MythTickle by Justin Thompson for September 03, 2010

New blog is up. http://mythtickle.wordpress.com/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go/

Thanks for your patience on this strip, it didn’t update but it wasn’t my fault. Computer glitch at Uclick I guess. :(

As Wendy Pini once said, you start with a likable character, then you torture the hell out of him.

Unless this isn’t the end, then forget I said anything.

Noooooooo! BOODY!!! Can this REALLY be the end for the lovable…hey, is that LONESOME DOVE on the bookshelf next to War and Peace behind you? Awesome!

Justin, you’re a master of your craft, and I’m proud to call you a friend.

Chanticleer, you are RIGHT! Some of my favorite books and authors appear on my bookshelf. You know me too well, buddy. Thanks for the kudos, namaste as well.

Baslim, you’re right too. =)

Now that you’re here, you do this to poor, innocent Boody?! –Just look at Sir Dudley’s black flag of Despair, and at half-mast, too! Boody must come back, Cartoonista El Jefe, you meany!

“There is a divinity that shapes our ends.”–and some of us have better shaped ends than others…

Sisyphos, it’s not yet over. I hain’t yet seen a fat lady singing. In hornéd helmet or not, either which would be appropriate for this tickled myth.

OKay… All together now…

Puff the Magic Dragon… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OiOlnoyljk

I’ve read this strip since it started over on Sherpa. It’s one of the few I would follow anywhere. Just say where.

Justin I don’t think it’s necessary to jump ship just yet. I have enough “Favoirtes” in my links. One more wouldn’t matter, but you might still want to keep a presence here to let others discover your comic for the first time. New people are de-lerking all of the time and you never know who you may be leaving behind if you leave now. If you feel you have out grown GoComics, by all means go. It is just easier for me to find you here than follow a link to the latest comic like Legend of Bill. I started a blog because my friends at the Pibgorn comments site thought that I should have a place to save and share my humor that I have posted there. That was almost two years ago and I get about 4-500 visitors a month. That’s a far cry from the 11,000+ you get a day and that’s just the people who subscribe! You get a lot of people who read and comment too. It may be selfish of me, but…

Thanks Minotaur. And that’s all o’ yuz. You’ve definitely given me something to think about.

Cheers.

j

Bleeep man! I may be pie-lastered right now, but that’s no excuse. I’ve been following your(and I do mean YOUR) strip for two years now, don’t give up! EVER!

Justin, I am a comic addict and, yes, I will follow you. I have a large bookmark file of comics that I follow religiously so changing a URL and folder is no big deal for me.

However, this site is very convenient and needs only one login to comment on all of the strips. I usually do not register for offsite strips and that would take away from the experience. We have a community here, as I am sure you have noticed, and a lot of us post on a multitude of strips. That cross-fertilization would be lost. I would also point out that reading and posting comments is a MAJOR part of the enjoyment of the strip. How else would we become aware of all the esoteric references that you challenge us with? I would probably miss over half of those references.

But the biggest reason for you staying would be the loss of readership. I would expect you would lose over half of your readers due to inconvenience, loss of URL and forgetfulness. You presently get a steady supply of new readers from people by dint of being on this site - just clicking on the gocomics index out of curiosity (I am one of them), or reader’s comments on other gocomics strips. Realistically, what would be your source of new readers for a separate website?

I hear your frustration about delayed displays but it is not a big deal for us - at least not for me. Many of us follow strips that only publish sporadically - sometimes just a few times a month. We do it because the strips are worth it. Just as yours is worth it and even more so since you publish often enough for us to get emotionally involved with the characters. (Witness the pleadings to bring back Boody!)

If you have other reasons for leaving so be it. However, please don’t do it solely because of posting delays. Perhaps if you posted your wants and/or needs this community could come up with creative ways of getting them satisfied.

Namaste’

BTW, Saucy1121 mentioned reading your strips on Sherpa. Are there strips in the archives from before 11-15-07? If so how do we access them?

I don’t “subscribe” to this strip (or any other at gocomics); I just set a whole load of bookmarks. Switching the Mythtickle bookmark to some other location would take what, about half a minute…? So, Justin, do what ya gotta do…

Meanwhile, we obviously can’t be done with this story. Even if Boody’s not coming back, we need to find out what afterlife he ends up in… where *do* dragons go? Maybe he’ll end up in *Goodnight Moon” dining on roast penguin…

I only hope this means we get to see more of Ma’at…well, not MORE of Ma’at…might have to change the rating for the site to do that…but some more adventures with Ma’at and company.

Justin - I would follow this strip wherever it ends up. I’m so glad I discovered it. You are so talented and your characters so engaging. Wow!

Let’s see. .1. Coffee…Check. .2. Asprin…Double Check. .3. Comments…Oh, bleeep.

Should I take down my last comment?

Don’t all yell at once.

Johanan, what is that? (above) Skulker: Your long and thoughtful post deserves a decent response. Hopefully I can respond to the rest of you with this as well. Oh, and Joe Minotaur- I love the comment! “Pie-lastered” missives are my favorite kind. Sleep it off Joe, and rock me with a new note tonight. Very funny. You’re right about making too much of a big deal about my comic not being posted on time, I should just relax about it. It got taken care of very quickly once I saw that it had happened, these guys are great about that. It was just very bad timing, since I’m closing up a very important and permanently-transforming story in the MythTickle universe. The pros of putting MythTickle on its own site would be that I have complete control over its content, I’d still have tons of space for all of your excellent responses and comments, but I would also be able to have ads which would mean that I could actually make $ on this thing. Imagine that! Making money on my comic strip, that’d be very cool. But, I would lose a lot of you. Also, dealing with ads and sponsors and checking up on revenue streams and all that technical adding-up of hits and visitors to justify costs garbage is just not me. I just cannot handle that cold capital business side of this and if I tried to, the entire creative side of MythTickle would likely collapse. This strip come from a side of me that absolutely abhors that part of reality. If I were to try to equally meld commerce and my imagination, you’d probably wind up seeing Karma yelling “Aack!”, Merlin stacking up 4 foot high sandwiches, and Boody craving lasagna twice a month (No offense intended to those multi-million $ comic strips, I only wish I could get the readers they do, I’m just saying that MythTickle takes a different approach). Also, aside from turning into a business man, monitoring commerce of the site and maintenance would take up even more of my time than it already does. That can’t happen. After this story line is over, MythTickle will go back to a much simpler and graphic presentation without so much detail. The story line looked like that because I have other plans for it (wringing hands and chuckling deviously) later. So yes, I’m staying put and hoping that I’ll be able to find a way to make some $ on MythTickle, or that some daring and forward-thinking syndicate can see its potential and rescue me from my tower. Thanks for all the comments, I love you all. I’ll post this over at the blog site too.

Thanks Justin. Right now, I’m not: Pie-lastered Pie-eyed Pied off Pie faced Apple Pied or even Strawberry tart. How did that happen? Back to the task at hand. Don’t you get anything from Uclick for posting your strip here? If you think it’s too much of a chore to run your own website, talk to people who do. Bill Holbrook(Kevin an Kell, Safe Havens, On the Fast Track) among others would be a good place to start.

Joe, I talk with fellow web cartoonists all the time. Don’t you listen to my Comics Coast To Coast podcast available at iTunes and on the web at http://www.comicscoasttocoast.com/ ? Well ya’ should. =) That’s how I know how much work it is and how time consuming it is and how I know that it’s absolutely out of the question. Yes, Uclick does pay me a little for syndicating my strip here. I’m not supposed to disclose the amount but let’s just say what I get per month would not be enough to fill a car’s gas tank even once. It’s ridiculous for someone with over 11,000 subscribers. Just ridiculous. But hey, I need the gas. =)

@Justin: The button is based on an illustration of a Greek epic singer and kithara (professional lyre) player (a woman, I believe), no doubt singing about a mythological subject.

In this case, lamenting the very ideas that 1) Boody might be gone for good and 2) you might be gone for good from here as well.

I never realized how much I loved Boody until this story arc.

@JUSTIN THOMPSON: I’ll help you if I ever become the head of a daring and forward-thinking syndicate… and surfstuff55 is right, your artwork WOULD look awesome on T-shirts. Maybe you have business there… ^.^

Well, I still am waiting for Boody to transport to his body (shell) hanging in the spider web. The swirling as Boody went down reminds me of Stargate SG1. HOWEVER, will he remember anything of the other side?

That’s a pretty good rendering of the artist’s office. :)

I particularly like that the wings on Justin’s helmet are green, the color of Uriel, the archangel of death and lord of the Earth elementals.