I used to read Sluggy Freelance all the time. This winter, I stopped. Pete was taking a lot of time off, and the strip wasn’t fun for me anymore, so I stopped & didn’t go back (except for John Allison’s fill-in week).
Well, last week I went to the site once. Torg & Riff arguing over who’s smarter. Whatever. Today I gave it another shot, and saw this:
As I have matured far beyond Sluggy fanhood, I post this not to encourage anyone to donate monies to Pete (I shan’t)–but to encourage anyone who’s never read Sluggy to go read a comic or 1,000 on the site, thus burning even more of Pete’s bandwidth and driving him out of business.
I’m sure I’ll grow out of Sluggy eventually, but I’m damn sure I’ve had more than $5 of enjoyment out of it since I first found it. I did in fact donate on those grounds, even though I normally never do.
Why are you so complaining? OK, if the quality’s declined (in your opinion, I haven’t made up my mind yet) this is a bad time to ask, but no-one’s forcing you.
If Pete gets rich drawing substandard comics for the rest of his life, I’ll join you in ranting, but I’m not convinced yet.
PS. OK, it’s lame. But didn’t you laugh at WET SLAPPITY OF DOOM!?
Hmm…
Rather than tick people off, I could apologise, like this:
I don’t really want Pete Abrams to go bankrupt. I used to really enjoy Sluggy Freelance. I was being facetious.
On the other hand, everything I said before the quote is true. I literally gave up on Sluggy, after being a fanatic for 2 years or so. So if Pete has to get a day job, I’ll be sorry for him, but not personally affected.
But primarily, I’m a big Jonathan Swift fan.
But that would void the rhetorical effect of my thread, so I won’t.
Oh, who cares about some halfwit webcomic anyway? You’re probably all Buffy fans too!
Man, I ordered my first Sluggy book like six weeks ago and it hasn’t arrived yet. I’d forgotten about it until recently. How long do they take?
I get Howard Tayler and Pete Abrams mixed up. Which one is devoted to the notion that web comics represent all that’s right with the world and syndicated comics are base and evil? While I agree with that sentiment somewhat, hearing it from a web cartoonist seems kind of self-righteous. In fact the whole web cartoonist community strikes me as a little creepy. They have their own awareness weeks and give each other awards and stuff like that.
But they do make some good comics. I like the convoluted storylines in Sluggy Freelance, because I can reread them and get more out of it. Although I admit a few of them are pretty dumb.
Maybe I’ll send him the five dollars if I get my book before the drive ends.
Sluggy might not be the best-drawn or best-written web comic around today, but you have to admit Pete Abrams has a uniquely skewed way of looking at the world. For that alone he deserves support.
I’m pleased. But not surprised - I suspect building up a large following and then hitting them with the guilt card is always going to be quite effective. (Maybe not in the long run compared to charging for things, but as a one of will do wonders.)
