How to Apologize Without Accepting Any Blame

A friend of me once told me that their teenaged daughter had actually taken some advice I’d given in my comic and applied it to her life. They seemed amused when I cringed.

I asked what the advice was. They told me that she had taken panel three of this comic and used it to craft an insincere apology to one of her classmates. They seemed confused when I continued to cringe.

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How to Apologize Without Accepting Any Blame

A friend of me once told me that their teenaged daughter had actually taken some advice I’d given in my comic and applied it to her life. They seemed amused when I cringed.

I asked what the advice was. They told me that she had taken panel three of this comic and used it to craft an insincere apology to one of her classmates. They seemed confused when I continued to cringe.

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Exhibit Good Form

This comic is one of my favorites, and it’s one of the very few that I can clearly remember writing. That’s probably because instead of writing it sitting at my desk, staring at a blank Word document, chanting to myself, “come up with something, come up with something,” I wrote this sitting in the Orlando airport. We were flying back home to Seattle after Missy’s audition for what was essentially her dream job at Walt Disney World.

I got the idea for the comic, then I sat there at the gate and scratched the whole script out on my Palm Pilot. At that point, my daily site traffic was something like a few hundred unique visitors a day, which felt huge. As for Walt Disney World, we had hopes, but neither of us really expected Missy to get the job.

Less than three months later Basic Instructions was running in Seattle Weekly, we lived in Orlando, Florida, Missy had her dream job, and I was being trained at the Tower of Terror (which was then, and still is, my favorite ride). Three months after that (thanks in no small part to the intervention of Scott Adams), I was getting thousands of uniques a day. Three months after that I had a book deal with Dark Horse Comics.

Life can change pretty fast. This comic reminds me of that, because the guy who wrote it would have been shocked to see who he was nine months later, and both of them would be pretty surprised if they could see where I am now.

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Exhibit Good Form

This comic is one of my favorites, and it’s one of the very few that I can clearly remember writing. That’s probably because instead of writing it sitting at my desk, staring at a blank Word document, chanting to myself, “come up with something, come up with something,” I wrote this sitting in the Orlando airport. We were flying back home to Seattle after Missy’s audition for what was essentially her dream job at Walt Disney World.

I got the idea for the comic, then I sat there at the gate and scratched the whole script out on my Palm Pilot. At that point, my daily site traffic was something like a few hundred unique visitors a day, which felt huge. As for Walt Disney World, we had hopes, but neither of us really expected Missy to get the job.

Less than three months later Basic Instructions was running in Seattle Weekly, we lived in Orlando, Florida, Missy had her dream job, and I was being trained at the Tower of Terror (which was then, and still is, my favorite ride). Three months after that (thanks in no small part to the intervention of Scott Adams), I was getting thousands of uniques a day. Three months after that I had a book deal with Dark Horse Comics.

Life can change pretty fast. This comic reminds me of that, because the guy who wrote it would have been shocked to see who he was nine months later, and both of them would be pretty surprised if they could see where I am now.

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Give Directions

Wow! MapQuest! When was the last time you heard that name? Before MapQuest I used a program called Microsoft Streets and Trips. It was a CD-ROM. You’d print out the directions and bring the sheaf of paper with you to consult as you drove.  It was not terribly accurate, and would get me lost more often than not, but at least it got me lost near my intended destination, which was better than I usually did on my own.

Note from Missy: This comic made me wonder if Thomas Guides were still around. Which led me to learn from Wikipedia that they were primarily a west coast thing, while I’d always assumed they were nationwide. Also, in the Wikipedia, “The neutrality of this article is disputed.” I guess even a bunch of books full of street-level maps can raise people’s ire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Guide

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How to Give Directions

Wow! MapQuest! When was the last time you heard that name? Before MapQuest I used a program called Microsoft Streets and Trips. It was a CD-ROM. You’d print out the directions and bring the sheaf of paper with you to consult as you drove.  It was not terribly accurate, and would get me lost more often than not, but at least it got me lost near my intended destination, which was better than I usually did on my own.

Note from Missy: This comic made me wonder if Thomas Guides were still around. Which led me to learn from Wikipedia that they were primarily a west coast thing, while I’d always assumed they were nationwide. Also, in the Wikipedia, “The neutrality of this article is disputed.” I guess even a bunch of books full of street-level maps can raise people’s ire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Guide

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How to Act Casual

Yes, I know that beatniks are a terribly outdated reference. I still use it for three reasons.

1.       Beatnik is a funny word.

2.       The nearest non-dated equivalent, hipster, is a moving target. What constitutes a hipster changes every year. If you had told someone from ten years ago that hipsters today would wear plaid shirts and have handlebar moustaches, they wouldn’t believe you.

3.       I can make fun of beatniks without fear of offending beatniks because the very few of them who are still around are not reading web comics, unless there’s a comic about bongo drums that I’m unaware of.

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Act Casual

Yes, I know that beatniks are a terribly outdated reference. I still use it for three reasons.

1.       Beatnik is a funny word.

2.       The nearest non-dated equivalent, hipster, is a moving target. What constitutes a hipster changes every year. If you had told someone from ten years ago that hipsters today would wear plaid shirts and have handlebar moustaches, they wouldn’t believe you.

3.       I can make fun of beatniks without fear of offending beatniks because the very few of them who are still around are not reading web comics, unless there’s a comic about bongo drums that I’m unaware of.

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Calm a Friend Down

The first square comic! We’re slowly zeroing in on the comic’s final form. This is also the first place I used the idea of freaking “all the way out,” which is an idiom I still use in conversation to this day. 

Also, this is another comic that was obviously written about Rick, even though I was still too squeamish to attribute it to him in the comic. If memory serves, he read this one and knew it was about him. That’s one of my favorite things about the guy. He has no illusions as to his place in the universe.

Note from Missy: Here we enter 2007, and at the time, we were probably both freaking all the way out. After receiving a job offer, we had one month (January) to quit our Seattle jobs, pack up our lives, find an apartment in Florida, and get us and the cats and a car and our stuff moved out there. It was definitely a time of stress.

Also! I know that in the last few years, Scott tried his hardest to get the narration to never go over two lines per panel. I’m interested to watch these progress and see if that tightening-up happens suddenly, or over a long period of time. :)

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As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).

How to Calm a Friend Down

The first square comic! We’re slowly zeroing in on the comic’s final form. This is also the first place I used the idea of freaking “all the way out,” which is an idiom I still use in conversation to this day. 

Also, this is another comic that was obviously written about Rick, even though I was still too squeamish to attribute it to him in the comic. If memory serves, he read this one and knew it was about him. That’s one of my favorite things about the guy. He has no illusions as to his place in the universe.

Note from Missy: Here we enter 2007, and at the time, we were probably both freaking all the way out. After receiving a job offer, we had one month (January) to quit our Seattle jobs, pack up our lives, find an apartment in Florida, and get us and the cats and a car and our stuff moved out there. It was definitely a time of stress.

Also! I know that in the last few years, Scott tried his hardest to get the narration to never go over two lines per panel. I’m interested to watch these progress and see if that tightening-up happens suddenly, or over a long period of time. :)

You can comment on this comic on Facebook.

As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).