Reality Amuck

August 6, 2003. Wow, six years ago. It seems as if time has flown by. Penny Arcade and PvP were only a little over 4 years old. Even then they were well on their ways to becoming the powerhouses of webcomics they are today. It seems like so much has happened since then.

If you have read my bio you already know that I wanted to be a cartoonist from as far back as I can remember. You’ve already heard the story of how my 5th Grade History teacher humiliated me in front of my entire class and for the most part crushed my dreams of ever becoming a cartoonist. But in mid 2003 I had been reading a few webcomics for a while and the cartooning bug really got me going again. Armed with markers typing paper and a tutorial by Barry T. Smith (of InkTank) I set out to become an Online Cartoonist. And immediately I allowed life to get in the way and started missing updates and making excuses. Looking back it seems that has been the trend for a while now.

August 6, 2009 marks the 6th anniversary of RA Comics, though several names have been attached to the strips posted here. “Random Acts of ADP”, “Westerwald Place” and “Kvetch” to name a few, but it has always been RA Comics.

The name “RA Comics” came from a buddy of mine. I was trying to come up with a URL for the site and couldn’t think of anything. He asked, “What’s the name of the strip?”
I told him “Random Acts of ADP”
“That’s easy, call it RA Comics dot com”

I held that URL for years until, during a rough time in my life, I let it slip away and it was gobbled up by cyber-squatters. I tried using other URLs over time, always checking if RA was free again and eventually just gave up. Imagine my surprise and delight when I recently checked late one night and found that it had just became available. I quickly grabbed it and won’t be letting it go for a good long time.

With RA Comics now back in my control, I was charged up again. I really needed to start getting back on track with the comic. At first I started just blogging to the site so that I could at least remain somewhat active online. But that wasn’t enough. Earlier this week I had a conversation with an online friend via twitter. He asked about my site and where the comics were. When I had to explain the situation I felt horrible. How could I consider myself a cartoonist if I wasn’t actively cartooning? I noticed that the anniversary was approaching and made a decision.

As you can see above, I have uploaded a lot of my archives, basically everything that I could find. As I was uploading I realized that I was missing years of strips. They are around here somewhere on various old hard drives or disks. For now, I hope you will enjoy looking through some of my older work. As I recover more strips (hopefully more from the 2004 – 2007 range) I will be posting them immediately. I am still toying with the idea of taking the George Lucas route and “correcting” some of the earlier strips to meet my original artistic vision.
In the meantime, I’ve got to get off my duff and start making you guys some comics. I have several newer strips that were never published and I will be adding them as well, but I’ve got to get back into the swing of putting out a comic on a regular basis.

Thanks to everyone for stopping by and taking a moment to read some strips.

Tovias.