It’s About Time
Corrections first, as yesterday during the hourly updates of A Softer World #1000 I spoke of alt-text disappearing as each new row of images was added to what ultimately was a twelve-part story. In fact, the alt-text changed with each new update but was not lost — it was added immediately below each row of photos, below panel #1, in grey text, upside down, and I overlooked it. It’s even right there in the screenshot I used in the post and I missed it. Fleen apologizes for the error.
- Also yesterday, I happened to notice that both Dinosaur Comics and Surviving the World dealt — by coincidence, no doubt — with the subject of time. The last time I can recall a coincidence of such proportions, two strips had hideous monstrosities from the deep, and before that there were the crocoform references the day that Steve Irwin died. Precedent and all that.
A’course, then both Messers Shepherd and North decided that each was the future self of the other, which is a weirdly Möbius-like kind of time-tangle of the sort that gives me headaches. If they are each other’s future selves, Shepherd seems to be taking a cautious approach to the risks involved, North appears to be doubling down, and Rich Stevens knows what time really is: a vector for regret. I trust this will tide us over on the coincidence-o-meter for the next two, two and a half years.
- Big Round Number o’ The Day: Jon Rosenberg¹ has just dropped the 500th consecutive scene on us over at Scenes From A Multiverse. While 500 updates on a MWF schedule over three years isn’t all that uncommon, bear in mind the more than 2000 updates over at Goats (presently between hosts, but accessible via the Wayback Machine), where it updated regular-like from April 1997 until April 2010; together they represent an unbroken stream of increasingly dense storytelling, complete with bizarre side-trips, twists, turns, and existential crises.
If you can think back as far as April 1997, think about what there wasn’t: no PvP, Penny Arcade, Diesel Sweeties, Schlock Mercenary, Sheldon, SMBC, or even other webcomics with names starting with letters other than P or S.
The Walkyverse was still six months from launch, Achewood another four years out, xkcd another four years still. Matthew Inman was still more than twelve years from launching the site that would eventually explode all over Charles Carreon, nobody alive could tell you about Homestuck, and even “Iron Man” Crosby’s Superosity didn’t start until 1999. Of all the webcomics still updating, pretty much only Help Desk and Kevin and Kell predate Rosenberg’s run.Oh, and there was that inaugural NCS Award for On-Line Comic Strip and all.
Rosenberg’s cast a long shadow and now seems as good a time to recognize. Congrats on 500 Jon, yeah, whatever — and thanks for the innumerable contributions before.
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¹ Standard disclaimer: Jon got me into this blog-based opinion-mongering gig, and at present is kind enough to spare the server space to host my daily word dumps. Our relationship is close enough that I actively avoided mentioning him on this page for close to six months after Fleen launched, to avoid any appearance of impropriety. With all that said, feel free to take this item with the appropriate amount of salt.
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