'm so happy to *be* back! And alive! And ok! And to see all of you guys commenting again! It's so excitinnnnng *happy Kermit flail*

Eh, a lot of it is probably familiarity and the crappiness of the laptop. My family's owned Macs since the mid-eighties and I've never really gotten the hang of Windows. As the study found, something like 90% of users' OS preferences boil down to "the one I used first", and I'm definitely part of that 90%. But my husband, a hardcore Windows user, struggles with printers too, so I feel justified in making SOME fun.

(As a note, we are NOT doing standard stuff with our printers: we have a big Brother workhorse that we use to print invoices, etc -- probably 2-3K sheets a month -- a smaller Brother for printing on waterproof Tyvek for use in production, a Dymo label printer for UPS, and a small label printer for internal inventory, all on the same network. Usually the Windows gets tangled up because it doesn't want to switch to the correct printer, or because one of the Macs used the printer last and now it can't "find" it, but about once or twice a year it requires a complete driver reinstall for no reason we can figure out. The Macs have far less problems with printers, but then the programmers had the very real advantage that they only had to figure out how ONE piece of hardware was going to interact with the printer -- whereas the Windows programmers have no idea what hardware configuration they're writing drivers for. I know WHY it's happening, it just doesn't make it any less frustrating. :P )

I hadn't, and that is awesome. :D

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.