Rad Internet Site

No notes. Except for a typo, which I didn’t fix.

I suppose in 20 years when I’m launching Rad Printed Zine (in 20 years technology will have regressed to the early 1980’s for some reason) I’ll clean up some of visual details I dislike, such as that terrible portal in the second strip.

Maybe I’ll get rid of that clip art of planets, too. What I won’t be giving up will be that amazing Dragonzord poster. That thing is gold. Well, it’s green. Then it was white. Then it starred in Power Rangers The College Years by Ian in an earlier strip.

I’m digging this. I censored one bubble due to racism and added nonsense. I enjoyed creating this weird little turn of events and I want to keep it, even if I have to disrupt the pacing a little. The effects on the door and the call back to the desert behind the couch set both make me really happy.

Also I guess I predicted twitter. If I were to revive Flatliner there’d have to be 280 characters these days. Good on me for calling out the characters. Often using a real world conversation as a jumping off point, including the people who were there at the time made sense, though it really stomps character development into the ground. The person who was there usually was happy to see themselves, though.

I really missed an opportunity in the third comic to change the poster in every panel. That’s a real shame. But like Harvest used to say with alarming frequency- Shame and success are just two ways of looking at the same thing.

Here it is, the part of the chapter that builds up to its name, and the longest single story arc from all of Flatliner’s run. It pays homage to Beavis and Butthead Do America with a very different setup to a same punchline as well as a throwaway joke on The Critic about Hitler being the mailman on Cheers.

Added to it is a weird bit of breaking down a fourth wall that also lead into another room that doesn’t exist. I suggest that webcomics are subjects to networks and ratings (TV is my real family) and they we are in danger of cancellation. Spoiler alert: we get cancelled and change thematically for a while. It all gets thrown away in the end.

I can’t believe that I went so far as to specifically create a game controller that is definitely supposed to be a GameCube control but I didn’t give it any GameCube controller colors. Remember when the orange one came out and they called it Spice?

This is what Flatliner is all about: showcasing horrible people doing terrible things. At least I’m actually sort of chuckling at some of this week’s sample. Harvest, the walking Internet that he is really could Hitlerify a conversation with breathtaking speed. But I am truly laughing at “I’m sorry” being an unbelievable lie.

The stigma around D&D has been obliterated by it somehow becoming popular and then several years later that whole pandemic thing. The fact that our Flatliner versions apparently stand around what would probably have been called SC State College by TS Toys rules cat-calling our male friends’ successes and failures with women as a hobby is troubling at best.

I will rectify the situation by not directly showing Mitch’s wife this strip. I’m a good person.

Adventures in my own personal trashiness. Some say they would remember this party as my first time being comfortably intoxicated in a group scenario. Whatever they said, I would have to believe as I do not remember it in any way that doesn’t involve photographs or this strip.

As I continue on this endeavor I find myself asking- “when is the god damn space story?” I named the chapter after it, and there have only been the most fleeting signs of it. It’s probably blown up in my head. It might only be four strips and I was doing something akin to repeating the joke of Prom Kings.

The last strip, there? I think my world view might be a Nine Inch Nails song in a major chord. Then, or now? Who’s to say?

The last time I paid any attention at all to the Resident Evil series was around when RE4 was released. Well, unless I refer to someone as a “resident evil” but that has never happened. It might, now. This is a pretty good take on exactly what playing that game was like. So many QTEs. Remember those? Anyway, remove 12 sword guys from SSBU and give me any Resident Evil character in their place. Any of them. Even a dead body that didn’t get zombified.

Snafu Dave was great. I hope he’s still alive. I hope The Used is still Dana’s favorite band and Snafu Dave still does art for them and the two have never talked to each other not even once. After a few cons I would meet up with Dave in Las Vegas one time where we pulled a casino heist. I’m not kidding. Though it was more of a confidence game than a heist. Anyway, we found a blackjack dealer who didn’t look at our hands and just paid out as long as we kept letting him talk about Everquest.

This meticulous, artfully done strip by Gina might as well have been a placeholder for any time I did not feel like putting up a strip. Snow is great because you can just look at one lonely flake tumbling like a dainty turd from the heavens and you can just be like “fuck work, time for my hobbies!” At least I can, these days. I’ve had jobs that would have required a doctor’s note to get out of a blizzard.

I guess the Prom Kings storyline continues? I mean, it didn’t start in the Prom Kings chapter, and doesn’t play out in any way that would be appropriate for naming a chapter after it, but it does go on, and it is accurate. I, being a too-old-to-be-getting-taken-to-high-school-dances-20-years-old found myself at a high school dance and I don’t remember who the offender or offendee was in this ex-boyfriend-showing-up-scenario. I have replaced them in my memory with entirely different people. If I recall correctly the afterparty for this dance was me drinking rum with the girl’s parents and watching Gone with the Wind, which of course would have made for a much better strip.

Dense Jason trying to make plans is a great bit. The narration is still fun. This time in my life is suddenly very bright and glowing with what was going on- something I can’t say for a lot of what happened during these years or the fifteen years I spent after Flatliner being hammered. That isn’t supposed to sound sad. At least I didn’t go to a dance to try and win an ex back.

We get an origin story for the Zelda-as-stalker bit. Seems right. The doors are a particular focus for me. They were used for many purposes throughout Flatliner, but they are entirely fictional. The real life equivalent to TS Toys’ only entrance was an open entrance into a terrible mall, where Harvest’s real world cell phone accessory booth lived. I’ll state for a second time that it’s good that I never drew up maps of these locations, real or fictional.