Ok, folks, like it or not, the wait is over. Thanks for your patience and understanding. (Now please immediately go to Top Web Comics and vote and let’s get this show back on the road!)

Why today, you might ask. Because it’s HPL’s birthday, I might answer.

But it’s Monday, you might say. I know, I might answer, but we will be back on a regular Friday schedule starting this Friday.

But, you might gasp, that would mean we would have TWO new LIM pages in a single week. That is exactly what you will have, I might reply. Happy Birthday, Old Gentleman.

Since this hiatus wasn’t planned, I stopped in the middle of a scene rather than at a cliff-hanger,  so you might need to go back and re-read at least the last several pages again in order to pick the story up again. I know I’ve stumbled along the way myself here, discovering a forgotten detail that then required a certain amount of revision on the new pages. It’s hard to get back into the rhythm after so many months away, but I have all the pages loaded through the end of October, and five more beyond that already drawn and in work, so I think we’ll get there.

As most of you know, my mom passed away in June after nine months of steadily declining health. I’m glad I got to be with her a lot during that time. But I did have to occupy my mind in some way besides work, so I read and started playing video games. The only genre pieces I read were the Stephen King collection, Just After Sunset (I’ve never liked his short stories as much as his novels, but “N.” and “The Cat from Hell” were well  worth the price of admission) and I also read his Dreamcatcher, which I enjoyed up to the ending, which so totally confused me I didn’t even bother to go back and try to figure it out.

Video games, I’ve found, demand concentration but are essentially mindless, so they were a good way to pass the time without dwelling on the bad stuff. I unashamedly use the cheats and check the walkthroughs online. I’ve played Bioshock 1 and 2, plus the downloadable content (Minerva’s Garden), Captain America, Arkham Asylum, and I’m currently wrapping up Dead Space. The latter is very Lovecraftian in the sense that Alien is Lovecraftian, though it is much more violent and gruesome than all HPL’s stories put together. It’s just brutal, frankly, so much so that I am using it as the starting point for some musings on the current state of horror. Bioshock 1 remains my favorite, more because of the story & design than anything else. And upon the advice of several Facebook followers, I got an Xbox version of The Call of Cthulhu:Dark Corners of the Earth game. It was made for the original Xbox system, and though you can p lay it on the xBox360, the sound doesn’t work. I’ll get to it soon, but since it starts out with a long dialogue scene, I’m not sue how I’m going to figure out how to play it. I suppose that’s where the adventure comes it. I’ll keep you posted .

Good to be back.  I still have a huge amount of pages to script and draw to finish out book 5. We’ll be going until at least mid-summer 2013. Then I’ll take a scheduled break and come back for the wrap up issue. Yes, 2014 will see the conclusion of Lovecraft is Missing, but we have a long way yet to travel.

Seriously, please help spread the word that LIM is back. Tell your friends, vote at Top Web Comics (you can vote once a day; the higher up the list we are, the more people see us, the more readers we attract) and mention or link to us on Facebook. I appreciate it.

See you Friday.