Hey there Grovers! I am sure you are wondering where the Willow’s Grove entry in Round 3 has gone to. Well, I received word from Kurt Sasso of TGT Webcomics that there was possibly something out of sorts happening with the voting for WG and he wanted to let me know. I told him that even though I had been campaigning on twitter (yes, I know, rather obnoxiously), Facebook, as well as via email to groups I belong to (which number in the hundreds), that if he felt the votes I was receiving were suspect, that I would rather pull out of the tournament than to have a win because some fan decided to “help” us win instead of us having an honest win. I truly do not know if this was the case or if it was just a coincidence, but I would rather err on the side of caution for the integrity of the tournament than to win unfairly because of unsavory means.

I would like to thank all of you who voted for Willow’s Grove (we did reach about 403 votes) and wish Michelle Van Zandt of Ginpu luck in the semi-finals. Although I am disappointed that it had to come to this as it was a very exciting round, I would rather take a bow than to have a possible tainted victory. If this was indeed the act of one of you Grovers, I would just like to say that although I appreciate your loyalty, I do NOT approve of your methods. If this was indeed the case, (and I don’t know if I ever will know or not) I just wanted to let that fan know what their actions led to. Let Willow’s Grove stand on its own merits and if we lose, we lose, it’s not the end of the world. Integrity, honesty and reputation is far more important to me than winning a competition.

Also, thank you to Kurt for having me in this tournament, bringing this incident to my attention, and having me on the show back in July of 2009. Good luck to the rest of the webcomics still in the tournament! Get out there and vote (fairly)!