First of all, happy new year to you when it hits. This goes up for new year’s eve, so I won’t speak to you on the day. Not that it really matters all that much. 2026 is the 20th anniversary year for Between Failures. I had hoped to do something special for it, but just keeping it going is about all I can ever handle. I don’t expect anyone outside of the readership will make note of it. I have been excommunicated from the webcomic “community” for quite some time now. Not that I was ever particularly welcomed in the first place. As far as I know there isn’t any of the old internet infrastructure that created the webcomics boom that I came in on. I never hear about anyone podcasting about them or anything. Not for many years. Since there’s no money in it that’s not really surprising.
20 years ago the internet was very different. Google was just starting its strangle hold on everything. Personal websites were where it was at. That’s why I have a dedicated site. That used to be how it was done. We went from personal sites, to platforms, back to personal sites, and now there’s a struggle over which is the way to go now. The platforms would very much like to make sure the personal website never rises again. The personal site years were fun because people really made unique pages back then. They were ridiculous and awful a lot of the time, but they had a sincere charm about them that social media refuses to foster. All the “free thinkers” want uniformity. The irony is practically cancerous.
People tell me all the time now that my comic is the last one they read. I’m the last bright spot on the internet for them. Lots of sentiments like that. It’s pretty wild after almost 2 decades of being the 5th or whatever favorite to being the last man standing. People feel like they were betrayed by other works, for various reasons, but I stayed true to whatever it is I’m doing here. I tried to avoid chasing social trends, which is probably why the comic seems more like an artifact of a lost time the longer it goes. I never truly understood the longing for the past of my older family members when I was young. I mean I did as a concept, but I didn’t feel it because the world was still for me back then. As you age the world slowly leaves you behind. The things you love disappear. In fact, i think it used to happen a lot more gradually whereas a lot of the stuff I like was actively destroyed. I never envisioned a day where Star Wars would be completely ruined. Just that franchise was a massive part of my identity growing up. I was extremely open to parts of it that my contemporaries abandoned it over. In spite of the billions of hours of essays tearing them down I still like the prequels. One of my oldest friends jumped ship because of Red Letter Media. I kept going all the way up to the end of The Bad Batch. Although I let my D+ account lapse, so I haven’t actually seen the final season. I figured they would release some kind of physical media eventually. Now I’m not sure if I’m waiting them out or I’ve given up. I didn’t care about Andor, or Skeleton Crew, or Evil Lesbians (I can’t remember the right name.) I just don’t care anymore. Or at least nowhere near the levels I once did. It’s strange because in the years before the prequels the excitement didn’t wane. After the sequels though it just dissipated. It’s not like Star Wars is important really, it’s just that there’s a space inside of me for being excited about it that’s just blank now. That’s just one example. There was a sort of ritual connected to caring about these things. Looking forward to them filled some kind of need that I never really considered until after it was over. Now I truly understand why my father watches episode after episode of Tales Of Wells Fargo every night. The world he was born into is so far in the fucking past I can scarcely conceive of what it must be like. I bet it won’t be too long before I do though.
I’ve thought about getting DVD sets of South Park, Family Guy, Star Trek, and so on because I have had enough distance from them at this point that revisiting them seems a little enticing. Really though I don’t want to watch all of them. I just want to hit a few high points I expect. Maybe check out some of the later seasons I didn’t pay attention to. The Simpsons is another franchise I kind of want to look in on but every time I see bits of modern episodes I think they have the stench of death about them. Sort of like it should have ended quite some time ago. There’s an undead quality to The Simpsons that I can’t fully articulate at present.
It’s not like I don’t look forward to anything anymore, it’s just that it tends to be things like manga that don’t have quite so many rituals attached to them. I generally don’t buy a lot of figures for manga and anime. Although I did get into One Piece trading figures for a while. I’ve also seen some Frieren figures that are very enticing. In any case it’s just not quite the same in a way I don’t know how to explain exactly.
I dunno. I guess this is just me writing down experiences that basically every human goes though in hopes of reaching some kind of understanding. I’m adding to the tapestry of experiences than perhaps one day will unlock the secret of being alive at all.
Right now I need to find something to put up on Patreon that will convince people I’m still worth supporting. So I’m going to do that. Possibly after I have a quick nap. The holidays always fuck up my internal clock and ruin my productivity, which isn’t good on the face of it.

I will see you in the fresh new year, with the first new page for it, on Friday. Until then, be careful in your celebrations. Return to me after your frivolity is at an end. Until then, love and success to you in 2026.

21 Comments

Jackie – I do resonate with your comments on following ‘franchised’ media. I think I have FOCTC – fear of committing to crap (or to things that will probably be later squeezed beyond stone dead into a cash-grab zombie mockery of their beginnings). Sadly I now don’t commit to many things at all, which is troubling all in its self.

Have a good 2026 & happy birthday to the BF crew too

So now Reggie’s going to walk into the mess that’s currently going on at the pizzeria. This should be good

I have an RSS with all the remaining webcomics I read. Read probably a 100+ back in the day. Now my RSS has probably ~8 that are still alive and kicking.

I still read QC, Sluggy Freelance (apparently it’s entering its end era!? My word, over 25 years of it). There’s a newer webcomic called Side Quested by the same author as A Girl and Her Fed but newer artist. It’s interesting. I still look at Misfile: Hell High, the sequel to Misfile…..from morbid curiosity. Haven’t read The Devil’s Panties in a while .keeping up with the Rock Cocks, though they’re doing it on Patreon nowadays. I think they basically abandoned Blaster Nation. I do believe Treading Ground is back up but it’s changed quite a bit (rewrites and redraws), but it is from the same era as this. The webcomic community is still pretty toxic, most of the good ones have migrated to Webtoons or something similar.

I *just* got back into webcomics after a decade away from the computer. I binge read Between Failures (and was pleasantly surprised it was still going) and Girls With Slingshots (and was unpleasantly surprised it had ended and that the author hasn’t replaced it with another story) and Gunnerkrigg Court. I had completely forgotten about a Girl and Her Fed until reading your comment! Now I know what I’m going to read over the long weekend…

Danielle Corsetto of GWS also did “Stuck At 32” but it has not updated since April of 2018. A Girl and Her Fed ended sometime in the year ,2025, and the last arc of it was by a different artist, the same one who is currently doing Side Quested. Gunnerkrigg is still going.

What a busy day the eateries of Kansas are enjoying, today.

I hope for you all to have something to celebrate as we turn the New Year.

The idea that the Melvilles’ seed money prevented Ramon and Evrina from crawling to Marbleton’s Mr. Potter is now lodged in my mind.

Skeleton Crew was actually pretty good. I was surprised. A Star Wars treasure hunt proved to be a solid amalgamation and I was on board.

Resistance did all right, but Rebels was a bit meh. Andor was okay but I think they suffered from their own ambition on that one.

But then, there’s no accounting for taste. I found Duncanville hilarious.

I only watched season 1 of Andor, and it was one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had with a show. So much of it was excellent in execution, but it has this bizarre issue of, well, not having a plot. It’s story is just a bunch of things happening–well-performed, good dialogue, great sets, interesting ideas, but it all adds up to nothing. Maybe it would have worked better as like an anthology, each character getting an episode or two to themselves and showing their part in the galaxy, but even if you just focus on the title character, it feels like every chapter of his story could be removed without much affecting the other chapters. I’ve never seen something so good and yet so unengaging overall. Besides that, ugh, I can’t stand much of any of it. I’ll take the Prequels over anything Disney; they are flawed, but also grand in scope and ambition, instead of just sort of watered-down nothing.

I was never the biggest webcomic reader, I think the most I ever read at once was five, but you are the last one, yes. One went on hiatus and the creator passed in the meantime, one just stopped. I don’t know what happened to Girl Genius, it may still be going. And the other, the creator got REALLY into a political movement that I can’t stand, made that him and his wife’s entire personality, then kept taking Patreon money without putting out a single thing for months on end. Then they accused people of doxxing them when fans started asking if they were going to post anything soon, and one day their website just had a picture of their main character and a promisethat they would be back. I check on their Patreon’s home page sometimes, (The one you can see for free, I’m not paying them another dime) and as far as I can tell, they haven’t posted anything since about mid-COVID.

Girl Genius is still going strong(and still very good). There’s the occasional rare delay, but it’s pretty reliably a monday/wednesday/friday comic.

You want updates that’s worse than glacial? Fred Gallagher’s Megatokyo has you covered XD they did just update a few days ago. As to the other ones you’re talking? Never got into Girl Genius. Don’t quite know which ones you’re talking about, but it does sound similar to whatever happened to Scout Crossing/Nerf This/Motokool/whatever else that artist was doing and then he quit it entirely, took everything offline, and disappeared.

Girl Genius is still going strong.

Alex, Victoria, and John see each other.

Everybody else except Reggie: Awkaward…..

Too many webcomic creators really got high on their own farts; couldn’t be bothered to have regular updates, lots of filler pages as well, talked down to their audience and other creators as if they thought they were Michaelangelo and their work was delivered from on high, used their platform to talk about politics or other topics that just invite division and arguments (or, naturally, departure), etc. I found some of them didn’t know when to end, while others felt like the creator just suddenly got bored and rushed a conclusion. Some also got on tangents that ended up becoming a higher priority than the plot. But I think the big one is the first thing I said; failure to make consistent, meaningful updates–either days and days with nothing, or filling pages with random doodles or “cover art” or whatever. It’s hard to stay invested when you realize a month has passed and you’ve had just a handful of story pages, not even an entire conversation has happened. I started quite a few webcomics in the past that I liked when I read through the archive, but when I reached the point of sitting and waiting for the story to continue, I realized it was moving at a glacial pace and I’d forgotten what the story really even was.

TL;DR Jackie, you’re dedication to your comic is a big part of your success. Maybe every page isn’t a banger, no one can deliver 100% every day for 20 years, but you’re always here, you’re always delivering. Alot of other creators forgot that this is their JOB, and still treated it like their hobby that they can do when the mood strikes them, and in whatever manner they please. You can’t take the audience for granted.

In fairness, for many creators their webcomic is more of a hobby than a job. Only a relative handful make it their primary living. When the hobbyists struggle with pressure from their day jobs or creative issues I may find it annoying, but then I remind myself that unless I’m paying them they don’t really owe me anything.

Simpsons is still going?!?!?

Happy New Year from the East of Scotland :)

Happy new year to you.

I’m mostly immune to nostalgia due to an overactive memory. But I think a lot of people long for a past that maybe wasn’t objectively all that great, but at least left them with a lot to look forward. I understand longing for youth, when I didn’t get tired so easily, any injury or illness healed quickly, and I could eat or drink anything I wanted without worrying about pesky things like calories. It’s just that for me that’s not specifically related to the time I was younger.

2927 No Need For Bankers.

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