It has been said that one should never discuss Politics, Religion or Sex in polite society, but then, the Internet has never been all that polite to begin with. R.A. Comics discusses those subjects along with movies, comics and everyday life.
In the beginning of the story Jim, Ira, Ben and Thom work at a small I.T. support company called “Random Acts of ADP”. After a while Ben decides that work has begun to interfere with his game time and quits to become a professional cartoonist. Not too long afterward he rejoins Jim and Ira doing PC support.
Scott runs the local comic shop called “RA Comics” staffed by failed Democratic hopefuls. The shop serves as a hangout for the guys from “Random Acts” and it is here we meet Grant. He’s a history teacher at the local Community College and a big comic book fan.
At home, Ben has his ups and downs with his lovely wife and kids. Uncle Joe lives in their “In-law” suite and serves as the cantankerous voice of a previous generation.
About the cartoonist
Tovias has wanted to be a cartoonist since forever. No seriously since forever, there’s like these stone tablets in a cave in the Middle East that have some kind of cuneiform writing on them that mention his wanting to be a cartoonist (they also mention he should take an art class or two). Growing up as a poor child in Alabama, he knew from an early age he was destined for greatness. Later it was explained to him that there had been a clerical error and actually the kid living two farms down from his was the one destined for greatness and Tovias was only promised mid-level mediocrity, but he chose to embrace his mediocrity with a passion.
He started his cartooning career in the fourth grade with “The Walnuts” featuring appearances by BatBoy and the Superkids (It was much later that he discovered what copyright law and trademark infringement meant). Tragically his early cartooning career was cut short in fifth grade when an drawing project for History class was openly mocked by his teacher in front of the entire class. Taking the comments of not being good enough to heart, he stopped drawing publicly for the next twenty-two years.
It wasn’t until his obsession with “EverQuest” led him to webcomics that he started to feel the cartooning bug biting him again. After reading the online works of early webcomic artists such as Scott Kurtz and Barry T. Smith, Tovias chose to try his hand at online comics. In 2003 he launched “RA Comics” with its flagship strip, “Random Acts of ADP”. Over the next year-and-a-half he proceeded to make every rookie mistake a web cartoonist could make; late updates, missed updates, filler strips and blogs full of excuses. After a brief hiatus he tried retooling the strip and changing the focus, halfway through this process he lost the RAComics.com URL to cybersquatters and was met with new challenges now of not only retooling, but of rebranding. Tovias took a step back and decided to end the strip until such time as he could focus more time and attention on a strip and do it right.
Kvetch! was the result of this extended hiatus, after missed updates and more frustration Kvetch! seemed to be on it’s way to meet the previous incarnations of the strip when suddenly it happened. Late one night while going through the archives of the strips Tovias noticed that the RA Comics URL had been freed from it’s squat upon prison. Quickly he re-registered it, vowing to never let it escape again. The next morning he began the long hard road of once again rebranding the strip and company back to what it was, what it was meant to be.
Tovias currently lives in Southeastern Virginia with his wonderful wife, five kids, two cats, a studio full of comic books he really needs to organize and a box full of Green Lantern action figures (“THEY’RE NOT DOLLS”). Recently Tovias left his full time job and is currently focusing on splitting all of his time between family, yard work, and working on the comic.
