Hey Grovers, Karl here. I was just browsing through the WG Store, seeing what I have on the shelves and taking stock of what to reorder…(psst, I don’t keep stock of merch at the studio…well, except for a few books to send out when ordered…it’s a metaphor so let’s pretend there’s a general store over here, shall we? I know I like to pretend, but that’s an entirely different kind of blog post for an entirely different site)

Sooooo, anyway, there I was browsing through the store(in my mind) and was wondering what you the visitors to my store(on the web) would love to see listed for purchase. Some items in my mental store are really dated, going back all the way to that long ago yesteryear of 2008 so I really need to clean house(literally, but that’s also another blog entry for yet another kind of site (hoarders…hey, I didn’t ask you(not you, you the readers, but him, you, my mental baggage…sorry, I’ll be quiet…thank you)! Then I got the brilliant idea (HA!…hey, I thought you said you were going to be quiet?…sorry, please continue)of asking you, my readers, what YOU would like to see available for purchase in my store. What item would you, personally purchase if you saw it? What kind of merchandise would you wear, display or hoard…err, proudly display?

Suggestions or ideas can be left in the comments. Thanks, Grovers! You’re the best(I thought I was your favorite?…not now!…you never make time for me anymore…I said not NOW!…I should have listened to my neurons and latched onto somebody more famous…quiet!)!

It’s that time of year again, the time I forget to check the code to see why a particular plug-in I have deactivates javascript code embedded in my site layout, which when those are gone, causes the banner to sink down below the comic. Sure, I could just deactivate the plug-in, but that would be too simple. Besides, I like the plug-in, just hate what it does to my site. Rest assured, on September 20th, all will return to normal.

Howdy Grovers! As you can see, we’ve come to the end of another volume. This little post is to give you a peek into how this volume ended and what was originally written. Now I’m sure there’s a few of you out there in Groverland who were a bit disappointed at how this volume wrapped up all happy and such but I wanted to let you know there was a method to my madness. You see, back when I first brought Crystal into the picture, I had a definite beginning, middle and end to her saga, and the end wasn’t as pleasant as it ended up. In fact, Crystal was created to be someone who was going to play a big role in the end of Willow’s Grove, not just the end to a volume or chapter, but an actual end to the strip itself. She was going to appear, get in between Max and Mel, cause Mel to either die outright (the original concept story arc), play a big role in Mel’s disappearance (partially the outcome, although I ended up keeping it vague on purpose, with a bunch of MacGuffins thrown in for good measure) or get killed off once she was revealed to be the one pulling the strings. I had leaned towards the latter but ended up pulling my shot when I had the chance. Crystal, at one point, was scheduled to die when the Walrus revealed to Max her true intention and shot her when Crystal attacked him on the podship.

Every time I had it on paper to kill the character off, something held me back and I ended up putting it off and letting her live. Why? Well, although she was based on a few people that I had grown to dislike in real life, she was fun to write and so on each of her scheduled demises, I stayed the execution, just to keep her around. True, she may not be the best person in the universe, but there was a certain dynamic between the characters of Max and Crystal that I just couldn’t maintain on a believable level with Max and Melanie. I felt that even though Max and Mel were married and had children, a history and that Melanie had been around for quite a few years in the Willow’s Grove Universe, there wasn’t a degree of credibility to that relationship that struck me as yes, they are a married couple. Crystal was just juicier to write. Is this a flaw in my own writing style? You could probably say that, but for the most part, I was just plain bored writing for Melanie Swan. Crystal made it more of a soap opera, a villain created through no real fault of her own that needed a redemption.

Now, as I mentioned above, I had strongly considered ending the strip. Crystal was going to trick Mel into fleeing, Mel was going to get injured out in space, be made into a cyborg, regain her memory of who she was and who did this to her and come back to Earth and kill off most of the main characters and battling Crystal, be mortally wounded and dying herself after killing Crystal and seeing the carnage she created. I was growing tired of the strip and wanted it to end. Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with the comic again and decided it needed to go on and sat down plotting out what would be the best way to go about this. I wanted to get back to the comedic roots of the strip and the way the strip had been lately, with tons and tons of drama, battles and destruction was veering too far away from how I saw the strip at its very core. Again, some of you Grovers may not be happy with the way I tied up all the loose ends, and trust me, it wasn’t an easy decision for me to make, but I thought it made the most sense from a writing standpoint.

This isn’t to say that at some point I may have Crystal come to some end that she deserves for her past actions, but for now, she has had her moment of redemption. She’s a bad person, who has done some bad things, but through Quincy’s intervention, that person is no longer around. Sure, it was a cheap way to do it, but again, for the dynamic of the strip and the interactions of the characters, it made the most sense. A story always needs a character that’s unpredictable and always keeping the reader guessing and Crystal fits that bill. As a teaser, we may not have seen the last of Melanie, either. I just need to think of a way that would be the best to reintroduce her into the storyline without it seeming forced or unbelievable. There’s only a few ways in which that would work, but I’ll leave the how’s and why’s for another day.

Thank you all for your comments as the volume ran its course and I apologize for not being too active in replying, but I was afraid I would have given away too many details by doing so. It was fun seeing your reactions to the events as they unfolded and taking guesses as to what was going to happen and why people were acting as they were acting. You don’t know the smiles it brought to my face knowing how well you were being pulled into the story and I can never express my true gratitude for having readers like you that interact with me and my work.

So onward we go to Volume 13 (lucky 13!) and back to the roots of Willow’s Grove. I hope I can make you laugh and groan and every now and then, feel sad for the characters, cheer for the characters, grumble at the characters, relish in their comeuppance or maybe even cry at their pain or sorrow. As this will be a comedy for the most part, perhaps there won’t be so many tears, but as in real life, sometimes things happen along the way that isn’t funny.

Now you have a little insight to my madness and why things turned out the way they did and what could have been and why they didn’t happen. Thank you again to all you Grovers! You’re the best fans a creator could ever hope to have!