how often does MCF update?

~currently, it updates Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. it'll go back to five days a week in about April when the semester finishes and i'm not so busy.

i can't find x comic where y happened; what number was it?!

~you can use the search bar (found on the lefthand side of the main page) to look for certain comics. however, at the time of writing this only up to the middle of January 2008 plus about a dozen random comics are searchable, because it requires manually transcribing each comic into the Oh No Robot system. if you're seriously desperate to find a comic, write me an eMail and i can find it for you.

i don't understand one of the comics. explain it to me!

~i make a lot of references to internet memes (the O RLY owl, for example) and geek culture (movies, anime, computer games, the like.) if you don't understand something, look it up on Google or the Encyclopedia Dramatica. if you still don't understand it, it's probably a horrible pun that i had an anvil dropped on my head for.

how did you start drawing the strip?

~one day in January 2007 when i was sitting in a cafe, i picked up a business card lying on the table and sketched a girl holding out her heart to a boy, freshly torn from her bleeding chest. these two characters would form the basis for Rei and Cove. i posted the comic irregularly to deviantArt for several months, finally adopting a regular update schedule in late June 2007.

are the characters based on real people?

~loosely, yes. Rei is based on myself- although i don't make children pie as often as her, i do make puns and macabre jokes frequently, and many of the situations or conversations that come up have their source in my own life. Mae and Elle are based on my two best friends, Chantal Short and Michala Bloomfield respectively. Cove is based on my boyfriend Rob Masson, who is also responsible for this entire site existing at all. <3

what's emo?

~*sigh*

where did you get their names from?

~i wanted simple, one-syllable names that would be easy to remember. Rei (pronounced REE, not RAY) is just a short form of two names i use online, Katerei and Lilyrei. Mae is named for the horror movie May and the charming indie-rock band Mae, because the dichotomy is so fitting for Chantal. Elle is the French word for 'she' or 'her', because Michala occasionally bursts out into French mid-conversation, and the name sounded sweet, friendly and feminine. Cove is named for Cove Reber, the vocalist for Saosin- because, well, Saosin is amazing.

how do you make the strips?

~i use Photoshop CS4, a Wacom Graphire tablet, and a freakin' huge monitor (24"). i used to draw them out on paper, but since the art doesn't change often, it seemed like a waste of both time and supplies to be constantly redrawing them. many of the strips now use character templates so i only have to change things minor things.

your comic sucks.

~...this isn't a question. rewind, try again.

OMG your comic is so offensive how can you talk about abortion/Nazis/pineapple farming so callously?!

~this is exactly how i am in real life. no one's making you read the comic. if you don't like it, leave now and you can still get out (mostly) unscathed.

what barriers have you faced so far in making it?

~one that came up was that my boyfriend whom Cove was originally based on broke up with me about three months after i started drawing it. the plan was to keep writing with him anyway, though (perhaps subconsciously) Cove did not appear for over two months. when i started seeing someone else, the character began to transition over to having a new inspiration.

in a similar vein, i had to make a decision whether to change the character's appearances along with their real-life counterparts. in the end i decided not to for the sake of continuity, otherwise there would have been some noticable differences, particularly in hairstyle- for example, Mae would have had pink hair for a few months.

an entirely unpredicted issue, and the biggest i've faced so far, arose with the character designs themselves- such large heads and small limbs does not lend itself to much mobility. learning to accomodate that is something i'm still challenged by regularly. :]