The webcomics blog about webcomics

Post Christmas Crash

Hey everybody. I see the piece that I wrote up and scheduled to post yesterday monrning didn’t actually, but it’s long and now you get an extra one for today, so everybody wins. In fact, I just wanted to point out some of my nicer presents today.

First up, you may recall that about a month ago, my wife arranged for a rather special birthday present for me. What with my birthday falling on a Tuesday, one of the intended gifts was delayed a day, but there I was — barber to ninjas. I got to thank Chris Hastings in person with beer and cheesecake about two weeks back, and he never let on that the original of that page was already in the mail to me. “Sneaky”, “underhanded”, and every other word that might apply to ninjas also applies to Chris and his partner, Kent Archer.

Next, arriving on the 24th and just in time for Christmas, DJ Coffman sent me an unexpected gift — a hardcover copy of his Hero By Night miniseries (prompting one of my nephews to notice it on my desk and say, “Cool, I didn’t know the hardcover was out yet.” I don’t see him often and didn’t know that he read HBN, so yay to Coffman for bringing families together).

I was going to pick up the trade of HBN, even though I have the individual copies, as it both saves space on my shelves and allows me to donate the individual issues to people that might not be able to get comics easily (this week I’ve got two boxes to send to Chris Tarbassian at Operation Comix Relief, who will send any and all donated comics to US troops on deployment). So I get a handsome hardcover for my collection, my nephew feels a little less like the only geek in the family, and some troops get a diversion from their crappy immediate surroundings sooner than they would otherwise? That’s a win for all involved.

Two weeks ago, Jeff Rowland ran what I think is one of the funniest episodes in the history of Overcompensating; having missed out more than once on the chance to buy particularly funny originals of various strips by waiting too long, I emailed Jeff right away.

He told me that the original had been water damaged, and he couldn’t in good conscience sell it to me. It showed up in today’s mail, with three little water spots away from the main image, along with a mess of stickers and temporary tatoos and a Band-Aid™ brand adhesive bandage. All of these gifts, especially the Band-Aid™, are going to be treasured parts of my collection of webcomics art.

So to Jeff, DJ, Chris and Kent, and all the terrific creators that I’ve met in the past two years of fumbling my way through this pseduo-journalistic hackery, thank you. It’s no exaggeration to say that being around so many creative, funny people has made my life richer, and I’m going to keep trying to spread the word about the great work that all of you do.

Glad you dug the hardcover Gary. And thanks for passing on the singles too! I Always encourage people to do that when they can. I gave my mail carrier a copy of the book too, and was pleased when he happened to have kids who enjoyed it, he left us a nice note today about that. I don’t know why that felt awesome.

RSS feed for comments on this post.