’Mong the various delusional ambitions I’ve had o’er the course o’ my life — & still have, which includes the recent “video game level critic”, which isn’t a career, & still writer & game developer, despite only making tiny updates in both these categories nowadays — when I was a kid I had ambitions o’ becoming a newspaper cartoonist, back when people other than that 1 blogger still read newspaper comics & newspapers in general. For ’bout 2 years in middle school — starting near 20 years ago — I wrote a drew a comic for e’ery day, like newspaper comics had, up to a total o’ 600 comics. Similar to my sprite comics & Pokéme comics, this was impressive in quantity, specially for a middle schooler, but when we see the quality o’ the comics, we can understand how I was able to crank these out. Also, one should not get the misimplication — my spellchecker says that’s not a word, but it’s wrong: I have now made it 1 — that I created a comic e’ery day: more oft I would create these comics in batches, usually several weeks after they s’posedly were published.

As this comic’s title hints, this comic followed the tradition o’ focusing on cute animals ( Garfield was my favorite comic @ the time ). 2 o’ the main trio, Pandora the Maine Coon ( Pandy for short ) & Peta the bunny, were based on pets we had. Since this comic is 20 years ol’, you can probably surmise that these animals aren’t ’live anymo’. Doney wasn’t based on any real animal I had, tho I did later get a turtle I named Doney, who also died, since I was too poor to afford the proper equipment & too busy to take care o’ it. Those who have read my great work, “Doney & Sid & the Epic o’ the Lightbulb Bong”, may recognize that name. After I wrapped up the 3rd “book” — yes, I drew these comics into fake treasury books like real newspaper comics had, included with commentary in red pencil, which I think was inspired by a Dilbert book, back when Dilbert was a comic people actually read for the comic itself, not just a footnote to its creator’s wacky Twitter political antics — I renamed the comic “Doney & Sid” & continued writing comics, only on rare occasions actually drawing comics, for a few years later, all the way up to when I started writing the unreleased novel Boskeopolis, the precursor to Boskeopolis Stories ( which, itself, is already 10 years ol’, horrifyingly ’nough ). As it turns out, Pandora & Peta, as much as I loved them as pets, were like Shermy & Violet in Peanuts. If you’re asking me who those characters are, that’s precisely it: they were so boring that I gradually phased them out o’ the comic & replaced them with characters that could actually inspire jokes. I don’t e’en think I e’er latched onto any consistent personalities for either o’ them.

Possibly the most boring opening to a newspaper comic that wasn’t named Garfield. If I had been familiar with Pearls Before Swine by this point I would’ve opened the comic with something as exciting as an ol’ bingo-playing woman being crushed to death by a ceiling tile ( a’least that’s how that comic opened in e’ery paper by the Bezos Post, if its 1st treasury is accurate ). I think I thought I was being clever introducing all the main characters’ names & tying it to the “punchline”. Eh, there will be far worse comics.

Case in point. The red commentary below it says this was actually the 1st comic I made. That can be the only explanation for why I chose “Where’s the Turtle’s Treat” o’ all lines as the title for the 1st “treasury”, as it’s not a particularly funny punchline. I guess the joke is that their owner is abusive & neglects his turtle. So he’s a foreshadowing o’ my neglect for my real turtle later on in high school.

I included this comic only ’cause o’ the commentary below it, pointing out how “interesting” these early comics were. So e’en then I knew these comics blew.

I looked up “umisaki” in Google Translate, & it tells me it means “seashore”. According to my commentary, I stopped using this alter ego ’cause ’twas too close to the Ninja Turtles. Apparently I was ’fraid Mirage Comics would sue my 12-year-ol’ self.

Being inspired by Garfield, there are a lot o’ “boy, this animal sure likes eating food that would poison them in real life” jokes. ’Cept e’en Garfield was much funnier ’bout it. I will be skipping most o’ them.

The weird thing ’bout this comic is that, being made by a moomer, & not someone o’ the silent generation, like the majority o’ newspaper comics, this comic is a strange, anachronistic mix o’ boomer jokes & video game references you’d find in a webcomic. I don’t think I’ve e’er seen video games @ all in a newspaper comic. That I chose an NES is particularly weird, since I hadn’t e’en played a real NES by this point & the NES was far from my favorite Nintendo system.

O yeah, & this comic’s “punchline” is just an advertisement. That’s probably the most important thing to note — its failure to be funny, despite that being its expressed goal.

1 o’ the things I loved as a kid, & still appreciate, ’bout Garfield are all the different title banners it would have for its Sunday strips. I was always disappointed in other comics that didn’t do something like this & made sure not to make the mistake myself.

I guess I only bothered to colorize the non-Sunday comics for the 1st week — I guess as a reference to the fact that @ that time Garfield had a special version o’ the 1st book that had all its comics colorized.

I figured this comic was me trying to establish Pandora as the “dumb” 1, but looking @ the commentary below I was reminded that Pandora, who I think was bought from a seedy seller, had some obscure disease that made her not want to eat & constantly grumpy. After my mother took her to the vet & had her treated, we were all surprised by how much nicer she became afterward. So this comic, which attributes Pandora’s problem to a serious eating disorder as a joke, in hindsight is mo’ fucked-up than funny. Quite an achievement so early in my career.

I’m pleasantly surprised I found a comic that I still find funny this early. I don’t like the weird Dreamworks smirk Pandora’s doing with her brows in panels 1 & 2 but I love Doney’s sour eye in the 3rd panel.

In true newspaper comic fashion, in order to pad out these daily comics, I just keep repeating the same joke ’bout being absentminded ’bout food for the whole week.

Gulford, believe it or not, would continue up to when I stopped writing Doney & Sid in round 2011. ’Cept in this later edgelord political iteration he would undergo quite a change: he would become a Nazi. This was back in the good ol’ days when fascism was widely held to be a joke & you would ne’er hear a politicians praise Hitler, unlike nowadays where just ’bout e’ery Republican does so to get his 15 minutes o’ fame.

Then jump o’er it, you idiot.

Damn, e’en young me is straight ripping into this comic. He’s right: this comic doesn’t have a joke, other than that 2 cat comic stars happen to be fat.

This comic baffled me & made it seem like these 3 just hate each other now, but I think the joke was that s’posedly Pandora was shaved bald by Peta & this was blamed on Doney ( how she judges Doney did it is unexplained ). The problem, ’course, is that this is meant to be indicated visually, but this is uncolored, & Pandora’s hair is ne’er drawn, so Pandora doesn’t look any different.

Mo’ unfunny advertisements. Man, I was really simping for Nintendo as a kid. This was back when Nintendo’s new releases were actually exciting & not disappointments. ¿Remember how people ragged on Super Mario 64 DS for its shitty controls? Man, I loved the hell out o’ that game when it 1st came out. Li’l did we realize how shitty a rerelease Nintendo would make for that game later on.

Cleo was a cat my grandmother had, who was already ol’ when we moved in, & would die the next year. Cleo would be replaced by the world-famous Patches, who was a baby then, but has recently died of ol’ age ( as had my grandmother a couple years before then, as commemorated in my masterpiece poem, “Taco Time” ), which only reiterates how ol’ these comics are. These facts are far mo’ interesting than this comic, which thinks saying hi to someone with “uh” in the middle is a punchline.

The 2nd actually-funny comic, & only week 6 — ¡& e’en my younger self agrees! I e’en managed to sneak in a visual gag o’ Doney’s shell springing up in the 2nd panel — albeit it’s hard to see, as I was still am a terrible artist then — & a different camera angle on the last panel.

This is some surrealist antipunchline. Also, ’nother advertisement.

Before this comic I’d forgotten ’bout how the squirrels would gather round Peta’s cage. This comic feels less like a comic & mo’ a boring pet blog ’bout all the “quirky” things my family’s pets did.

Our family also had a mouse named Dario, who was my older sister’s, which Pandora would, being a cat, try to grab. Thinking back, I don’t think I e’er made a character for a bird my younger sister had — I have no idea why we had so many pets; I think my mother wanted each o’ my siblings to have a pet ( mine was a fish that died 2 days after I got it, so I got the short shaft ). I guess by that point I realized that these character’s weren’t interesting.

This is the 1st unintentionally funny comic, thanks to the absurdity o’ Peta being possessive o’er grass, which is all o’er the place, & Dario’s “punchline”, which doesn’t connect to the rest o’ the comic @ all.

I’m shocked that this brilliant character, a horseshoe that causes chaos for no reason, didn’t stick round till the end. I think I just picked a horseshoe ’cause e’en my younger self couldn’t fuck up drawing it.

What actually is shocking is that I stretched the nonjoke o’ horseshoe causing pain & suffering to these animals for 2 whole weeks. We will be skipping the rest o’ these, as they’re boring.

Young Mezun won an award for his shocking discovery o’ an e’en less funny version o’ “I Hate Mondays”.

Doney discovers some edgelord from Kiwi Farms, who, presumably, called him a racial slur.

I love my stubborn hatred o’ punchlines by adding this pointless “Got some coffe” — whate’er “coffe” is; I wonder if it tastes like “covfefe” — line, which is like taking the air out o’ the punchline — not to say that the punchline was great in the 1st place.

Funny ’nough, I only use my TV for video games. I don’t think I intended to imply that Doney is taking advantage o’ his newfound discovery o’ television programming in that 2nd comic & that I just forgot the 1st comic’s joke immediately afterward.

Cosmo was a dog my uncle had. Not only is Cosmo dead, my uncle is also dead. The photo from my poem, “Shiny II”, was taken @ his memorial ( which, despite this poem coming out in November, actually took place in June ).

I think that’s s’posed to be the phone Pandora’s chopping up. Which makes no sense, since Cleo doesn’t need the phone to come o’er. Checkmate, liberal.

When I 1st saw that this wacky topic would fill 2 whole weeks o’ material, I was pissed; but then I realized it just meant mo’ content I can skip. Fun fact: we’re now up to the 150’s in terms o’ strip #s. That’s ¼ done. Be glad you didn’t have to read the stuff I skipped.

Look @ that inconsistent characterization: before Peta was so dumb she didn’t realize she had to eat; now she’s making wisecracks @ Doney’s expense.

& now I’m realizing that Doney’s characterization is inconsistent, too. ¿Wasn’t he lazy & dour before ( he certainly is later on )? ¿Why’s he dancing like he’s Snoopy here?

’Stead o’ “Where’s the Turtle’s Treat”, this comic should’ve been called “Where’s the Joke”, ’cause I have no idea what the point o’ Horseshoe Man scheming with the moon is s’posed to be.

These comics, which introduce the character who would later be named Sid, show why Sid stuck round after Pandora & Peta got Lyman’d: these comics are strikingly much better than anything else in this tedious “treasury” — specially that 3rd comic where Sid devours the fuck out o’ the wanted poster, which is hilariously badass.

Man, I can’t believe Cute n’ Cuddly’s already going woke, bro. I can only imagine how well it’d go if someone who “treat[ed] a black unequal” tried to rectify that situation by giving them a chew toy. Actually, that’s not true: that’s how the average edgelord YouTuber “apologizes” after spending a whole hour whining ’bout cancel culture.

Literally just a Garfield comic.

¿Why’s their owner bringing a pet turtle to help him carry his golf club? Man, he really is an abusive owner. E’en I didn’t make my turtle bring me golf clubs — tho that’s mainly ’cause I ne’er played golf.

This whole week o’ comics is just Doney fat-shaming Pandora’s boyfriend. Worse, this is a ripoff o’ a series in Garfield, where Garfield does the same ( ’cept Garfield, being fat himself, has such N-word privileges ). Those jokes, unsurprisingly, were much funnier than these.

Worse, that caps off the 1st book. Well, ’cept that due to the weird formatting o’ this book, I separated all the Sundays from the dailies. Howe’er, I will spare you almost all o’ them, as none o’ them are interesting, & the vast majority just reiterate their week’s themes. But I will leave 1 mo’ with Sid:

My only complaint gainst this comic is that the final panel is bad. If I made it now, I’d end it on the final pause.

I wouldn’t blame anyone who bowed out on reading the next 2 books with me, e’en the incredibly abridged version I have here. The comic does get a’least mo’ interesting — albeit not better — in the next few books.