Man, you samoans are a surly bunch. I've gotten more mail in the past few weeks from Goats readers than Vince Vaughn has gotten pity-fucks from Hollywood starlets. I wouldn't care so much if you could make up your collective minds, but the mixed messages I've been getting are enough to drive a cartoonist a bit loopy.
Neil and Bob showed up for Halloween last year.It would seem that half of your are ecstatic about the direction that the strip is taking, and are thoroughly enjoying my little meanderings and experiments. The other half of you are sending email with subject lines like "You SUCK" and explaining ad nauseum how much worse Goats has gotten and how much you pine for the Good Old Days. I've never been sure when those days were, but they must be pretty early on, because I've been getting similar mail for the past two and a half years. People are never satisfied.
Jay and Toph outside of Planet Cocktail Bar, Gregor Mendel's favorite Brussels nightspot.My philosophy on the subject of Goats, and all art for that matter, is that you create for yourself. Make something that you enjoy. If you start catering to the whims of an audience, your art will suffer, much like the effect that focus groups have had on today's big-budget studio pictures. If you create something that you enjoy, you may not find tremendous commercial success. People living in a trailer park in Iowa may not get your hoity-toity New York jokes, and spend their weekly salary on potato vodka instead of buying a t-shirt with hamsters on it. But your work will have integrity, and a few like-minded people may find it, and appreciate that you haven't compromised yourself. Maybe they won't find it; maybe you'll be beseiged by bitter people who enjoy sending nasty comments to someone who creates for them for free. But you won't be a sell-out.
To those of you who have written notes of support, to those like-minded individuals, thank you.
Mini Europe is the bomb.To those people who have written notes offering constructive criticism, thank you.
To those of you who have written bitter flames, who have denounced my work as trash, who have complained endlessly about "too many words", go read something else.
Goats will never be a traditional comic strip; I refuse to adhere to what other people see as the "rules" of comic strips. I will put as many words in a panel as I like. I like words; I like prose and poetry and vivid description. Goats, I would like to think, is a literary comic strip (beneath all the bestiality jokes and such). I am not in the business of garnering readers who are afraid to read. Goats will continue to occasionally ramble. If you want fewer words, go read Garfield. Laugh at the exploits of a lazy cat and his lasagna. I don't need you.
Goats will continue to be experimental. Goats will take chances, and do things differently. Goats will sometimes succeed in this endeavor, and sometimes it will fail, but it will never stop trying to try new things and remain fresh and different. Constancy is a slow death.
I grow to 50 times my original size and destroy the Grand-Place in Brussels. Things may change in the Goats universe; my characters will not stay children for 50 years. They will not live forever. They will be allowed to grow and change and explore and die and find whatever path they choose. But I will not allow them to become stale and familiar. I'm not in the business of providing you with a safe comics experience, one where you know what to expect every morning. If you want constancy and familiarity, go read Garfield. Maybe he'll abuse Odie today. I don't need you.
Goats will never support the furthering of Brooke Shields' career. If you want Brooke Shields, go read Garfield. I don't think you'll find her there, but go anyway. I don't need you.
Anyway, enough ranting. If you've made it this far, welcome to the third anniversary of Goats. I'm not sure if Goats is a hobby or a prison sentence, sometimes. But rather than rehash what an arduous trip it's been, I'd like to tell you a bit about what's new. For one, you may have noticed our new Web site. I've already received quite a bit of mail about the choices we've made, most of it positive. The few people who had negative comments were mostly nostalgic for the left-hand navigation with the character icons. Getting rid of that left-hand nav was actually the reason for the redesign; without it, the site fits nicely in an 800x600 window, which should make for less side-scrolling. For those of you who miss the pretty pictures of the characters, we've tossed in a rotating character area in the upper-right corner of every page.
Jay enjoys some Mentos in the European fashion.We've redone some of the internal navigation for the subsections (such as the section you're reading now) to make them easier to read, and added a few new features to the archive system, such as series titles that link to the first strip of the series, commentary for selected strips, and a random strip feature (the little question mark under each strip) that'll let you bounce around from comic to comic.
And finally, we've added some new stuff to the features section, including Drew Johnson's Goats: The Live-Action Role Playing Game, a treat for all you alcoholic gamers out there.
There'll be more stuff coming in the next couple of months, including new merchandise (let me know what shirts you'd like to see next), community features, and a brand-new beef-related website.
And for those of you who enjoy such things, I've included a few of my photos, vacation and otherwise, for your perusal. Much of what Shazam Twix is, comes from my vacation in Europe last August. Hope you enjoy.
-jonathan rosenberg, cartoonist extraordinaire
april 1, 2000