I always thought this cover by Jim Steranko was the definition of cool and remain puzzled that it didn't grace an annual, a premium hardcover collection or an original novel ... but rather an index of Fantastic Four comics. Not to slight those indices; in the pre-Internet days (remember those?), they could be invaluable. Still ... I can't help but feel this one went underutilized. Check out more index covers here. (But I'll be honest with you: none of the other ones come close to this.)

As a complete aside:

As of this writing, I'm reviewing Eduardo's pages as they come in and I am absolutely thrilled. As you can imagine, things will soon take a turn for the worse for all of our characters -- and Eduardo makes it all look so cool. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading!

• Adding Eduardo's take on the earlier strips originally illustrated by Scott Wegener. Scott's pages were awesome, but it rankled my obsessive-compulsive nature to have two artists here when it was (relatively speaking) easy enough to address this. I know comics change artists all the time, but there was another reason for this change. (See the next bullet point.)
• Inserting new pages into this early action. When the title was originally submitted to Zuda, they only accepted six pages (correct me on that if I'm wrong), so I had to do some trimming. The couple new pages here undo that trimming.
• Introducing a new sequence that touches upon Nancy's growing skepticism about the End Timers.

Every one of these pages has been sitting around ready to go for quite some time, so I'm happy to finally get them in here for you. Some still require minor tweaks, but this should be it for changes to this portion of the story.

As always, thanks for reading.

I blame Leo Laporte.

Sort of.

Laporte, of This Week in Tech fame -- and TechTV, which you'd surely remember if you're anything of a computer geek -- has long touted the Squarespace publishing platform on his various podcasts. So when I was casting about for a platform on which to publish Gone Zombie, I decided to give Squarespace a go.

To date, I haven't been disappointed with my decision: Squarespace is a highly capable, relatively easy-to-use platform that knows when to get out of your way. And that whole "getting out of your way" thing is important to me because I've seen other Web comics utlize platforms that make it too tempting to slather on this widget or that, often resulting in a site that looks too busy, too crowded. Heck, I've only just today added social media links to the site. Gone Zombie is first and foremost about the comic itself.

Which makes it aggravating as all get-out when I come upon what I think should be a straightforward adjustment but which isn't available on the platform: the ability to reverse page numbering so that instead of reading 1, 2, 3, etc., it reads 99, 98, 97, etc. For a Web comic in which the authors intend to place the most recent strip front and center, this would be really great. I imagine it would also be useful in a variety of other ways.

Squarespace's response? We can't do that; hire a programmer. Problem is, I've tried ... none of the folks I've contacted feel they could achieve the modification I'm looking for.

Audible sigh.

But I like the platform's journal features for many of the things it CAN do, so we're going to give this a go. If the oddball numbering scheme, in which the most recent strip is actually identified as the first strip, is just too silly, let me know. In the meantime, I'll continue working on a solution.

Meanwhile, I'm blaming all this aggravation on Laporte. Fair? No. Somewhat soothing, in an utterly irrational, sophomoric way? Yep.

Thanks, Leo.

Sort of.

As fate would have it, that weekend was the single busiest weekend I've had all year with various personal and professional obligations. Oh, and, uh, Mother's Day. Good luck sneaking out of the house for a comics show on Mother's Day. I would have returned to a neat stack of divorce papers in an otherwise empty house.

It's probably best that I didn't make it out. I tallied up the cost of picking up every title I wanted and to came to nearly $200. Once there, I have no doubt at all that figure would have increased by at least 50 percent.

The list of titles to pick up included:

• Paying for It, by Chester Brown (written up in the New York Times today, BTW)
• Lucille, by Ludovic Debeurme
• The Band and Home and Away by Mawil
• The Next Day, by Porcellino, et al
• Wolves, by Becky Cloonan
• Chester 5000, by Jess Fink
• Island Brat, by C. Frakes

... well, here I go again, just mindlessly listing things. Suffice it to say I could have added a half-dozen more titles to that lineup.

Boy, writing about this missed show is really depressing me. Maybe next year.

Still, I managed to make it to the Motor City Comic Con for a short while, and snagged this beauty (among other things):

I'm not entirely certain what it says about me, but I'm really looking forward to reading this one.

The Motor City show was fine, but boasted fewer artist alley denizens than it has in the past, and that's where I've been spending the majority of my time at these events now. I even missed Art Baltazar, one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet at a comic con.

Looks like I'll have to circle the first weekend in May and make sure I keep obligations away from that weekend so I can hit TCAF 2012. Of course, it'd help if I confirmed when the 2012 event will be held. I wonder if these guys know?

That sounded cool enough for me to check out, but, alas, my search turned up no such animal. Still, "Brazilian zombie webcomics" sounds cool. I'm gonna have to work in some Sao Paulo undead here soon, I'm afraid.

Hey, we all get it wrong from time to time. :)

(PS: Thanks for the mention, guys!)