Break out the champagne, it’s post #400! After four long, thankless years, I have managed four hundred posts on this beast. And you know what that means, don’t you?
No, it doesn’t mean I’m spinning the chamber of a revolver loaded with a single bullet. Silly person! It means I’m announcing the next issue of Bands I Useta Like magazine!
Work in progress- subject to change (©Matty Boy Anderson)
Just look at what’s inside:
- No One Cares
- Who Gives A Shit?
- It Doesn’t Matter
- I Might As Well Be Polishing The Brass Railings Of The HMS Titanic
- Seriously, No One Gives A Flying Fuck
- Everyone Is In Love With Garbage And Lies
- We Are All Worm Food Anyway
And more!
If each post on this site was 1,000 words (not quite), I would have written 400,000 words here. Can you imagine? The only thing I might have done that many times in my life is fart. 400,000 farts would have more meaning and value than as many words written, and smell nicer. I could sell someone 400,000 farts more easily than a book of my comics. Compare the amount of people who bother to read, with the amount of people who bitch about bad smells. Clearly I picked the wrong racket.
I took time and energy I couldn’t spare to set up a “Patreon” page to fund the production of my comics. If I worked for Patreon, or Google, or some other dream-pimp, I might have turned a “profit”. I might have secured a lucrative “book deal” with one of those whore companies that bury you if your politics don’t line up with theirs. Since I don’t play nice, or suck corporate cock, I get to starve. That’s why I don’t care about advertising the contents of the upcoming issue. What the fuck does it matter? The people who were going to buy it, will buy it. Everyone else clucks from their ivory tower that I’ve been “rejected by the free market”, like that’s even a reality anymore.
There is a fifth issue of Bands I Useta Like coming. It will have almost all-new material in it, plus probably some reprints of older strips. If that appeals to you, you have my gratitude. I appreciate your desire to go against the grain. I have to self-publish it because I have neither the time nor the inclination to pitch to what passes for publishers nowadays. It exists, like a podcast. Cut me an advance to reprint a collection, or fuck off. You want to bring my work to the mythical “larger audience”? Pay me. That’s the way it used to be. I don’t care about “bad precedent”, or the “bottom line”. Did you create the work? No? Then fuck you. Pay me.
I don’t care about the political agenda of you, your magazine, or your publishing imprint. Fuck you. Pay me. I don’t care about the other cartoonists you print. Fuck you. Pay me. Everything you see here comes out of my pocket, or my partner’s. I don’t want to hear about your “guidelines” when I’m scrambling to pay rent, buy food or medicine. Fuck you. Pay me.
I’ve created a small empire of comics that people buy even with no advertising. I get traffic on my site merely for typing out my thoughts. I’ve kept a single comic strip going for two decades, while watching one legendary cartoonist after another shrivel up and die. Cartoonists and artists who defined your dreams. Dead. You think I’ll let that happen to me? Fuck you. Pay me.
It’s partly my fault. I gave away too much for free. It’s easy to fall into that trap on the Internet, because people expect everything to be free. That’s doesn’t make it true, or right. Never mistake my passion for naiveté. That’s your fault if you do. This isn’t what I do in my spare time. This is what I do. Period.
Yes, this is harsh. Life is harsh. Life is “misogynist”, “racist”, and all the other concepts you waste your life trying to erase or fix. If it wasn’t, your life would have no meaning. No one would care. People only care when you struggle against something and triumph moments before your untimely death. No one with a functioning brain stem gives a fuck if anything offends you. Get over it or shut the fuck up. You’re polishing the brass railings of the Titanic, and you found a blob of dried jizz. No one cares. No one.
Make something, believe in something, or shut the fuck up.
Bands I Useta Like #5 is slated to bow this May, for “Free Comic Book Day” at Criminal Records in Atlanta, where I will have a table again. (#5 will not be free.) This will not happen in the event of:
- My death
- The death of a pet or someone very close to me
- Sickness preventing the completion of the material
- Starvation or eviction due to not being paid
- Suicidal depression or overwhelming futility
- Incarceration, or physical incapability brought on by severe injury
I figure the odds be 50/50. There is no security in my life. If there is in yours, maybe you should thank your goddamn lucky stars, motherfucker. If you’re sure you’ll have a roof over your head a year from now, maybe you should be thankful and shut the fuck up.
You got parents that are still drawing breath? Be thankful. Can you buy food and medicine when you need them? Be thankful. Maybe your job’s not so bad. Maybe your life isn’t. Can you hear? Can you see? Need I go on?
If my application is accepted, you’ll see me at “DragonCon” for the first time in 16 years. I don’t get my hopes up over conventions, as they’re always the first to call something I’ve done “problematic” and shut me out. Newsflash: all great art is considered “problematic”. Fuck you if you think like that, you fucking censor. You pearl-clutching, fascist, poseur-activist pussy. Crawl back into the “safe space” between your mother’s hairy legs and do us all a favor.
Another 1,000 words. See you in the funny papers.
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