April 29, 2002
Halleleujah! I'm finally a mature adult! I'm a grown-up!That's right, while standing in front of the mirror and trimming my beard a bit, I found a grey hair in it. At first I thought it was a fluke, but after rooting around in there a bit more ("hmmm... no, that's egg from breakfast... that's dried chocolate milk... that's a squirrel") I found a SECOND one.
The really cool thing is that they're symmetrically positioned on either side of my chin. Granted, nobody can see them without standing close enough to smell the squirrel (by the way, it's a red squirrel, so I'm confident the grey hairs are not his), but hopefully, with time, they'll be joined by other grey hairs in the same areas, and I'll have a nifty pair of streaks in my beard, rather than the garden-variety, salt-and-pepper effect that is so common.
For those of you who could care only a little less than you currently do what a pair of hairs on some webtoonist's chin are doing, let me announce that as of Sunday the 28th Schlock Mercenary broke a million page-views for the month of April. This beats my best month of web-logs by 25% on that stat, and every other stat was up, too.
And now, for those of you who now feel like a number, let me assure you that you're not. I mean, sure, you can be counted and represented numerically, but I feel it both an honor and a privilege to be entertaining so many people. Granted, I've corresponded with only a tiny fraction of you, and actually met an even tinier fraction, but I still feel this strange sort of connection.
Maybe it's one of those commitment-type bonds. After all, Schlock Mercenary is wildly entertaining to create, but it's also tedious and laborious at times. Sometimes all that gets me to sit down at the table to draw is the knowledge that thousands of people out there want to see what comes next, and I really don't want to let them down. I mean, I don't know most of you personally, but I want you to be happy.
The errant thought that many of you are military or ex-military types with firearms almost never enters into my mind.
Anyway, on this million-page-month I think it's appropriate for me to say "Thanks for reading." It means a lot to me to know y'all are out there. Now is also a good time to restate my commitment: Fresh schlock, right here, every day, forever, or until I die. And in the words of Woody Allen (which I'll paraphrase badly) "I don't want to achieve immortality through my works. I want to achieve it by not dying."