The Story
One day, the Moon up and disappeared; where it went, or why, none can say. Without the Moon's light to keep them in check at night, monsters, crawling horrors, and other creatures of the dark run rampant throughout the land. But Princess November has much more pressing matters to worry about: she hasn't had a decent sleep in ages.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the title of this comic?
A: "No Rest for the Wicked". Not "For the Wicked" -- that's just the website URL. And especially not "Wicked" -- that's a Broadway musical and a book by Gregory Mcguire.

Q: Will you link to my comic/Can we exchange links?
A: I'd really rather you not ask me that. ^^;;; As it is, my links page is rather long; and I like to write little blurbs for each comic rather than just slapping the buttons up, which makes it difficult to update the links page as frequently as I should. And even then it only contains a small percentage of the comics I actually read; there are comics I've read and enjoyed for years which are not listed. So please don't be offended if I don't link to you. I link to comics I like without expecting them to link me in return; conversely, I'm very honored if you want to link to me, but please don't ask me to link to you. I'm a complete wuss and hate having to tell anyone "no"; so it's probably better all around if you don't ask in the first place.

Q: What's this thing about the moon being dead? Is that from an actual fairy tale?
A: The Buried Moon is an English fairy tale. It's probably not incredibly well known, but it's a favorite of mine, and I thought it would be cool to base a story around. Fantasy writer Charles de Lint has a short story called "The Moon is Drowning While I Sleep", which is based on the same fairy tale. The title of the comic's first chapter, "The Moon is Rolling in Her Grave", is kind of a spoof of the title of de Lint's story. For a list of the fairy tales referenced in the comic, go here.

Q: Who's that girl without hands? Is she from a fairy tale?
A: She's from one of the Grimms' stories, called (funnily enough), The Girl Without Hands. As I've said before, if you're confused about the source of any references you find in the comic, the extras page has a bibliography list of fairy tales appearing in the comic, plus DVD commentary notes on the first two chapters. There's also the cast page, although it's not completely up to date (I purposely don't include characters that were introduced in a currently-running chapter). Hopefully, those should have enough information to clue you in. If you're still left scratching your head over certain references, either it's something that I made up, or it's part of some big mystery where all will be revealed in time, or else I suck at clarifying things. :P

Q: So what fairy tale characters are November's mother and sisters supposed to be?
A: Here's one of those where I suck at clarifying things. I never intended for them to be specific fairy tale characters so much as I intended them to have easily recognizable fairy tale-related maladies. November was allergic to peas, so I decided they would all be allergic to some kind of fairy tale food. Apples, obviously, are from Snow White. Gingerbread would be both the Gingerbread Man and the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel (though in the story that house is never actually described as made from gingerbread -- it just says that it's made of bread and the windows are sugar). Now, the radishes... were a mistake on my part. I distinctly remembered, as a child, reading some version of Rapunzel where 'rapunzel' was explained as the name of a type of radish. Only later did I find out that a rapunzel is actually a rampion. >_< I'll probably end up correcting that panel sometime in the future.

Q: Wait... August, September, and November? They're missing October! Was there another sister who died or went mysteriously missing or something?
A: Nothing as dramatic as that. September was born the year after August, so their parents named her after the succeeding month. November was born two years after September, so they skipped a month. Actually, that's just the explanation I came up with when people started asking me about it; the real explanation is that I had already picked November's name but didn't feel like giving all three sisters -ber names, so I used August. Only later did it occur to me that August was kind of a masculine name. :/

Q: Hey, this putting different fictional characters together in one story thing kinda reminds me of that comic, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Did you get the idea from there?
A: Short answer: yes! Long answer: sort of! ^_^

Q: How long will the story be?
A: As I said, I'm really terrible at planning these things. But I'm thinking 11 or 12 chapters, not including interludes.

Q: Is Perrault the cat named after Charles Perrault, the 17th century French guy who wrote many fairy tales including Puss in Boots, Red Riding Hood, and the most well known version of Cinderella?
A: Yup.

Q: So is he a some kind of cat-person, or is he a cat-cat?
A: He is a cat, who is able to talk and to take on a somewhat person-ish appearance. But he is otherwise a cat in all respects.

Q: Why do the characters keep mentioning something about November being the youngest? I don't get it.
A: A number of people have asked me this, so I figure I'd better cover it here, even though I think that this is one of those cases where explaining the joke makes it no longer funny. :/ Anyway, in almost any fairy tale you read in which more than one female sibling appears, it's the youngest who is described as being the most beautiful, the kindest, etc. etc. among her sisters. So in the fairy tale world of the comic, there's a widely-held belief/assumption that youngest daughters are extremely good-looking. That's why Perrault found it obvious that November was picked since she was the youngest; and when asked what November looked like, the Boy mentioned that she's a youngest.

Q: Hey, can we do a link exchange?
A: Um, please try and read more carefully. I explained above why I can't do link exchanges. If you email me and your site URL is mentioned I will check it out; but please, please, PLEASE do not ask me for a link exchange. I'm sorry to come on so strong, but a lot of people still ask me about this even though I've written about it here in the FAQ and on the links page itself.

Q: What materials do you use to draw this stuff?
A: I draw with a mechanical pencil. Then I ink with a combination of .01 and .005 Sakura micron pigma pens, and a Zebra brush-tipped pen thingy that I got in Hong Kong, that is apparently meant to be used for signing your name in Chinese characters. I draw the panel borders with a .08 pen and the lettering/balloons with a .05 pen. Grey shading is added in Photoshop. For the first 2 chapters I drew all the pages on plain old run-of-the-mill 8x11 copy paper; but starting with Chapter 3 I finally caved in and got some fancy-ish A5 manga paper.

Q: I'm a busy person. How am I supposed to keep track of when this thing updates?
A: There are various ways of keeping track of updates. If you subscribe to the mailing list (by entering your email address into the little form on the main page), you will receive an email every time a new page is up. Once in a while I will use it to send special announcements about the site, but I mostly only use it to announce new comic pages. We also have an update LiveJournal, which you can add to your LJ friends page, or to your RSS reader. This one mirrors the news posts on the main page, so all updates, including fanart and website changes, will be included. You can also get updates at webcomic update tracking sites like The Webcomic List, OnlineComics.net, Piperka, ComicAlert, Comic Nation, Belfry Webcomics Index, etc. Piperka in particular is very useful for when you don't check webcomics very often and you need to remember the last page you read.

Q: Is it okay to send fanart for this comic?
A: Judging by our generously-stocked fanart section, I'd say it's very okay. ^___^ (People actually ask me this. What am I, some kind of fanart-hating misanthrope? Who doesn't love to get fanart?)

Q: How do I send fanart to you?
A: Do nothing. Your place of residence is being monitored and you will be contacted. At approximately 1:07 AM of the third day, you will receive a telephone call giving you directions to an unlisted office in an abandoned building. There will be nothing in the room except for a metal colander. Place the colander on your head and concentrate as hard as you can, forming an image of the fanart in your mind, an image which will be transmitted through the astral ether and...

...On second thought, just e-mail it to me at daedalus at icarusfalls.com. It's okay to send it as an attachment, but be sure to put "fanart" or something similar in the subject line, so it doesn't get deleted by accident. If you're on DeviantArt, you could also send me a note (my username is andrael), though I don't check DA every day. While you're at it, be sure to mention what name you'd like to be credited by (some people have several screen names as well as real names and I have a hard time guessing which I should use ^^;; ). And if you have a website, a DeviantArt gallery, a livejournal, a blog, or anything else you'd like me to link under your name, please mention that as well.

Some have posted links to their fanart on the shoutbox or forum; this is good if you want other readers to check out and comment on your art. But if you want me to actually post your work in the fan section on the site, please email it to me or send a DevNote. This is just so I can keep track of things and so I don't have to keep asking or guessing if the artist wants me to post their art or not.

Q: Can we trade links?
A: Um. If you were paying attention (and if you're still asking this, you probably weren't), you might have noticed in my answer to the previous question that people who send me fanworks of any kind will always get a link in the fan section. So that, at least, is a surefire way to get a link from me. ^^

Q: Why didn't you reply to my email, you horrible person?
A: I'm sorry! I'm ridiculously slow when it comes to answering emails. I've also known emails and replies to occasionally get lost in the murky bowels of the internet. If you sent me a question or something that needed a reply and I still haven't answered after a couple of weeks, feel free to email me again. And if you sent me a fanwork and weeks pass and I've updated the fan section and you still haven't heard anything from me, something is definitely wrong because I always respond to fanwork stuff. So either I never received your email or my reply to you was lost. At any rate, please let me know if this happens.

Q: Do you do link exchanges?
A: You're trying to make me cry, aren't you?