Scenes From A Multiverse: Go and read it!
Jonathan Rosenberg just launched his new comic, Scenes from a Multiverse, and I am more excited about a webcomic than I have been in a long while. There are only seven comic strips in the archive so far, so it shouldn't take long to read them. (Oh, and keep an eye out for mouseover text--I missed it at first!)
When I think of my current relationship with webcomics, it's impossible not to think about Jonathan Rosenberg. His comic Goats is the first webcomic that I really got into. It's far from the first one I read, or even the first that I made sure to read every time it updated, but it is the first webcomic that truly made an impact on my life. Goats has probably had more influence on me than any other comic I've read. Several months ago I made a webcomics diagram, showing which comics led me to read which other comics. The chart was not comprehensive, and it quickly became out of date, but that's not the point.
The point is that on this chart were 23 comics. One of them was Goats. 15 others were comics that I read because of Goats, either because Goats linked me to them or because comics that were linked by Goats linked me to them. (Or comics that were linked by comics that were linked by comics that were linked by Goats linked me to them... you get the idea.) Of all the comics on that chart, 2/3 were either Goats or comics I read because of Goats.
I started reading Goats in April of 2005. I remember the time because the link I followed from Scott's blog said "Happy 8th birthday to Goats!" and I remember that Goats' birthday is April 1st because it's the day after my birthday. It wasn't actually April 1st anymore by the time I followed the link, but that's not important. The important thing is: There was a series going on called "Good Hitler vs. Space Hitler" and it was hilarious. Just this absurd idea, a James-Bond style hero who is a clone of Hitler, but good, and who inhabits a universe containing various other clones of Hitler. (And Scientist Hitler is secretly in love with Good Hitler, but it's not much of a secret because everyone knows.) I think this is the first strip that I read, but I'm not certain. I am particularly fond of that one, anyway.
I fell so in love with the concept of Good Hitler that I started to read the entire Goats archive, just in case there were some references to Good Hitler in earlier comic strips. (There are.) Along the way, I developed a love for Goats as a whole. I adored the characters, particularly Jon. I liked that the comic never insulted my intelligence. At the same time, I liked the silly go-with-the-flow nature of the jokes and storylines. I liked the bizarre internal logic of the Goats universe.
I mean, Gregor Mendel is a villain!
It's no exaggeration to say I became obsessed. Goats was not just my favorite comic, but quite possibly my favorite thing I had ever read. I powered through the archive, then went back and read it all over again. Almost all of my spare time was spent reading Goats, particularly my two favorite series, Stalking the Wild Ex and Doodletown. I was sixteen and needed something to distract me from the depression and stress that plagued me during high school. Goats was my escape, and even when I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it. Every time I opened my browser I immediately went to Goats.com, so to save time I went ahead and made it my homepage. I got all the Goats merchandise I could convince my parents to buy for me. I even started working on my own comic that was a complete rip-off of Goats, but with characters based on me and my friends, and a dragon instead of a chicken. Unfortunately I left all those sketches and notes someplace and never got them back. I'm sure that comic of mine was terrible, but I would love to be able to show you something from it. Suffice to say: Goats pretty much ruled my life back then.
Shortly after I started reading, Goats had its longest series ever, Infinite Typewriters. This story changed Goats from a gag-a-day comic into a story comic, in a sense. There had been plot threads in Goats for ages, and the frequency and sensibilities of the jokes didn't change that much, but the focus of the comic shifted. Before, the stories were vehicles for jokes, and now the jokes served to drive the story. At the time I was thrilled about this change. There was a promising new story premise, exciting new characters had been introduced, preexisting characters were given new purpose... Everything familiar that I had come to love about Goats looked shiny and new. I never anticipated this new format for my favorite comic presenting any problems.
And for a while it seemed like there were no problems. The story progressed, slowly but perceptibly, and the sense of humor was still brilliantly absurd. Take the description of the mythical cow-snatcher: "Two dragon butts strapped together that just keep makin' each other angrier and angrier. They fly over the fields, scoopin' up cows and careless folk into a great maw full of giant teeth. Teeth the size of a hundred regular teeth." Even more than this description of a cow-snatcher, I enjoyed the eventual reveal about cow-snatchers' true nature, because it included the phrase "blood-flavored grape jelly." This was my favorite time as a Goats reader. New and exciting things were happening, I felt like the story was leading somewhere, and the truly bizarre things that are peppered throughout Goats still caught me off guard with surprising consistency.
My infatuation with Goats faded so gradually, I didn't notice it was disappearing until the levels were critically low. There were too many characters, spread over too many locations, and the story was being told over too long a period of time for me to keep track of everything. Several months would pass between character appearances, and I found that I couldn't remember when I had last seen a given character, what they were doing or where they were at the time, or even whether that character was currently attempting to destroy the universe or save it.
If I can find a marker for the point at which Goats lost me, it's probably the day when the laptop running the simulation of the universe was destroyed. Up until that point, I felt like I kind of understood where things were going and why things were happening. After that point, I'm pretty confused. About everything. About the different locations, about character motivations, about why the universe is still going after the laptop that's simulating it was destroyed. I don't feel like I have any grasp of the story any more. Goats ceased to surprise me, because I no longer knew what to expect of it.
Of course, I remained loyal. I still read Goats every time it updated. A year ago Del Rey published its first Goats collection, Infinite Typewriters, and I preordered it. Even if I wasn't enjoying the comic as much as I used to, I still felt enough gratitude for those first two years or so of reading Goats that I wanted to do my part to keep it going.
But it was hard to keep up my enthusiasm for Goats. Another Goats collection from Del Rey came out a few months later, and I couldn't justify the expense to myself. I had just bought a Goats collection. I couldn't spend more money on Goats collections so soon. I decided to put off the purchase until ComiCon. I didn't realize that by not purchasing this book I was sending a message, nor that the message was completely accurate: Something about Goats isn't working for me any more.
When I got a new computer recently, I didn't bother setting Goats.com as my homepage.
The third Del Rey Goats collection came out just recently, and I had the idea that I would buy that one at ComiCon as well. I didn't realize that the Goats collections were not selling as well as Del Rey, or Rosenberg, had hoped. I was not the only one not buying the two newest books. Apparently other former die-hard Goats fans were feeling lost and confused, too. At the beginning of May, Goats went on hiatus.
I met the hiatus with an incredible level of ambivalence. I was full of emotions, and they tended to contradict each other. I didn't want Goats to disappear, and I was disappointed in myself and other readers for failing to provide enough support for it. All the same, I was aware of my waning love for Goats, and I knew why I and others had been less than enthusiastic about the comic as of late. I didn't like the hiatus, but I understood that it was necessary. For Goats to survive, something needed to change.
Now we have that change, in the form of Scenes From A Multiverse. It has all of the absurdism and wacky internal logic of Goats, without the continuity to snarl and confuse readers. Each strip takes place in a completely separate location from the others. There will be repeat locations once a week, and the location to be revisited will be determined by a poll of the readers. So you've got fun, new places to visit, with audience interaction and no cumbersome narrative thread to follow.
Oh, and that multiverse that Scenes From A Multiverse takes place in? It's the Goats multiverse. So while it's new and exciting and not at all tied down, it's still familiar and connected to that comic world I have come to love so deeply.
Scenes From A Multiverse. Read it, Internet. Enjoy it. Tell others about it. When there is merchandise, throw money at it. Please, just do whatever it takes to keep Jonathan Rosenberg making comics.
Because I think my heart would break if he ever stopped.
(EDIT: I have been informed by Jonathan Rosenberg that the laptop was not actually destroyed. It was a typewriter. That's been bugging me for ages!)
When I think of my current relationship with webcomics, it's impossible not to think about Jonathan Rosenberg. His comic Goats is the first webcomic that I really got into. It's far from the first one I read, or even the first that I made sure to read every time it updated, but it is the first webcomic that truly made an impact on my life. Goats has probably had more influence on me than any other comic I've read. Several months ago I made a webcomics diagram, showing which comics led me to read which other comics. The chart was not comprehensive, and it quickly became out of date, but that's not the point.
The point is that on this chart were 23 comics. One of them was Goats. 15 others were comics that I read because of Goats, either because Goats linked me to them or because comics that were linked by Goats linked me to them. (Or comics that were linked by comics that were linked by comics that were linked by Goats linked me to them... you get the idea.) Of all the comics on that chart, 2/3 were either Goats or comics I read because of Goats.
I started reading Goats in April of 2005. I remember the time because the link I followed from Scott's blog said "Happy 8th birthday to Goats!" and I remember that Goats' birthday is April 1st because it's the day after my birthday. It wasn't actually April 1st anymore by the time I followed the link, but that's not important. The important thing is: There was a series going on called "Good Hitler vs. Space Hitler" and it was hilarious. Just this absurd idea, a James-Bond style hero who is a clone of Hitler, but good, and who inhabits a universe containing various other clones of Hitler. (And Scientist Hitler is secretly in love with Good Hitler, but it's not much of a secret because everyone knows.) I think this is the first strip that I read, but I'm not certain. I am particularly fond of that one, anyway.
I fell so in love with the concept of Good Hitler that I started to read the entire Goats archive, just in case there were some references to Good Hitler in earlier comic strips. (There are.) Along the way, I developed a love for Goats as a whole. I adored the characters, particularly Jon. I liked that the comic never insulted my intelligence. At the same time, I liked the silly go-with-the-flow nature of the jokes and storylines. I liked the bizarre internal logic of the Goats universe.
I mean, Gregor Mendel is a villain!
It's no exaggeration to say I became obsessed. Goats was not just my favorite comic, but quite possibly my favorite thing I had ever read. I powered through the archive, then went back and read it all over again. Almost all of my spare time was spent reading Goats, particularly my two favorite series, Stalking the Wild Ex and Doodletown. I was sixteen and needed something to distract me from the depression and stress that plagued me during high school. Goats was my escape, and even when I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it. Every time I opened my browser I immediately went to Goats.com, so to save time I went ahead and made it my homepage. I got all the Goats merchandise I could convince my parents to buy for me. I even started working on my own comic that was a complete rip-off of Goats, but with characters based on me and my friends, and a dragon instead of a chicken. Unfortunately I left all those sketches and notes someplace and never got them back. I'm sure that comic of mine was terrible, but I would love to be able to show you something from it. Suffice to say: Goats pretty much ruled my life back then.
Shortly after I started reading, Goats had its longest series ever, Infinite Typewriters. This story changed Goats from a gag-a-day comic into a story comic, in a sense. There had been plot threads in Goats for ages, and the frequency and sensibilities of the jokes didn't change that much, but the focus of the comic shifted. Before, the stories were vehicles for jokes, and now the jokes served to drive the story. At the time I was thrilled about this change. There was a promising new story premise, exciting new characters had been introduced, preexisting characters were given new purpose... Everything familiar that I had come to love about Goats looked shiny and new. I never anticipated this new format for my favorite comic presenting any problems.
And for a while it seemed like there were no problems. The story progressed, slowly but perceptibly, and the sense of humor was still brilliantly absurd. Take the description of the mythical cow-snatcher: "Two dragon butts strapped together that just keep makin' each other angrier and angrier. They fly over the fields, scoopin' up cows and careless folk into a great maw full of giant teeth. Teeth the size of a hundred regular teeth." Even more than this description of a cow-snatcher, I enjoyed the eventual reveal about cow-snatchers' true nature, because it included the phrase "blood-flavored grape jelly." This was my favorite time as a Goats reader. New and exciting things were happening, I felt like the story was leading somewhere, and the truly bizarre things that are peppered throughout Goats still caught me off guard with surprising consistency.
My infatuation with Goats faded so gradually, I didn't notice it was disappearing until the levels were critically low. There were too many characters, spread over too many locations, and the story was being told over too long a period of time for me to keep track of everything. Several months would pass between character appearances, and I found that I couldn't remember when I had last seen a given character, what they were doing or where they were at the time, or even whether that character was currently attempting to destroy the universe or save it.
If I can find a marker for the point at which Goats lost me, it's probably the day when the laptop running the simulation of the universe was destroyed. Up until that point, I felt like I kind of understood where things were going and why things were happening. After that point, I'm pretty confused. About everything. About the different locations, about character motivations, about why the universe is still going after the laptop that's simulating it was destroyed. I don't feel like I have any grasp of the story any more. Goats ceased to surprise me, because I no longer knew what to expect of it.
Of course, I remained loyal. I still read Goats every time it updated. A year ago Del Rey published its first Goats collection, Infinite Typewriters, and I preordered it. Even if I wasn't enjoying the comic as much as I used to, I still felt enough gratitude for those first two years or so of reading Goats that I wanted to do my part to keep it going.
But it was hard to keep up my enthusiasm for Goats. Another Goats collection from Del Rey came out a few months later, and I couldn't justify the expense to myself. I had just bought a Goats collection. I couldn't spend more money on Goats collections so soon. I decided to put off the purchase until ComiCon. I didn't realize that by not purchasing this book I was sending a message, nor that the message was completely accurate: Something about Goats isn't working for me any more.
When I got a new computer recently, I didn't bother setting Goats.com as my homepage.
The third Del Rey Goats collection came out just recently, and I had the idea that I would buy that one at ComiCon as well. I didn't realize that the Goats collections were not selling as well as Del Rey, or Rosenberg, had hoped. I was not the only one not buying the two newest books. Apparently other former die-hard Goats fans were feeling lost and confused, too. At the beginning of May, Goats went on hiatus.
I met the hiatus with an incredible level of ambivalence. I was full of emotions, and they tended to contradict each other. I didn't want Goats to disappear, and I was disappointed in myself and other readers for failing to provide enough support for it. All the same, I was aware of my waning love for Goats, and I knew why I and others had been less than enthusiastic about the comic as of late. I didn't like the hiatus, but I understood that it was necessary. For Goats to survive, something needed to change.
Now we have that change, in the form of Scenes From A Multiverse. It has all of the absurdism and wacky internal logic of Goats, without the continuity to snarl and confuse readers. Each strip takes place in a completely separate location from the others. There will be repeat locations once a week, and the location to be revisited will be determined by a poll of the readers. So you've got fun, new places to visit, with audience interaction and no cumbersome narrative thread to follow.
Oh, and that multiverse that Scenes From A Multiverse takes place in? It's the Goats multiverse. So while it's new and exciting and not at all tied down, it's still familiar and connected to that comic world I have come to love so deeply.
Scenes From A Multiverse. Read it, Internet. Enjoy it. Tell others about it. When there is merchandise, throw money at it. Please, just do whatever it takes to keep Jonathan Rosenberg making comics.
Because I think my heart would break if he ever stopped.
(EDIT: I have been informed by Jonathan Rosenberg that the laptop was not actually destroyed. It was a typewriter. That's been bugging me for ages!)