Despite the late nights, sweating over pads of paper, inky hands and callused fingers, stressed deadlines and angry emails, constant loss of cash and sacrifice of (admittedly nonexistent) social life, the last two years have been pretty groovy for me. Two years of Goats. It hasn't been easy, and I'm more tired than I've ever been in my life. Juggling this site with a full-time job and the occasional attempt to get out of my apartment has proven a bit of a challenge, but luckily I have more than a bit of a masochistic streak, and I've hit a stride which I can probably maintain (at least until some sort of internal organ bursts).
As I've said before, though, without readers this would all be meaningless. We have over 3,000 daily readers, and we're serving over 300,000 pages a month, which is beyond anything I could ever have imagined back in those early days of April 1997, when the cartoons looked like they were scrawled by monkeys with epilepsy. And the supportive emails I've gotten have gone a long way towards bolstering my strength, and I thank you for that support.
We've come a long way in the past few months especially, with the start of our mailing list and the progress that's being made on the animated short (mailing list subscribers got a special treat and have seen the initial models for the Diablo 3D character). Of course, we're not stopping now; there's a lot more to come.
Today, we took a big stride towards making the animated short a whole lot better; we have a new member of our team on board, and while I can't go into detail about it right now, suffice to say that it's going to be absolutely incredible. I'll give you the inside scoop as things coalesce a bit more.
As well, we have plans to move the site onto our own server, which is going to be accompanied by a number of changes, including a complete site redesign, message boards, new t-shirts and a bunch of other new features which we'll unroll over the next couple of months. Stay tuned.
For now, we have one brand-new feature for you, concocted in the steamy depths of the mind of uberfan Drew Johnson, the man who brought us The Battle Goat of The Republic. Enjoy, but do not abuse, Goats: The Drinking Game. (Note: To cover my ass, I must add that that you should not actually attempt to play this game, and it's only meant as an entertaining read. That said, let me know how you... uh... enjoy it.)
And, as an additional treat, we're participating in the The Great Internet April Fools Day Comic Switch. John Allison of Bobbins will be doing Goats (huhuhuh) for April 1 and 2, and I'll be doing Bobbins for those days. There are some crossover elements, so you may want to check out both sites to get the full experience.
That's it for this month -- and thanks for sticking with us for all this time. Stay tuned for the next two years, coming up after these messages. There's so much more to come.
-jonathan rosenberg, cartoonist extraordinaire
april 1, 1999