Rad Internet Site

What a wild week in Flatliner world this was at the very end of 2004. We get a new character in Rick’s cousin who was a real person that I had a massive crush on. At least it milks the pirate joke again. That is the one enduring legacy of Flatliner- its love for this awful joke.

Then we get a strip from Gina with a totally new art style! I love it. I wish I could work within that style, but I don’t have the skill and I wasn’t going to learn how to work with it. The Jason drawing is great and updates him to my look at the time, which is largely unchanged except closer to death now. That it takes place in a chain bar from our mall is appropriate but also sad. We don’t ever get to see her rendition of Harvest.

Tom returns for the first time in over a million strips. He did not like this strip due to real life accuracies we didn’t know about. I think I took it down at the time? Is it rude to post it again, now? No. I’ll pull strips with racist or homophobic humor, or ones that just weren’t good enough to go up then, let alone now but for a relationship that was so notoriously lopsided, bordering on abusive 20 years ago it passes all my checks. Maybe the shotgun is a little much. I think they’re still together and happy now.

Good thing nobody reads this site.

I do a week’s worth of posts before 9 AM than most people do all day. I also in 2004 did more lazy comics before Noon AM than most people did ever. I did not get up as early as I do now back then.

Gina was never “caught up” the way I was with Harvest’s chaotic personality. She was always learning new stuff because she met him after high school and I met him in 9th grade. He could say something that sounded mouth-frothing-ly insane to most people and it would roll off my shoulders like it was a completely normal statement. I probably did the same to him on many occasions.

I love the third strip. That is me recycling one of the best strips ever but pasting over this new character, Rick, on top of the old strip. Rick was a dedicated Flatliner reader who I had never met before I got a job where he was my coworker. He was pumped to meet me, and also to be featured in the strip eventually. I gave him this, which was cruel. Also, I didn’t even draw the monstrous person to be him originally. It’s a reworking of a single frame I drew for Tetris the Movie 3 in MS Paint. I don’t know if he knew that.

I think we’re referencing Four Swords Adventures in one of these strips. What a delightful game for people who had a lot of gaming equipment AND a lot of friends. Both of those guys would have been extremely happy if there were two more guys just like them. Of course it was the most fun game that year.

The notion that Hitler is just alive and around, running for office would be hilarious if we weren’t living in times where that seems like it could be a reality at any possible second.

I like Jason’s little out-loud affirmation of his situation. As the strip has gone on we see Harvest really get deep into the persona of an impervious hyperactive ball of anger, which he was and presumably still is, and Jason just kind of get tired and just trudge through other people’s over-invented scenarios that no one should ever have to be in, which I do.

Prescient. Nothing but prescience here.

Ryan’s afterlife offshoot continues, while this other, far more confusing offshoot gets skipped again. It’s weird. I have the vaguest fleeting memories of this thing that features none of the Flatliner characters but is very much in the Flatliner style and I can’t remember who or what the hell they are. No disrespect to them, they contributed to the strip several times. I just don’t know them.

It’s like it’s The Tortellis of Flatliner, if you wanted me to explain the situation to literally only me. Except in this case the titular Tortellis didn’t spin off from Cheers at all and you’re supposed to root for these characters you don’t know at all? I’m down with this situation if Flatliner is Cheers, those strips are The Tortellis and Rad Internet Site is my Frasier moment. Am I Frasiering? Is that even a good thing?

There’s a few strips in the archive that I don’t know what to do with. There’s only about 3 of them total, and over the course of the last 20 years, I’ve lost the frame of reference. I genuinely don’t remember who these characters are supposed to be, and why they have no connection to me at all.

It’s strange, as that is probably how most people feel reading Flatliner. I shouldn’t feel that way, though? Right? It is a comic that was meant to keep track of my own inside jokes. If it didn’t do that, then it fails? I don’t know- there may be an apocrypha collection for some of the less offensive strips, if they can be edited into something comprehensible.

Today we have the second Plymouth Rock strip. I definitely named a Geodude or two things like 1620 or PlyRock back in the day. Geodude is the most hilarious Pokemon. I should have referenced him in the strip.

This also has the one and only appearance of Dan. Dan is a hilarious human being who can boil anything down to just the fun parts and make everything else disappear. However, even admitting the slightest lack of knowledge of Symphony of the Night would set his internal rage alight. You were supposed to know that shit, at all times.

Ryan is in heaven, investigating the loose ends left over from the Death of Harvest of story arc. He’s on brand.

Well, the Game Boy Advance SP was out, so it was a miracle we got any strips released. That was a game changer for handheld systems, despite the whipping-out of money required that we did not really have the capability of doing. Still, I’d find a way. Then I’d find a way to own more than one. And a Game Boy Micro. I didn’t have a problem, you had a problem.

I opted out of a couple strips to get here, and shifted a little for continuity’s sake. You’re not missing much- targeted takedowns of specific people. One was about a person we know couldn’t speak without using a specific slur, and there was just going to be no way to make sense of it without dropping the same slur about 40 times. He was generally speaking an awful person, and his presence doesn’t need to be here. Another one was a more lighthearted but still highly specific takedown of someone no one, not even a passerby in Flatliner, has seen or spoken to in like 15 years. I won’t be tracking him down to show him his glorious return.