I think that in some ways Alex is uniquely qualified to handle Reggie’s sass because she’s something of an old school netizen. Reggie at his absolute worst isn’t as grating as a forum from ten years ago or more. Although he’s never really been allowed to be as freely expressive as he might have been if I were more capable of dealing with the internet as it exists today.

I started this comic almost 17 years ago, or there abouts, right as the internet began to gentrify to a degree where the users of that time wouldn’t recognize it now. Of course those very users have watched it happen, but if they were suddenly transported from then to now it would be very jarring. I came in just as the transgressive content was being pushed back against by the new crop of busybodies who eventually browbeat most of the internet into submission. I wasn’t in a place mentally that could put up a fight against that kind of thing since before then everyone tended to keep to themselves, but around that time everyone started making everyone else’s business theirs and the whole internet started fighting with each other for dominance. This is primarily why I hate almost every other webcomic creator I’ve ever dealt with. People started changing their ethical standards to suit the wind rather than because they believed in what they were doing, and that isn’t the kind of thing that sits well with me. Remaining true to myself, as best I could, caused no end of trouble for me though. That problem has only escalated over time to the point where I have a handful of creators left who I actually trust in any meaningful way. Sometimes I feel like I have so many back problems because of all the knives stuck in it. (Also the fat) No matter what arena I have entered in my life I have always been cast into the camp of the cast out and then cast out a second time after that. So I end up with the most unloved of even the unloved. In recent years I’ve even been cast out from there and left in a sort of professional limbo.
Ironically the only time I wasn’t ejected from all things was when I was in retail. Of course I couldn’t enjoy it since everything else was so miserable, so I guess I was doomed never to achieve whatever balance of happiness and misery regular people seem to get to eventually. Now I exist here, in my strange little corner of the internet with my weirdly loyal readers. Honestly I think this is the best outcome I could hope for since I seem completely incompatible with any other part of the world at large.
Anyway, if memory serves the 20th is the 17th anniversary of the comic’s birth. Officially at any rate. If you’d like to see more returns of the day I encourage you to support my work via the links above. I’ve got a lot of story left to tell before I can call this one finished. Your help would be very much appreciated.

For now though I wish you the best and hope to see you here on Friday.

18 Comments

welp, that conversation ended better than I thought it would lol

17 years. Damn. This might be the second-longest webcomic I have read consistently. Well done.

Thank you, thank you.

And getting close to a quarter myriad!

The first doesn’t happen to be Sluggy Freelance, does it?

Qwantz! I never read Sluggy Freelance. It just never pinged my radar, even though its popular.

Besides Sluggy, I also read Kevin & Kell, which was already two years old when Sluggy debuted and claims (accurately, AFAIK) to be the oldest continuously running webcomic. I also read Something*Positive, 21 years and counting, Gunnerkrigg Court, turns 18 next month, El Goonish Shive, 21 years, and The Devil’s Panties, also 21. I haven’t been reading any of those since the very beginning, but the ability to do an archive binge is one of the things I really like about webcomics, especially those with ongoing story lines. Oh, and as you can probably guess from that list, my tastes tend to be pretty eclectic.

Lol, I followed all of those (and dozens of others) for many years, but they dropped off, one by one. The usual cause of drop was hiatus. Good for the above that they have kept going though.

In retrospect, I have to ask myself what kind of long-term funk I was in to read Something*Positive for as long as I did. How things change.

Alex is too level headed to take a cheeky comment like that and go completely off the rails by it. Reggie to his credit takes things in stride and at least makes it clear he offered to let her come along.

These two actually play off each other quite well, and honestly I think even if he can be abrasive sometimes, Alex really does enjoy his wit at times.

I forgot the “abs day” dinner at the swing set. And also Alex isn’t at all bothered by her sister figure possibly showing up.

When Alex calls their dalliance “arguably better than eating” Reggie should feel quite complimented.

Now I’m wondering what Alex’s Mom looks like?

2200

As someone else mentioned, I do enjoy the fact that Reggie has enough aplomb to ride with the conversation, instead of doing what most people would do after Alex’s last line in the first panel, i.e. look chastened and nod a bit, maybe say “Yeah, that’s true”.

Better than eating?!?

They must not have been eating right!

;)

I’d certainly hope at least a little “eating” was involving.

The 20th?

I must prepare for my annual re-read from the beginning!

Nobody else has responded to the invocation of shrubbery, so it falls unto me…

NI!

(#sorrynotsorry)

Man, I miss the old internet. People called you names–you called them names back until you had enough, then…moved on. No one got hurt, there was no threat of it escalating to physical violence, it was super-safe verbal sparring so you could grow a thick skin. I’ve been called named, casually, that would make half of Twitter meltdown. And I’m fine. Yes, bullying can be a thing, but 99% of cyberbullying is BECAUSE of social media; we used to abide by the golden rule of never, ever, ever, tell anyone any of your personal information on the internet. Even when I had to make accounts and they asked me for my name (aside from picking a user name), I gave them fake names. Google still doesn’t know my name. Steam doesn’t know my birthday. If anything, we need the old-school internet more than ever–people need to learn again how to be called strings of curse words, racial epithets, and school ground taunts, and just walk them off. We’ve already made schools and corporate work places incredibly sanitized, so with the internet becoming a safe space, adults are like children, and have no idea how to respond when yelled at or insulted; they cry or spaz out or run away. Unless you work in retail or customer service, of course, and get to deal with Karen.

2487 Shrubbery.

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