As some of you have noticed, the Strang Institute, home of Ellie’s Mission Control, has had its computer system hacked. Dr. Marek Kozak, Chief Software Engineer, has dragged me down to the computer core. With his skills in computer wizardry, we hope to discover who or what has hacked into our CPU and why so we can get Ellie’s transmissions back online as soon as possible. . .
Archive for Blog
Yikes!
As impenetrable as we’d like to think that the Strang Institute’s computer system is, there’s always someone trying to break in. This time they appear to have succeeded. Their calling card? A string of spam left in our system about “how to ask for verification of Faxless Bad Credit Payday Loans” and a link to a website in Australia. We have our theories about who would do this and why – there’s plenty of classified information buried deep in our main frame’s memory banks. Right now, however, it’s more important that we track down the breach in our security and stop it.
Dr. Marek Kozak, Chief Software Engineer at the Institute, is entrusted with the job of ferreting out all cyber intruders. But this isn’t just a matter of combing through lines of computer code. He must travel deep down into the heart of the Strang Institute, far below ground, to the very core of the CPU itself.
And he’s dragging me with.
Practice makes perfect. Here’s some drawings of Jeff from my sketchbook.
Sorry for the lack of blog posts lately. It’s been a busy several weeks with a lot of interesting work I’m not allowed to show yet (unfortunately). Stay tuned and we’ll try to keep you up to date with goings on at the Strang Institute!
Due to technical difficulties, today’s Ellie comic is delayed. Stay tuned while we have our crack I.T. department zero in on the problem. While you’re standing by, here’s an artist’s impression of Ellie meeting a Camelon:
Joe Foo, creator of the fantastic Desmond’s Comic, sent out a special Happy New Year featuring his versions of some of his comicking compadres. We here at the Strang Institute thought it pretty awesome that he’d include our little Ellie too.
Go check out Desmond’s Comic!
Thanks, Joe!
Everybody have a safe and happy holiday season! Thank you all for reading Ellie’s adventures. She’ll be back on January 3rd!
The Strang Institute is going to be on vacation for the remainder of the month.
I know, I know, . . . but there’s long overdue site maintenance, calibration of our new LE 1700 tablet PC on which we draw Ellie’s progress, plus the finishing up of freelance projects and other goodies.
I’ll make a few blog posts over the month to keep you updated with goings on around the Strang Institute during our break. And I’ve got one more special comic post that I’ll share before we shut down. It’ll likely arrive Friday of this week, so stay tuned!
If you get lonely for some comics while we’re gone, please check out our archives, as well as some of the links in the menu up top, especially the Extra! Extra! button. There’s all kinds of fun in there if you haven’t seen it before. And if you have seen all that, here’s a couple of good friends of Ellie that you should be reading:
Tom Dell’Aringa’s winding up his space opera in the next several months and now’s a good time to catch up. He’s a big reason you get to read Ellie’s adventures here as he provided a little push to get her story noticed in the wide world of web comics. Plus, I’m gonna be working on a special Ellie/Marooned crossover story over the break for his upcoming super compendium.
Denver Brubaker’s Tales Of A Checkered Man is one part Philip Marlowe, one part Adam West Batman, and cool as all git out. If you like your super heroes flawed, you’ll love this.
Not a comic quite yet, but you can follow Jay Fosgitt on his blog as he puts together his newest creation, Bodie Troll, for publication next year. Jay was nice enough to ask me to do a pin up for one of the issues! I’ll be finishing that up during the next month too. And check the links on the left for more comics – we’ll be updating that list too.
Thanks to all of you for following Ellie, Jeff, and Muffin on their adventures. Have a great holiday season! We’ll be back January 3rd!
Jim Anderson
It takes me quite a while to get through a book, especially one as thick as Strang Tales, the biography of Dr. Cornelius Strang, discoverer of Planet X and creator of Ellie. At the rate I’m going, we’ll be celebrating ten years of monitoring Ellie on Planet X before I even get halfway through this book. Here’s another scan from the book’s insides (go here for the first one). Just click on the pic below and read how Dr. Strang was inspired to make his great discoveries!
Here’s a sketch of various species of flits native to the Jungle Oasis. Flits are kind of the Planet Xian equivalent of flies, only far cuter. I’m not sure if all of these species have been identified, but the two bottom flits in the right are the Damsel Flit and the Dragon Flit. Those of you wondering where their mouths are, they eat through their feet. Mmmmm . . .