First of all, my sincerest apologies for not having updated the site for a long time. In July I took a month’s summer vacation. All of August I was very, very busy getting three books in print so that they would be ready in time for the Helsinki Comics Festival that was held on September 15-16, 2007. Then, my second son was born on September 1, so I took a week of paternity leave. Then I was one week at the office, but all of my time went to preparing the extra materials we were taking to the comics festival. Now that the festival is over, I am taking two more weeks of paternity leave. During my paternity leave I am running around trying to get our new books onto the shelves of every single book store in Finland, so I really haven’t had any time over to update the Jessor pages.

To cut a long story short, I haven’t updated for a long time, and it will take two more weeks before you will see another update. But then, I will update again. We have nearly a full album of inked and colored pages ready, and they are just waiting to be lettered and posted on the net. So please do not despair, Jessor will do a comeback very soon.

So! The first Jessor album has been published. Alas, it has been published in our native language, Finnish. Along with Jessor, we’ve published two other comic books, tranlated versions of Rice Boy and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. And we published them all under our Finnish name, Taikapaja. Check out Taikapaja’s web site, where there is more information about these books (mostly in Finnish, though.) All of our books are available for sale on a number of web stores, including Taikapaja’s own.

Also, if you’re in Finland, you might want to pass by the nearest Akateeminen Kirjakauppa book store. Our books are slowly being disseminated to the farthest reaches of the country, so if your local book store doesn’t carry our books yet, ask them. The books are in their database, for sure.

We will probably publish an English-language Jessor album within the next few months as well, if there’s enough interest from the public. Drop us an email (you know our address, mail —a—t— jessor —d—o—t— com,) if you’d be interested in seeing a glorious paperback version of your favorite comic, August Jessor!

Take care, and thanks for reading. Again, I am very sorry that I have let down my readers for a long time, but that will change soon, I promise!

-Mikael

Don’t worry, though. August Jessor is still up and running, and plenty of material is already waiting to be lettered and posted on the web. Please have some more patience, we’ll get back to our normal updating schedule soon.

Take care,

-mikael

Honestly, though, I did intend to post updates all through my vacation. As things turned out, I haven’t done any work at all. And that’s been very nice, so I will continue my vacation until the end of July as planned, and start posting regular updates again in August.

As a small token of gratitude for all the readers who have missed the updates, I have made a wallpaper of the top frame on page 4, because that frame might just be the most beautiful one we’ve created so far. Credit is due here to Sarno for the inks, and especially to Pekka Veikkolainen for the incredible colors. For now, the wallpaper is only available in 1680×1050 resolution, because that’s all I had time to do right now, and because that happens to be the resolution of my own monitor. I would be happy to provide that wallpaper in other resolutions as well, but since I’m interested to know if a) these Daily Flounder updates ever get read, and b) what resolutions I should do the wallpapers in, please send us some encouraging emails to feedback (insert at sign here) jessor com, and tell us what resolution wallpaper you need. To the same address you can also write any other comments and suggestions you might have relating to August Jessor.

Have a nice remainder of July, and see you in August!

-Mikael

Anyways, seems that people have really enjoyed the Captain Hookbeard short story, and we’re all very happy about that - especially Lauri Konttori, who drew the line art. Check out Lauri’s other artworks here.

As you’ve probably noticed, the first pages of the second album are now up.  Check out the other two pages here and here.

In third place, winning a copy of Gone with the Blastwave, Vol. 1 is Alex, with a very funny “King of Karaoke”-themed entry. Anything with Baccara in it will make us laugh, so this was a clear finalist for us.

In second place, also getting a Blastwave album, plus a friendly smile from the jury, is Stef, whose entry contained many funny elements, including “sorry, you interrupted me picking my nose” and “stop using my house for your conquistador treasure hunts.

And the winner is… YQM, whose Air band-themed entry had the jury laughing out loud, and who also received the most positive feedback from the readers (notably from YQM himself.) Oh, and YQM won the Blastwave album, AND an original inked Jessor image, as seen below, with Jessor playing air guitar, accompanied by Glen Lubber on the air piano!

Thanks to all who participated, and congratulations to the winners!

Norman Rockpool, an amateur nutritionist from Occam, California, has discovered what he calls a “proto-diet,” a diet he claims has kept humans fit throughout the ages.

Now Mr. Rockpool, who recently patented and trademarked Caveman’s Diet™, is trying to cash in on his discovery by selling a 650-page book with a description of the weight-loss method.

“What a sham,” commented a professional nutritionist from Jessor & Co. Dietary Labs, a leading supplier of proven diet information. The specialist spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Rockpool’s method is so simple, that it can be explained in just a few sentences. Anyone spending any money on this book is crazy,” the specialist said. “Those who are serious about losing weight should use a proven methodology, like the Jessor Diet, and not listen to quacks like Rockpool.”

Mr. Rockpool remains unfazed by the scathing criticism raining upon him from all over the nation. “The only reason all these nutritionists fight me is that they’re afraid of my diet method, because it works better than their methods.”

“Get this,” said the Jessor & Co. specialist, “the only thing Rockpool discovered, while visiting a museum with his daughter, was that 200,000 years is longer than 8,000 years! It’s a big fat joke!”

Rockpool has heard that argument before. “That’s an enormous oversimplification,” says Rockpool, and tries to explain: “Homo Sapiens originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago. Until some 8,000 years ago, all humans were hunter-gatherers, eating food that they could gather with the help of their hands and maybe some very crude tools. This means berries, fruit, and meat. The human body is adapted to eat this type of crude food, and not the modern agricultural products - wheat, rice, potatos, dairy products, and so on - that our ancestors began consuming in the relatively recent past. Moreover,” he continues, “our ancestors were getting a huge amount of excercise on their daily hunting-gathering trips, thus ensuring that their bodies were consuming more energy than their mouths.”

Rockpool’s theory is that if people only eat food that could be hunted down with a club, and excercise a lot, they are bound to stay in perfect shape. Maybe so, but it sure sounds like a lot of work and personal sacrifice.

Jessor & Co. Dietary Labs today announced a major breakthrough in their groundbreaking research of a weight-loss method called the Jessor Diet. The diet achieved a truly astonishing success rate of 100% among the members of a test group this Spring.

A Jessor & Co. spokesperson, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained, “the Jessor Diet is perplexingly simple, but ruthlessly efficient. Anyone who follows our diet is guaranteed to lose weight, no matter how obese they are.”

The diet works by altering the ratio of energy intake vs. energy consumption. “This is complex stuff,” says the spokesperson. “In fact, it’s so complex that non-scientist persons need to read the official guide to grasp it.” To learn all the intricate details of the diet, consumers are advised to buy the 700-page guide called Jessor Diet in a Nutshell, to be published later this year by Jessor & Co.

The diet was discovered by a Jessor & Co. research team, who studied the recorded impact of food deprivation. “One day, as we were watching The Life of Gandhi on the History Channel, we had this epiphany: people who are denied food for long periods of time are really skinny.”

“We instantly knew this was it. We were all going to be so rich,” he says. The team instantly formulated a working hypothesis that they used as a basis for live experiments on volunteers. “Our hypothesis was, If your body uses up more energy than it takes in, you will lose weight. In other words, to lose weight, people should eat a lot less than they normally do. That’s what set out to prove.” And prove it, they did. A mere two months after the clinical trials began, the research team noticed a weight loss averaging 12 kilograms (26,45 lbs.) across the population. “We now had a method that we could start cashing in on, and that’s what we’re doing now,” says the elated spokesperson.

The Jessor diet’s cornerstone is the cutting of meals to one per day. “Your one meal can consist of almost anything, as long as you don’t eat anything else all day,” says the spokesperson, and adds, “you should still drink a lot of non-alcoholic and low-sugar beverages during the day, such as water, coffee, and diet soda, so you don’t dehydrate yourself.”

But the Jessor diet still faces some hurdles before it turns into a pile of gold. First and foremost, it seems that many people are unwilling to stop eating to lose weight. “People want fast and painless silver bullet solutions. They’re willing to spend a lot of money to quacks of all sorts who promise to get them to lose weight without making any sacrifices. Well, let me tell you something: there are no free lunches when you want to lose weight,” says the spokesperson. “Buy our book, and you’ll know why,” he says to conclude our interview.

What, are you still reading this? Go participate in the contest now!

Even if you don’t participate yourself, you should at least comment on other readers’ contributions, just to influence the jury on who’ll win

As you’ve probably figured out by now, the first story arc is coming to a close within a couple of weeks.

After that, you will first get a little Jessor treat in the form of a short story. I will not reveal the contents of that short story yet, but I can modestly tell you that it is a work of sheer brilliance!

After the short story, it is time for the second album, tentatively named The Mystery of Seal Paradise. The second story is faster-paced and more sinister in its tone than the first album. We will meet most of the characters from the first album, plus a bunch of new ones. Oh, and Jessor is starting to go a bit native; check out his new look here:

Also, just so you know, every page in Jessor is made in huuge resolution, and scaled down a lot for the web. The originals are made for print, not web, and the files are truly enormous. Check out the above  image of Jessor in print size (.jpg, 0.7 mb). Oh, and mind you, this is only one small frame of one page.