Mine is that I have a really stupidly large collection of Little Golden Books, and I don’t even have any kids, I just like buying them and looking at the art. THERE YOU KNOW YOU CAN START TAUNTING ME WHILE I READ THE POKEY LITTLE PUPPY AGAIN BITE ME

I said at the start I’d give it five years to see if it works, but I feel like I’ve just…begun? Weird. I just don’t know how to not make comics.

Lately I’ve been watching Strip Search, the reality show about people who want to make it as a webcomics artist. Not many people know it but I somehow got to the third round of shortlisting for this show last year. That’s not a brag, I think there were something like 40 billion rounds of shortlisting in order to whittle over a thousand applicants down to the dozen contestants we’ve seen on the show. But the reality of spending two weeks in another country when I had just started a new job and really I have a wife and some cats at home am I really just going to leave them for two weeks and what if I win, am I really going to drag them all to Seattle? meant that being on the show was not a feasible option anyway.

Sorry, rambling. My point is that I was watching it, and really became a fan of Lexxxy (who I used as a basis for how I draw Anna, fact fans) and especially a fan of Erika Moen, who just got evicted from the show. On her own comic she posted about how she had dinner with Robert Khoo, and he asked her what her brand is, and she didn’t really know. It occured to me that I should think about what my brand is, you know, the stuff I’m into.

I’m into playing old video games on my Commodore 64, drinking chocolate milk, reading and drawing comics and living in the suburbs with my wife and cats. That’s pretty much my ‘brand’.

So why am I instead doing comics about radio DJs? *headscratch*

I like doing Hive FM though! It’s fun. I think the comic’s working better than it did when it started, and I’m having fun writing and drawing it. I’m interested in mass media and how they act as gatekeepers and how crushing it is to work in an industry that is becoming incredibly irrelevant to the point of absurdity. And Action Sally is a good character that I’ve been drawing for way too long now so hey, why stop now?

My plan at the moment is to keep doing Hive FM here on Funny Webcomic until September, at which time the Hivefm.com site will have ‘caught up’ to where we’re at here and new comics will go up exclusively there. What’s going to happen to Funnywebcomic.com in September when I hit the five year mark? No idea. Hopefully you’ll be along to see with me…

If you haven’t had a chance though, I highly recommend you watch Strip Search. It’s like a reality TV show, but you actually give a crap about what the people are making! Now I like reality TV as much as anyone I guess but there’s only so many cupcake challenges I can watch before I start to question how important cupcakes are really.

As I said, Mister J wrote this one, and my favourite contestant is actually Erika because God damn man she can draw and she really has her act together. More cartoonists should be like her! I should be like her!