It's calmed down considerably since then, but it's nice to see that a few of you stayed, and Goats now has a healthy 200-person daily audience, which continues to grow. Unfortunately, I am no longer able to purchase food as all my income is going to pay my web-hosting bills, but such is the price we pay for our passions. It's all worth it to me as long as I know that there are people out there enjoying it, slowly growing addicted, and readying their wallets for the inevitable onslaught of Goats: The Merchandise.
We've received a number of other honors and mentions in addition to the Yahoo thing, but the one thing that always impresses me the most is the email that people send and the links that people put to the site from their homepages. It always brings a smile to my face whenever i run across a new mention of Goats on someone's page, and it's even better when they take time to write and express their feelings about the strip. Good or bad, doesn't matter to me, but i know that if people feel the need to pick up their electronic quills and send feedback, i must be touching a nerve somewhere, and that's what it's all about. So keep the letters coming, and i'll be adding the newest letters we've received to the letters section in a day or so.
One thing you may have noticed is the proliferation of new characters over the past month. I've been telling people that the strip is just going through growing pains, and it's important to find the right mix of characters for Our Heroes to interact with, but let's be honest, introducing a new character is a great way not to have to come up with a new plotline for a few more days.
Regardless of whether or not these new characters are the result of my own laziness or a flash of creative inspiration, hopefully in the fullness of time they'll all find their places and settle in nicely with the other kids. Feel free to let me know who and what you'd like to see more of; I'm always interested in finding out what's working. It's hard to see the picture when you're inside the frame, and i count on my readers to give constructive criticism.
One final note on the new characters -- one of them is not entirely new, I must admit. Back in my high-school days (which are days that I do not remember with any particular fondness), I tinkered with a comic strip for my high school newspaper. I cranked out about 2 or 3 of these before i decided that perhaps my talents needed some time to mature (the strips were absolutely awful, and not fit for human consumption), but i always enjoyed one of the characters that had crawled out of that particular pool of primeval ooze. I've scanned one of the strips that i was able to find in my highly unorganized collection of papers and other assorted garbage; see if you can spot the ancestor of one of the characters that is neither animal nor mineral.
Anyways, that's about all the babble I can spew for the meantime, but please keep coming back, read the strip, and tell your friends, relatives, pets, religious leaders, politicians, and neighborhood butchers about the site.
september 1, 1997