November 17th, 2003

I honestly don’t know what/if I was thinking when I put this together (read the last spoken line like Jerry Lewis), but you’re stuck with it, regardless. Maybe I decided there wasn’t enough senseless, unwarranted weirdness in the comic. Maybe I wanted to draw a nice wild take. Maybe I just wanted to draw myself again. It’s not that I do not try to explain my reasoning in anything. It’s that I try not to explain my reasoning in anything.

Now vote.

I’d like to reminisce for a moment. I remember a long, very long time ago, during the Cartoons by Gaspirtz fiasco on The Funny Papers. All had tired of that sickly rotating banner sitting in the 1st Place spot on the list. The great Straub even went to the trouble of parodying it. Then, one morning, I spoke to a young Canadian named Pierre-Luc, who asked me to check out his new Top 150 list, Top Webcomics.

And it was good. All of the members were small, unknown artists, still trying to make names for themselves. The site even featured a randomly chosen banner that cycled through every single comic on the site, so even if you never got any votes, you knew people would still see your link.

It was a time of glory and everlasting wuvness. Top Webcomics grew. Countless aspiring comics joined the list. The site branched out to feature an affordable hosting service for new comickers to take advantage of. The sun, it seemed, could not shine brightly enough on this plucky young toplist.

And then, something went wrong. Servers disappeared. Websites vanished. Fingers pointed at Pierre-Luc, who could do nothing but vanish entirely.

Time passed. Top Webcomics found a new master, and began to rebuild. It seemed the troubles of the past were gone.

And then it freakin’ happened again.

And again.

And again.

I was one of the first members of Top Webcomics on that day so long ago. And today, well, it’s down for about the umpteen-billionth time. It seems those shining days of glory are gone forever.

In closing, sheesh.

Just wanted to get that off my chest. Anyway, you’ll notice that the splash page is gone, and that the comic is no longer right out smack on the front page. I’m gonna try something new. I realized long ago that a lot of people probably weren’t seeing my pathos-ridden pleas for votes when the newsies were way down yonder below the comic. That was the inspiration for the splash page. I later realized that the splash page must have been freakin’ annoying, so we’re going to give this a go. Unfortunately for me, this will force me to post more newsies, but I can live with that. Gives you more to read, anyway. But here’s the deal: if we start getting less votes, the splash page comes back, a’ight?

A’ight. Enjoy the comic. VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!

In other news, you might’ve noticed the Merckam, over on the left there, preaching the good news of my new computer. I don’t have the Radeon 9800 XT that I want yet (I’m waiting for the ASUS board to come down in price), so I’m using my old GeForce 2 GTS, which is bottlenecking things like crazy. Still, Photoshop and Illustrator are hella fast now. My favorite part, really, is my sound-insulated case. It’s so nice and peaceful in my room because of it. My old machine sounded like a vacuum cleaner.

Good Lord I’m long-winded today.

CURRENT MOOD: Gordita