Well, I'm putting this thing together early. Both early in date and early in time. It's 12:15 in the morning, and I'm listening to some Pearl Jam, as per usual. Off He Goes, to be precise, which is an excellent song off of an excellent album, No Code. Go grab it on iTunes or something. Anyway, this is the first comic. It's not so much a comic as an introduction to the main character, Ryan. Of course, you probably got that from the picture and the text, but it never hurts to reinforce what's already been said. Sorry to repeat myself but it helps you remember. A cookie to whoever gets that reference.

Getting to know Ryan will be one of the main focuses of the comic. After all, he is the main character and that distinction sets him apart from the rest of the characters. And there are MANY other characters, as you can see from the Cast page. It just has names for the moment, but as each character is introduced, their character sheet will be put up and some information will be written about them. Keep checking it whenever a new character sheet is put up!

In the meantime, check out the Links page. Some of the best webcomics and fun sites await you. Nicki and I hand-picked everything that's on there, and we visit them frequently. If you've got a site that we should check out, shoot me an EMAIL, kay?

There's really nothing in the archives or other stuff section yet, but that's mainly because this is the first comic, and we really haven't had time to establish ourselves yet. For instance, there aren't any comics in the archive because there aren't any other comics. I'm not too sure what we're going to put in the "Other Stuff" section. It's a bit early to roll out merchandise, which i don't really think we'll be doing in the first place unless there's a demand for it. Probably any special art that Nicki puts together, any fan art (get drawin', artist-type folks!) and anything that I draw myself. I don't draw pretty like Nicki does, but I draw well enough to have done my own Webcomic a few years ago.

What I REALLY want to talk about, though is the forum, which is a LiveJournal community. Anyone that has a LiveJournal account can join and discuss the comic, and every update will be noted in the community. All the fans can get together and talk about the comic and comic-related stuff, and it'll be a fun, happenin' place eventually, but only if people join. So get your ass over there, register for a journal for free if you don't have one, and add the community to your friends list!

Technically, Nothing But Friends is my sophomore effort. There were three other comics that I tried to get off the ground but couldn't. The first was 3am, which was the story of two friends, Ryan and Evelyn (Who star in NBF), that got together at a local diner at midnight every night and talked about their days and stuff in general until 3am, then they summed up their thoughts and went home. All I got done on that was concept art, which changed styles several times. I may put it up in the Other Stuff section, actually.

The second comic was called High Card, and it took place in Ryan (from 3am)'s dreams. He was a private detective and Evelyn was his client. Lots of action! I got a nice script and one finished comic done on that one, but that was it. The sheer amount of work and time I put into the concept comic was entirely too much for me to continue putting in to comics on a regular basis. My work on Idle Minds (my first comic, for those that didn't follow the aforementioned link) was extremely easy and not time-consuming at all. For a regular run-of-the-mill Idle Minds comic, it took about an hour and a half. Two and a half if it was in color. I spent literally weeks on the High Card comic to get it just right. It was all pencil work just scanned in. No color or anything. But it was good and i liked it. That'll be up in the Other Stuff section, too. It should be up by the time you read this, actually. This entry is completely stream-of-consciousness.

The third comic was called Colony Team II, which was a giant mecha comic. It was heavily inspired by the anime Gundam Wing (which I was obsessed with at the time, I believe), where the people of space colonies on the moon and around the Earth get tired of the Earth's oppressive rule and want to become independent. The Earth doesn't like their attitude and decides to put together weapons to severely cripple the colonies. The colonies learn of the plan and send down 5 giant mecha that are set to meet together at a certain point on Earth and destroy everything military that they come across and eventually destroy the weapons that are being made. The 5 pilots, nicknamed Colony Team II, consisted of the following mecha: Orion, who was the healer of the group and used nanotechnology to repair the other mecha, and had grappling-hook-type metal hooks that shot out of its wrists -- they could be used to puncture other mechs' hulls and the chains attached to them could explode for splash damage. Kilo, who was the powerhouse of the group; he had no ranged attacks but in melee combat could use giant knives attached at the arm to slice and stab, and could generate an extra powerful force attack. Nighthawk, who had giant talons and wings, was the ranged attacker and had a gigantic particle cannon in its chest and could also fight with a beam saber. Voodoo was the elementalist and could change his form to and from any element: fire, ice, lightning, water, light, dark, toxic, atomic, nuclear... you name it, he could change into it. And Death, who had a protective armor vest, could fire concussion missiles out of it, and had a beam katana and wakazashi. They destroyed minions and lieutenants and bosses and gleaned computer cards from the broken mecha. Each card was an upgrade for one or the other mech. It played out like an RPG, really. There was a sixth pilot after a while, and eventually the Earth forces gave up and joined the Colony forces to fight off what turned out to be an invading alien population that was working with the Earth forces as a guise to gain energy and numbers. Other alien forces came together to help the Earth/Colony force because the invading aliens had destroyed half the galaxy already. It was a REALLY involved storyline that would have taken YEARS to complete, and that's why I abandoned the project. That, and I couldn't draw mecha to save my life. But mainly because of the story.

Wow, that was a really long paragraph. It was a very involved comic, so it had to be represented thusly. At any rate, there's quite a bit to come with Nothing But Friends. Keep checking back, we should have new content every week or so.

-SAM

i've lived all these lives, it's been wonderful at night