Some things that have gone on for a while are coming to an end. I thought I’d share.

• Once upon a time — musta been ’round October few years back — Nick Wright¹ launched a webcomic called Treading Ground. It bounced around for 2003 and 2004, took 2005 off, returned for part of 2006, and then came back all regular-like in 2010. I came across a link to it early last year and went through the archives, but confess I’d forgotten about it until two things happened:
  1. The resurgent Eric Snark-White wrote about Treading Ground last week, detecting a hint of “wrapping up” in the storyline
  2. Nick Wright announced, two days ago, that Treading Ground is wrapping up this week

  From which we may conclude two things:

  1. It’s possible to wrap up a comic in a pretty graceful, organic way; Wright didn’t make a big announcement that things would be concluding and let that dominate the story for weeks/months/however long. He built in some story beats where people found themselves questioning decisions, settling on new directions in life, and which legitimately conclude the central story-driving conflict of the past 250 strips. I’ll be interested to see his promised next project (to be announced on Friday), and this time I’ll be sure to check it out from the beginning.
  2. Though I may have made of fun of the tendency of Websnarkings to depend on readings so deep as to be in danger of striking oil, it is clear that Eric is an astute and skilled analyst of stories and we all should be paying attention to him. That, or he is my natural rival and I must destroy him — I can never decide which².
• Long time readers of this page may have noticed that I have a tendency to build nicknames around certain creators and figures in the webcomics scene³ — thus, the Toronto Man-Mountain, The Radness Queen of [vaguely NoCal geographical location], the Latin Art-Throb⁴, my evil twin, and so on. Today we must retire one such nickname, as Gordon McAlpin can no longer be called my sporting bet nemesis. From an email I received from Mr McAlpin:
  

  I concede on our bet

  http://www.girlcomicstrip.com/ Dana Simpson is kind of working something but hell if I know what. It doesn’t seem like Universal is involved. I’m sure she’s still getting her development stipend for Girl, even if it will never appear. BTW, Multiplex turns 6 on July 10th and recently passed #600. :)

  Given that by the terms of our bet, there were as many as three more years to go before final status determination, I’m surprised that McAlpin was so eager to give up his dollar. Then again, sometimes prolonging that final act does nobody any good⁵. Then again again, Gordon sent me the agreed-upon stakes in the form of a PayPal transfer, so I had to substitute a dollar already in my possession in order to make good on condition #4 of the original bet.

  Then again^cubed, I don’t have a PayPal account and it’s not worth it to give a company I regard as intensely creepy any information about myself for one stinkin’ buck, so I’m released McAlpin from the monetary forfeit. Hugs all around, we’re all friends here, and time to think up a new nickname … since Gordon is the original stereotypical Canadian name, we may have to go in that direction.

• Metaphorical attic-cleaning time: in addition to dropping a complete graphic novel on us, Ryan Estrada apparently figured his hosting bills weren’t quite high enough, because today he’s announced the completely free, no strings attached single data bolus of (damn near) everything he’s ever done:
  

  This collection contains over 1000 pages of comics including Aki Alliance, Ped X-ing, Awesome O’Clock, Chillin’ Like Villains, Cartoon Coup, The Unbelievable! The Amazing! Computer-Savvy Ungulate, Frank: The Storybook, The Kind You Don’t Take Home to Mother, Sci-fi Drive-by, and Mystical Monkey. It also includes 25 minutes of adventure videos, with Expeditions: Africa. There’s no forms, no signup, no ads, just a single 826 mb download.

  I think it’s time to clear one of those promotional-item 1GB USB keys I’ve got hanging around here.

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¹ Who is not, sadly, an amalgam of Nick Frost and Edgar Wright, but we can dream, can’t we?

² Oh, wait, he’s offered to buy me scotch, which disqualifies him from the destruction list. My bad.

³ Although Eric Burns-White is one of the very few to have merited two such nicknames, also being known on this page as E. B.-White.

⁴ He’s dreamy.

⁵ Much like ripping off a Band-Aid™ instead of trying to gingerly remove it one yanked hair at a time.