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 This was a tribute comic I created when Steve Troop ended his Melonpool web comic back in 2004. To find out why this is so meaningful for me, let’s board Mr. Peabody’s wayback machine to the year 1997. The place: El Cerrito, California; in particular, the Ohlone Greenway underneath the BART tracks. A young cartoonist who’d just been taken on by a fledgling operation called Future Features Syndicate decides to visit the El Cerrito Library to see how his cartoons look on this thing called the “Inter-Net,” since he doesn’t have one of these new “computing machines” himself. He signs at to the information desk, and turns on the 12" monitor to type in “http://www.spindata.com/futrfeat” (don’t bother checking, it’s long gone). Thrilled to see his little scribbles all pixelated* and stuff, he checks the “links” page, and finds a site called Stu’s Comics. Whoa! Look at all these comics! Some of which I’ve never seen before! And wait, there’s another site! This is fantastic! Some of these are really excellent! One in particular catches the young cartoonist’s eye. As the fluorescents buzz above and the muted sounds of people checking out books ten feet away float towards him, he finds himself enraptured by a strip with a Snoopy-esque dog and a group of bigheaded aliens. (It might drive Steve crazy to know that this cartoon was the first Melonpool strip I ever saw, considering that the characters weren’t exactly typical in that strip, and there was a certain amount of backstory needed to understand it. It didn’t matter, the drawing style was fun enough to catch my eye in a big way.) So the young cartoonist clicks on the link next to the strip, and spends the rest of his internet time exploring the Melonpool** site. My God, it’s professional looking! And he gets exposure on these Stu’s and Webcomics sites! This is fantastic! Exposure... without having to deal with a syndicate! What if I... what if... I think if Melonpool hadn’t been so much fun to read, I might not have been so heavily inspired. To me, it was a comic that should have been mainstream, that should have launched a thousand TV specials and merchandising deals, that should have been discussed at the water cooler in every office. And I felt like this cartoonist had ignored the stigma of being an “unsyndicated” cartoonist and did his level best anyway, and in my mind, had gotten where he was on his own. It was only later that I found out about the realities of internet cartooning. But in those days, it was still young and new and fresh... like radio in the 20's or television in the ‘50's. *Copyright Jason Furness. **In those days it was called “The Adventures of Mayberry Melonpool.” It’s since been shortened to “Melonpool”. It’s just as well that the strip had the longer title then... the word “adventures” was easily a word that got my attention. |