One of the enduring images I remember from my childhood is a picture of Perseus holding up Medusa’s head (don’t ask), so I knew exactly how I was going to draw the middle panel. It actually ended up pretty close to what’s in my head (which doesn’t happen all that often), although our friend He-Jin’s head’s is probably not as fearsome as Medusa’s.

My little science illustration gig is still going… actually it’s gone from what I thought was going to be a short project to kind of a recurring thing now. It’s a lot of fun and I’m finally learning to draw on a tablet, so I’m definitely not complaining, but I’m afraid this comic will have to stay on the dreaded update-when-I-can type of schedule for the foreseeable future. But there’s some nice graphic violence coming up in the story so that’s good motivation for me to keep drawing

A belated Happy New Year to you all

One of the things I learned in the course of drawing this comic is that it’s surprisingly hard to come up with insults that sound culture- and period-appropriate. But as you can see that doesn’t stop me from trying .

Having drawn mostly talking heads lately, I’ve been itching to do some action scenes. So this is me scratching that itch

This might be a tad premature, but I have some news that might affect the updating schedule for this comic: I have recently accepted an offer to draw scientific illustrations for an online textbook-type company, it’s a project-based gig, and some weeks I’ll have more illustrations due than others (and some weeks there’ll be none at all), so – and you probably know where I’m going – depending on how many illustrations I have to do, I might not be able to update this comic every week. As excited as I am about this new opportunity (and I am quite excited about this because it’s a chance for me to do something that combines two of my passions in life – science and drawing), I’m also a little sad to think that I might not be able to work on this comic as much, at least for the near future. I haven’t started doing the illustrations yet, so I don’t really know how much time it’s going to take, but I thought I should give you guys a heads-up. Drawing an ROTK comic has been a long-standing dream of mine and I don’t intend to give it up – I’ll be updating this comic as frequently as I can, and if I have to miss some time I’ll let you all know here.

Teddy Roosevelt said “speak softly and carry a big stick”. We’ll find out if daggers work as well as sticks

Here for your viewing pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, three of our characters with regular clothes on instead of armor, just to show that they can do it

Spent a week in Nashville. Did some work, ate some greasy Southern food, listened to some great country music. All in all it was a pretty good time

And yes, our old friend Dong Zhuo is coming back. Happy days ahead…

It was quite common for wealthy eunuchs to adopt children, so that they can carry on the family name. Our old friend Ts’ao Ts’ao is a product of this practice – he is descended from the Xiahou family, but his father was adopted by a eunuch and took the eunuch’s last name Ts’ao Ts’ao. This was alluded to in the last chapter.

Now for a bit of scheduling news: I’ll be traveling for work next week, so unless I’m struck by a miraculous bout of productivity in the next couple of days, I’ll have to skip next week and make the next update on Sept. 22.

Hope everyone on the US east coast made it through Hurricane Irene unscathed. Just like our eunuch friends

Timeless truth #24: groveling and flattery works almost every time.

The fat gung-gung, as promised. Gung-gung is the polite term to address eunuchs, so these eunuchs can all be gung-gungs. In retrospect I wish I gave the “important” eunuchs more distinguishable names to avoid confusion. Guess i’ll chalk this up to a lesson learned