There are two more versions of today's strip up as today's bonuses... the first one is an alternate version of it, and the second is a bad translation of it.

Thank You to everyone who's been voting for Station V3!

When Chuck Rowles had his recent Gods of Arr-Kelaan book signing, he was drawing sketches for people (mainly of Ronson, God of Apathy/Alcohol) - I think I must have had it a little backwards, since I wound up drawing one for him instead! :)

(And if you'd like to see it, it's up here now!)

Three new voting bonuses up today - a bonus strip where two rumormongers discuss the Rumormonger Idol voting, another bonus strip where they discuss a rumor about some Potato People, and finally, a photo of a Potato Person! :)

As some of you already know, and many of you may have guessed from the times I've mentioned going to record shows or put up record-related bonuses or lists of 45s on the forum, one of my interests besides webcomics is record collecting. For the most part nothing too rare - we're not talking Beatles 'Butcher Cover' here - but I have a lot of 45s and LPs from the 60s and 70s (and some 50s, and some more recent), including a lot of stuff that isn't easily available on CD (and in some cases probably never will be). A lot of the 45s from thrift stores and flea markets come without sleeves, so today when my wife Karen and I were buying a couple 45s at a record store (Donovan's "To Try For The Sun," which we got for its b-side "Turquoise," and the Doors' "Wishful Sinful"), I also picked up 100 sleeves, since I had a few 45s on the shelf by the stereo that needed them, and any left over after that could be used for some more 45s without sleeves I had in the attic.

It looks like the attic 45s are going to have to wait, since the 'few 45s on the shelf' used up the 100 immediately (and could have used a few more)!

One of the other problems besides getting enough sleeves for them is remembering which ones I have already - I spotted a few doubles just in the ones I was putting in sleeves today, and I know they're not the only ones. (I'm even starting to wonder if I had "Wishful Sinful" already, come to think of it...) But on the other hand, I also spotted a few interesting ones I didn't know I had, like a promo copy of "Back Up On My Feet" by Jimmy Druiett and the Music Fair on Epic from 1970. "I wonder if that's a cover of the Monkees song?" I thought to myself... "Yes, it is," the turntable answered. (And a pretty good one, too!)

Anyway, on a final record-related note tonight, I've just put up two more record-related voting bonuses - A sketch of Ebb with some 45s that need sorting (and Mr. Maintenance Engineer is trying to help), and a new 45 by Ebb on his own label!

I'm not sure what's happened to Webcomics List, but it's been down all week. I don't know whether or not to expect it back any time soon, so for now I've replaced its voting button on the main page here with one for KillBoredom, another list Station V3 is on. It looks like I should be able to set a voting image there... so if that works and you vote for V3 there, you should see a photo of one of Ebb's children with the cast of the now ended (or is it?) comic Clipped Together! (Which has found a new home over on DrunkDuck.)

Besides changing the voting button, I've done a little bit of site updating on the links page, which has a few more links now, and the bonus archive, which has all the voting bonuses now except for the one I hope just went up and the other current two. (Thanks for voting!)

And in other news, the "Who should be kicked off?" poll for Round 2 of Rumormonger Idol is now open!

Two new bonus strips today - a bad translation of today's comic, and some thoughts on round 2 from the Rumormonger Idol judges before the "who gets kicked off" poll starts. Thank You to everyone who's been voting! :)

Today's voting bonuses conclude round 2 of Rumormonger Idol - Contestant 4 and Contestant 5 have their say!

In the two new bonuses up today, Rumormonger Idol Round Two begins, with Contestant One, and since Contestant Two was kicked off last round, we then skip to Contestant Three! (Webcomics List appears to be down today, or I'd have something up there too.) Thanks for voting!

The Sci-Fi channel is showing Dr. Who tonight!

Three new voting bonuses today... The Rumormonger Idol judges have a few comments before Round Two, the station is a bad place to get dinner on St. Patrick's Day, and today's strip can make a whole lot less sense when badly translated! Thank You to everyone who's been voting. :)

A couple people pointed today's Dilbert out to me, asking if the plant Wally gets to water is related to the one on the station. Thinking plants - the hottest new trend in comic strips! :)

I'm going to try to have a couple new bonuses up soon - it's been a busy week for me, so I haven't had time to do much work on the comics besides making sure V3 and Z7 keep updating on time! But I did just update the bonus archive with everything except the current three, so if you've missed any recently, they should be there now.

The poll's closed for round one of Rumormonger Idol, so in today's first bonus, some rumormongers see a billboard advertising the results show. In today's second bonus, we see the results show! The results are based entirely on the votes in the poll... despite what the loser would have you believe in today's third bonus! Thanks for voting, both in the poll (you can see what the exact results were here), and for Station V3! :)

While Z7 recently reached 300 strips, the other Station V3 spinoff, Ebb's Children, hadn't been updated since December. I've fixed that now, and also moved the comic off the ComicOstrich semi-hosting (since I'm probably taking that down soon) to its own subdomain, and added some color to the older strips.

In other news, there are three new voting bonus sketches up today: The new station's food machine (which they're using while the Chef's away), Floyd making his contribution to the maintenance department's work, and somebody didn't read the employee handbook. Thanks for voting!

Z7's 300th strip went up this past Monday! (Not counting the nine Station V3 strips it started out with, which introduced the station - as V3-b - as a temporary substitute for V3, and Gordon as a temporary substitute for Floyd.)

Z7 was originally hosted on DrunkDuck - in fact, I started it partly as a way to give that a try after meeting Chuck and Steve Rowles at one of their Gods of Arr-Kelaan book signings at the Barnes & Noble in Wilkes-Barre. But DrunkDuck went down for a while last year, I had signed up with a Jatol Economy hosting plan for ComicOstrich (and Station V3 a couple months later when I moved off ComicGenesis), and I had written a comic automation script I was using for a V3 and Z7 mirror, so I just moved Z7 over to its current location, and it's still going. :)

So if you enjoy V3 and haven't read Z7 yet (or even if you have!), take a look!

Three new bonus strips up today: A badly translated preview of tomorrow's strip, Mr. Substitute subscribes to a magazine, and one of the Rumormongers gets the voting wrong for Rumormonger Idol. Thank You to all of you who have been supporting Station V3 with your votes! :)

If you have a request for a bonus you'd like to see, you can post it on the forum, and if there's a contestant you'd like to see kicked off Rumormonger Idol, you can vote in the poll! (Which I'll probably end some time this weekend, with results to follow.)

Station V3 will not be hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics. And do you know where else the Winter Olympics will not be hosted? Hoth. (They missed the deadline for the bid, after all...)

If V3 did have the Olympics, Honest J!on would no doubt run another round of Rumormonger Idol against it... :)

Three new voting bonuses up today: An alternate version of today's strip, a bad translation of today's strip, and a bad translation of the alternate version of today's strip. Thanks for voting!

(And I've just updated the bonus archive again with the bonus strips from Sunday.)

In case anyone was wondering if the "History of V3" strips this week are some sort of commentary on T Campbell's "History of Webcomics" book and some of the controversy that was (is?) going around about it - they're not. I actually had them written before I heard any of the fuss about it last week. Most likely none of you were wondering that, but I thought I'd say it anyway. :)

The one thing I will say about the book is that even with the webcomic characters on the cover and the title "The History of Webcomics," somehow the way it looks makes me think "You Can Program Videogames on the Commodore 64!"

In other news, voting is open for Rumormonger Idol, and the bonus archive has been updated with everything except the three bonus strips from Sunday. (Thank You to everyone who's been voting!)

There was a record show in Wilkes-Barre today... A couple days ago I thought of looking for some records by the Kit Kats, since I had heard a couple songs by the group that I liked ("That's The Way," and "Won't Find Better Than Me," which was a minor hit for them in 1970 when they rerecorded it after changing their name to the New Hope). By the time I got to the show today, I had completely forgotten I was looking for them, and didn't remember until I got home. But I had picked up their 45 "Let's Get Lost On A Country Road" in a 3/$1 bin anyway. So that worked out well!

(It appears this post has nothing to do with Station V3... of course, I could take a picture of Ebb with the 45s and post that on the forum... but would I do that?)

There are three slightly different versions of today's strip up as voting bonuses now, here, here, and here. The third one seems about as likely a situation as the 'official' version above... The other two, somewhat less so. Thanks for voting! :)

Over at Catharsis today there's some guest art I drew - take a look!

I hope you're enjoying all the new voting bonuses so far this month, because there are three more today - a slightly mangled translation of tomorrow's strip, and the final contestant and judges' comments for round 2 of Rumormonger Idol!

On a different note, some fun facts from the site logs:

• Some people find Station V3 through some pretty strange searches!
  
• The least-visited strips in the archive last month were May 9, 2004, and December 29, 2004.
  
• At this point a visitor to Station V3 is just as likely to be using Firefox as Internet Explorer.
  
• While most readers are in the US, there are lots of visitors from other countries too!
  

The Station V3 Frappr map shows a sampling of Station V3 readers, illustrating that last point... Are you on it? :)

If you voted for Station V3 at TopWebcomics yesterday, you probably had at least a vague idea of what today's strip was going to be like... Today's bonus there is another badly translated look into the future! Over at buzzComix and Webcomics List, Rumormonger Idol continues with Contestant 3 and Contestant 4. Thanks for voting!

In other news, the trivia quiz has a winner, and the answers are up now!

There are three new voting bonuses up today to start off the new month: A badly translated preview of tomorrow's strip, and the first two contestants in the second round of Rumormonger Idol (Contestant 1 and Contestant 2).

Last month Station V3 hit the top 40 goal on two of the three lists - thanks for voting! The voting lists do bring a lot of visitors to the strip, and this month I'm hoping even more people find the strip. :)

(Makes sense, right? When's the last time a webcomic author said they hoped fewer people started visiting?) :)