June 8, 2004: A Positive Development

How often have you wished that a creator whose work you really liked . . . an artist, a writer, a cartoonist, a musician . . . would give up that stupid, distracting day job, and devote himself to entertaining YOU with his creations?

You've probably wished for that a lot more than it has happened. Day Jobs are a fact of life. It's a rare and lucky creator who can pay the rent with his art, whether it's music, art, or game design.

But right now it looks like somebody's about to pull it off. Randy Milholland, the creator of Something Positive, recently put up an appeal to his readers. "Send me enough donations to cover my crummy salary for a year, and I'll quit my job and cartoon full-time."

And he's almost there. His goal is a bit over $22,000, and as of the last update his readers had contributed more than $19,000.

We're rooting for Randy. Obviously, we believe in him, or we wouldn't be carrying his T-shirts (and other apparel, some of it rather frightening) in Warehouse 23. And we think it is just massively cool that (a) he's willing to take this chance on his art, (b) that his readers are coming through, and (c) that if it works, there'll be a whole more more evil, funny Milholland cartoons out there! (Among other things, if he can pull this off, he'll start updating his new strip, The New Gold Dream, every weekday. This is a fantasy story, very unlike Something Positive, but with an interesting twist . . . some of the characters in The New Gold Dream are the gaming characters of the S*P characters.)

Anyway: If you're a fan of Randy's, and you haven't contributed, think about throwing him a few bucks for everything that you've enjoyed so far and everything you WILL enjoy. And if you haven't ever looked at Something Positive, and you think you might enjoy a NON-work-safe comic about . . . well, about people . . . check it out.
-- Steve Jackson

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