The webcomics blog about webcomics

By Now, You’ve Probably Missed It

Paragon of agility Rich Stevens is going to be a business school teaching case someday, what with his ability to turn on a dime¹ and execute his mad plans quickly; Small, fast, ruthless … all Edge as Mr Gibson put it. Yesterday, about this time, he put up a microsale [link probably dead by the time you read this] in honor of his tenth anniversary of Quitting The Day Job:

The one thing I don’t know about Diesel Sweeties is the day I posted the first comic. It was some time in early 2000, twelve years ago.

The one thing I’ll never forget about Diesel Sweeties is the first week it was my full-time job. That was ten years ago this week.

This is the longest, most stable-yet-rollercoastery job I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve screwed up plenty, but never enough to have to give it up. It’s all thanks to you folks out there reading and buying stuff. I’ve been sorting comics by year for my 3,000+ strip ebook project and it made me wonder … do I have a shirt in the store from every year this had been my job? Actually, kind of yes.

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Because this is how my brain processes things, I’m doing a DecaSale. Ten shirts are on sale for $12.10 each for 24 hours. They represent a little tangible reminder of every year from 2002-2011. A few will be weeded out during this sale to make room for 2012.

This sale starts NOW, 3pm Eastern AKA Easthampton, MA time and runs for 24 hours. [emphasis original]

I think if you were to do a comprehensive trawl of my archives (and I would never recommend that to anybody), you’d find certain names cropping up with regularity: Gran, Kellett, Khoo, Vernon, Beaton, because they’re consistently out there doing new stuff, consistently interesting to me. But probably the person that gets the most mention would be Rich², because nobody in webcomics is out there trying as many things, experimenting, pushing himself, looking for The Next Way Of Doing Things, and The Way After That, and The Way After The Way After That. He is in constant, almost Brownian motion, trying, succeeding, failing, learning, and having the goddamn time of his life as he does so. He just might be who I want to be when I don’t grow up.

So good on yer, Richard Stevens the Third — it’s been a great decade for you, and I can’t imagine the next ten years will be less {fun | frustrating | exciting | meaningful | other value-laden words here} [choose all that apply]. As for everybody that missed the DecaSale, there won’t be another of those for ten years, or until Stevens has some other excuse to do something similar that pops into his head like unto a bolt from the blue. Week from Tuesday, I’m guessing.

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¹ Before any of you make with the sexual innuendo, just … don’t.

² Actually, it’s probably Scott Kurtz³, now that I think of it, and for mostly the same reasons as Rich.

³ And Guigar.

Thanks, big G! I like that someone out there can take my lack of a plan and turn it into a virtue.

[…] of following up, it’s a hoot and a half to read. As agile as he runs his business¹ (and he’s nothing if not agile), his mind is running faster still, bouncing from brilliant idea to brilliant idea, mining only the […]

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