72 thoughts on “Chapter 6: Creative Fiction, Page 145”

  1. I was just today wondering about this very comic. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see that little blip on my feed!

    And can I just say? I like to think of myself as a pretty grounded guy. Stoic, even. But the way you write the Jakes, you create these MARGINALLY sympathetic little avenues that they use to get right under my skin. They creep me out horror-movie style.

    1. It’s been so long since an update, I only checked the page out of boredom. I gasped and lost my breath when I saw that we had an update.

  2. Numbers, I have great affection for you, but I believe you have the self-preservation instincts of a lamb…with severe brain damage. Hasn’t living in Templar taught you that you NEVER turn your back on a crazy person or stand too close to the bars of the gorilla cage?

    ESPECIALLY if you have long hair?

    1. This is why veteran prison guards don’t reach into cells, but make inmates reach out from the cells, if one is supposed to give something to the other.

  3. OW. Don’t fuck around with batshit crazy, post-apocalyptic-conspiracy-theorist, uber-racist, didn’t-die-from-drinking-the-koolaid survivalists. The Jakes are effing creepy. I love ’em!

    You just lie down and go to sleep like a good girl, and maybe you won’t get shanked, love.

    1. Yeah, I’ll agree to that. In an action films + action comics way, I think that: if Numbers just lies down + doesn’t interfere with Jackie, Jackie might just walk by her, + get the keys to get into the inner rooms, or something like that,

  4. don’t know if I should start reading this smack again. the withdrawl almost killed me the last time she went on hiatus…

    …that said, more, please.

    …please!

  5. Welcome back, Spike!! Glad the mutant seabass that were holding you hostage finally got tired of feeding you!

    Anyone else get the feeling that Jackie would have been happy to just hold Numbers against the bars by her hair, until the words “cultural liaison” fell out of her mouth? That turns Conscious Hostage into Migraine Hostage.

  6. Numbers and Ben should meet. They can bond over their shared experiences, like head trauma. How’s Ben doing these days anyway? Still bleeding out in that entryway? Hard to believe that happened back in 2011…

    1. …apparently so.

      Spike, we’re not trying to sound too entitled, but the anticipation is killing all the Templars out here. So to put it bluntly…what’s going on?

    1. Not every last person posting here merits a response, but yeah, I still check back occasionally. I still hope that there’ll be an update from Spike, and that’s what matters. Who can say? She might update it. It’s not completely impossible.

    2. I check occasionally. Obviously I understand that Spike needs to work on projects that sell, but I do wish we could have an update here…..cause that’s one hell of a moment to leave it at.

    1. Bitching that Spike’s not updating her unpaid webcomic is idiotic, particularly when she’s been editing and publishing 4 other books and anthologies, with more on the way. Which people are giving her REAL moneys for. Get some perspective.

      1. Actually I wish I could agree with your sentiment, but the issue isn’t so simple as “She works on other stuff that pays bills so just chillax, d00d.” Many webcomic artists do their damnedest to publish pages on a regular basis and can earn supplemental income selling comic-related merchandise. The trouble is, as Spike put forward her focus to other projects and started dedicating less time to TAZ, viewership began waning which detracts from money earned through TAZ-related merch. And maybe she wasn’t making enough from TAZ stuff to maintain a living, but that’s getting off-point.

        The main issue at hand is that Spike continues to refer publicly to TAZ as that one story that is at her core and keeps promising to write and draw out to the very end. But with as many projects, books, and collaborations as she’s managing or contributing to, she doesn’t seem to have given too much attention to her own personal story as she would have you think, or as most other artists have given to their own core works; and these long pauses leave much to interpretation regarding just how deeply she cares about this story.

        1. It’s interesting to note the length of this interval. I do hope it doesn’t become an indefinite one, especially noting that Spike promises to provide another update or updates. It’s also interesting how so much less was happening between updates on TAZ.

      2. I fully support her endeavors to support herself. But if it was me, I’d say something. Post a blog, apologize, explain, I’d even settle for thinly-veiled rationalization.

        Silence, on the other hand…not good. It suggests her Templar readers aren’t worth the time for any of the above. Even if all she did was say, “I’m sorry” every week in the blog section, at least I’d think she was thinking of us.

  7. I kind of wish she at least officially closed it (or went on hiatus). If life gets in the way, readers would know not to expect–or if she had the time she could even release the rest of the story in text form (I know a couple web artists who did this successfully and it left everyone feeling happy). It is very clear there’s a direction this is all going…that it’s not comic-by-comic. Would love to find out what happens to the main characters–at the very least Ben and Zora (as well as Reagan, Scipio, and Gene).

  8. So…i reread the whole thing and now i’ve got a crush on Reagan. Tell me i’m not the only.

  9. This is just getting sad. I kinda want to hack in to the site, just to superimpose cobwebs over the corners of everything. Not that I’d know how, but it’s the thought that counts.

      1. Spike, if you go a full year without so much as a word, Templar will not only stop being a favored webcomic, it will become a cautionary tale. “You think this hiatus is bad? At least it’s not Templar, AZ.!”

  10. TIME FOR SATIRE. …No, really. No fair plagiarizing anything, of course, so don’t make the Jakes and the rest of us come after you for plagiarism, in the courts. However, THESE CIRCUMSTANCES DEMAND SATIRE! SAAATIIIIIIIIRRRE, I SAY!! :P =}

    1. Yeah, you probably thought the scariest thing about the Jakes is the way they handle a knife. That’s nothing. One guy actually got a peek at one of their attorneys, and now he just kind of sits around and talks to himself. He never entirely recovered from what he saw.

  11. Nearly the end of July, Spike. In about 6 weeks, it will be a year since the last update.

    Please tell us what’s going on.

    1. She has until the end of September, so roughly 2 months. If we don’t see anything in August, I’ll have serious doubts about TAZ.

      1. you mean you’re not having any doubts now? or, actually, there’s pretty much no doubt this has been abandoned. posting one page per year does not make it any less abandoned – at this pace we’ll be all long dead before the next plot twist, including the author.

  12. If we deign to consider the Knights Templar, the only thing they ever left unfinished was a campaign they didn’t ultimately win. Are we to believe, then, that this is another quagmire? That would seem quite unfortunate.

  13. On the 29th of this month, it will be one full year without an update. I will come back to check for an update one last time on that day.

    It’s been fun.

  14. I’ve been listening to her podcast, Dirty Old Ladies, regularly. The last ep was about webcomics, and I thought (hoped) we might get some kind of sense whether this project was dead. Nope. Some oblique references. My impression is, she’s not willing to pull the plug, but her time is being taken up by projects that actually help her earn a living, so.

  15. Doesn’t she do a lot of comic conventions and the like? Hasn’t anyone had a chance to simply say hello in real life and ask what’s up with it? Because her twitter page still introduces her as someone who “Draws Templar, AZ.” Not “Used to draw Templar, AZ” or “Can’t be bothered to draw Templar, AZ anymore”.

  16. Hello, Spike. Are you out there?

    Seriously, Spike. You’ve become a cautionary tale to a lot of people. Any sympathy about your situation runs up against this towering pile of BS.

  17. Put a fork in it.

    Templar is done. More than two years without an update and almost as long without an explanation or mention?

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