#246

Hello! Factually Pointless do be coming to you today to tell you one thing, a singular thing that is on my mind, for reasons, and that thing is this:

I accept that adults need food and shelter, and no one provides these things for free. Therefore! Comics, like any other produced good, cost sweat of the brow and price of material, and the producers ought--nay, need--be remunerated amply for their efforts.

When I was a kid, on the internet, comics uploaded in jaypeg and other viable formats were free, because they weren't real. Now webcomics are confirmed as real, and I can't afford to read them--specifically, the ones from back in the day that are still producing new work, because I too am an adult, with food and shelter costs, and the legitimacy of these artists--who I was once able to support commensurately with the available avenues of support and my own income (simply showing up to the website, as my income was and has always been close enough to nil)--has led to deals with actual publishers, and holding back relevant content behind paywalls, and QUITTING YOUR COMIC TO START A FUCKING SODA COMPANY*. 

Also, I can't believe how much it costs to keep two cats and a husband alive. I can't really afford to support my favorite artists. Any of them. I'm thinking of the comics, but it's everyone. 

*

Comics can't be free. Not forever. Not for always. Sometimes they are, and that is a wonderful thing that I understand cannot last. 

However, today, on this day and at this time of the morning, I want to take a moment to say two selfish and useless things that I only mean in a certain sense:

1. Fuck soda pop. I don't care how crafty and good it is. Screw that.

2.  Comics should be free to all. Go ahead! Keep charging money for shelter, which is insanely fucking criminal when you think about it! Keep charging money for food and making it increasingly difficult for any given individual to grow their own supply! Also and perhaps even more criminal! Go right the fucking hell ahead! I don't give a shit anymore. Just take a chunk of all those taxes and subsidize every comic ever made and every comic that will ever be made for free public use and reproduction. Pay everyone who ever made a comic strip and give that comic strip to the people. 

*

If you make the bread fake and take even that away, the circuses better come directly to me, suck my actual dick to completion, and dazzle me like no circus has ever dazzled a man since time immemorial. 

Just sayin. 

--JL

*look. You can do whatever you want in life. Nobody has to make a comic if they don't want to. But while I enjoy a high-quality craft effervescent beverage as much as the next person--why, in youth, my friend Red and I were known as quite the connoisseurs, and indeed, I have tried probably hundreds of such tonics--if I have to make a choice, I would forsake ever to so much as taste a fizzy pop again for just one more Achewood strip.

I mean, at least any given strip will serve me for the rest of my life. All I got from pop tastin' is a working familiarity with empty bottle smell and an inability to even look at a bottle of coca-cola without retching quietly but intensely.