Worthless Online - About - A History of Worthless

September 25th, 2009: I remember giving birth to Worthless-Online like it was yesterday.

Only it was actually more like eight years ago.

See, the original idea for Worthless—the very first sparks and seeds and inklings that existed—came in the form of a paltry, graphite sketch I did for art class, the first semester of my senior year of high school. Ben was there, center-stage, in his black, hooded sweatshirt that read “HOOK-UPS” across the breadth, wielding an aluminum baseball bat to fend off some Lovecraftian creature intent on eating him whole. Spencer was there, too, looking mopey as usual and sporting his signature Amish-esque sideburns and Final Fantasy VII haircut. Flanking both of them on either side were: Bradyn, looking all smart and shit; Dan, looking cute as a motherfucking button; Baryd and Stuart, looking like the pyro/kleptomaniacs they were; Mrs. Daulton with her brazen, trailblazin’ beehive haircut; and hell, even Louise Dyxtra was there, four-eyed and femi-fascist. Typical Louise Dyxtra. (I will attempt to find this drawing when I go back to Iowa sometime, but no promises. I've already looked twice.)

In fact, the only main character not to appear was Hass. I assume this was because, though we were friends with Hass, we were not super best friends forever, as of yet.

This was all well before I knew what a “webcomic” was, well before I’d ever seen Penny-Arcade or PVP. In my mind, the ideas presented in the drawing were nothing more than insanely brilliant ideas loosely based on my seventeen-year-old life as a means to get an A++ on my end-of-semester sketchbook. At most I thought that maybe, possibly, but probably not, I’d put them in an animated TV show (deep into the terrible future), a la The Simpsons meets South Park meets Tail Spin meets Batman: The Animated Series meets Terms of Endearment, which is not a cartoon but rather a really sad cancer movie with awesome Jack Nicholson being awesome all the time. Or maybe I’d put them in a comic book with panels and pages and arcs and cover art and crossovers and high-octane action so high in terms of octane that it’d blow your assholes wiiiide open just by looking, nay, glancing at them nonchalantly. It wasn’t until after becoming intimately (by which I mean: sexually, perversely, grotesquely) familiar with various websites across the Internet aimed at my most coveted demographic—Aintitcool.com, Chud.com, TheForce.net, IGN.com, TheOnion.com, and most importantly, Penny-Arcade.com—that I said to myself, “I could do that. Only better.” Hell, why make a genre-busting animated cartoon or a 25-page, monthly comic book when you could do it all on the Internet instead (and for much less money, too)?

Not long after, I shared my idea with Spencer Higgins, he and I talked about it a lot, there was a lapse of about three months where nothing happened save for the occasional chat about it (sometimes via AIM), and then, one day during summer, we were driving around Ottumwa and just decided to do it all of a sudden. We just decided to make Worthless. I think Hass was in the car at the time, so we had no choice but to let him in on this, the sweetest of deals. (Thank God, too, because he turned out to be one of the more creatively valuable members of the team.) Then we went to Bradyn’s house to acquire his big, old Bradyn brain, and Dan’s to acquire his Dan, and finally Brian McMillin’s house to acquire his rather unique web-site making skills. We wanted their help, but most of all we wanted their characters. (Of course, we also invited Baryd and Stuart, but they were, and are to this day, unreliable as all hell.) We held subsequent meetings about logo design—FYI, it was Dan’s idea to use a price tag—website design, character design—I refused most input on art, but was open to good ideas—story arcs, strip ideas, marketing campaigns, the name itself—by yours truly—and finally, a launch date. July something something. We all agreed that our very first strip had to, without hesitation, without equivocation, without doubt or confusion or hedge or reservation, and I quote: “kill.” Decide for yourself whether or not it does that. I actually still like it a lot, to this day, but did it, as we had hoped it would, “kill”? I don’t know. I just. Don’t. Know. Fuck the police.

The first four strips introduced the characters, the first three of which were drawn in MS-Paint. Ben and Spencer, Dan on his own, Hass and Bradyn (NOT, I repeat, NOT watered down versions of Ben and Spencer!), and Baryd and Stuart. By the time the Baryd and Stuart, dildo-stealing comic rolled around, I’d purchased a Wacom Intuos 2 Tablet and was drawing with Corel Draw. (To be honest, I think I liked MS-Paint more…) A number of storylines came and went, and in the meantime, half of the Worthless Team (Bradyn, Dan, Spencer) moved to Iowa City, IA to attend University. I stayed behind (and attended a two-year community college) for reasons of financial bearing, as well as a lack of a hefty science credit, and Hass, Baryd, and Stuart stayed behind for reasons of being one and two years younger, respectively, and therefore still in high school. Looking back, early Worthless-Online comics are, to be blunt, pieces of piles of shit. Unadulterated. Absolute. Incredibly immense. (In a lot of ways, anyway.) Oh, sure, there’s the occasional gem, but the separation of key team members, a growing ambivalence between them, a lack of communication, focus, true understanding of the medium and the required effort therein, and an utter laziness that rivaled Buddha and Ghandi combined, muddied the quality to the point of mostly mediocre at best.

This would soon change.

With the arrival of the strips I Was Really Mad When I Made This and Spencer Hates Jesus, Worthless-Online rose out of its swamp-like status of “better than 90% of webcomics, regular comics, books, movies, TV shows, et al” and into the divine artistic realm known as “better than 100% of everything everywhere, yourself included.” (Hence the tag-line: Less Worthless Than You.) Never before had the webcomic world seen such a strident, longstanding streak of quality, beauty, and balls-out, balls-down, and balls-all-around brilliance. Why the change, you ask? What about these measly comics was so much better, so much more enjoyable than what had come before them? First of all, I upgraded my artistic tools from the most frustrating piece of shit software known to man or beast or time—the aforementioned (and atrocious) Corel Draw—to a more visually satisfying and user-friendly program—that of Macromedia Flash MX. Secondly, I began to genuinely care about creating fantastic comics for you, the reader, and me, the creator, and my Worthless teammates, the occasional collaborators. Fantastic in terms of art, fantastic in terms of format, fantastic in terms of story, of dialogue, of hilarity, and of any other creative ingredients I’m currently neglecting to recall. The truth of the matter is, for the first couple months, I treated Worthless like a ~~cheap, tax-free hooker~~ hobby—like quilting or crafting for those of the middle-aged feminine variety—with the faint hope that it would someday, somehow grow into greatness all on its own. It wasn’t until after the Robot Dan storyline (which was actually really damned good, in my opinion) that I realized Worthless, like any newborn baby, needed to be treated with the sort of tenderness typically reserved for auto-eroticism.

It needed—to be loved.

From then on out, it was all Worthless, all the time. And in this case, being Worthless was actually a really good thing. (Despite what some people would say. See: Ctrl+Alt+Del.)

The Worthless Premise: At its core, Worthless-Online was the tale of a bunch of asshole high school kids fighting assholes even bigger than they-selves (believe it or not!), in ways that usually involved how adorable Dan was or how brilliant Bradyn was. Obviously, the characters in the comic were modeled after we, the creators (only terrible to the extreme) not just in terms of visuals, but also in terms of personality and uber-cool catchphrase coinage. Throughout the two-year, 230-plus-strips that made up the golden age of Worthless, our webcomic counterparts fought everything from super religious ~~zealouts~~ insect teachers to vampires to the U.S. government to Islamic-extremist-terrorists to Nazis to Robot Dans to the Yakuza to Canadian Mounties to each other and more. I say, I say, I say: don’t be so jealous of my creative resume, you. Making a webcomic this awesome is probably more work than it’s worth.

Worthless VS. the Webcomics: One of the many webcomic tropes that Worthless-Online single-handedly crafted was that of “making fun of other webcomics in really mean and petty ways.” You might think that that’s not a terribly innovative concept, as books have been making fun of other books, movies have been making fun of other movies, and plays have been making fun of other plays since the dawn of all these things and more. But that’s because you just haven’t seen how drop-dead hilarious our webcomics that made fun of other webcomics were! Starting with:

#1) Movie-Comics

Movie-Comics was a notorious Penny-Arcade rip-off that ran from 2002 to 2004. The art, at times (seemingly) directly lifted from pre-existing PA strips, was painfully stilted and terrible due to the fact that the artist and creator, David Breen, was incapable of original artistic choices. He was sort of like an answering machine that suddenly became self-aware and attempted to “act human” by watching Reality TV, specifically The Bachelor or its sister show The Bachelorette, and therefore was the exact opposite of what a human being should act like. But worse than the art—crazy as it sounds—was the rip-offy way in which David wrote the comic. The characters, the set-up, the so-called “comedy”—they were all exactly like that of Penny-Arcade, only many, many times worse.

(Click for big.)

(Click for big.)

(Click for big. Click for reference.)

Movie Comics 4

(Click for big.)

Which is why Hass and I produced many a webcomic—four altogether—pummeling their hideously unoriginal asses into the furthest corner of rip-off oblivion. (FYI: We Hate Movie Comics #3 was making fun of this comic. And #4 was making fun of the time David (A.K.A. Mr. Furious) and his buddy Salvador (A.K.A. Breezebringer) had a falling out, so David changed Breezebringer's character's name to "Tacobender" in retaliation. Get it? Because Salvador was Mexican, and David was a big, racist baby. Hence: We Hate Movie-Comics (And Racists).)

There was also the time David wrote, on the main page of his website, that he was “not very good at the art of socialism,” referring to his inability to socialize competently. When I made fun of him on my website for confusing socializing with Socialism, he sent me an overly defensive email wherein he quoted Dictionary.com's definition of “Socialism” (“...[A] theory or system of social organization in which  the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by  a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy...”) as proof that he didn't literally mean socializing when he literally said Socialism. So what was it, Dave? A metaphor?

#2) Ctrl+Alt+Del

I can safely say that we were the first people in the world to absolutely loathe Ctrl+Alt+Del—that other webcomic about videogaming. (Is being the first person/group/entity to hate a terrible webcomic even worth bragging about? Probably not, but I can’t say as I care.) At least with Movie-Comics, you had a guy and a comic that barely denied being a rip-off of Penny-Arcade. With Ctrl+Alt+Del, you had one of the biggest assholes ever to tread the face of this dying planet pretending like he’d created the most original webcomic in all of webcomicdom.

(Click for full version of Parody #1)

I remember coming across said webcomic, way back in the day (and well before he was ever popular) and hating it immediately—and immensely! There’s just something about a guy blatantly stealing someone else’s intellectual property that rubs me the wrong motherfucking way. So, as I often did in those days, I created a parody webcomic to express my outright abhorrence of the thing. (Again, this was way before CAD was popular. In fact, at the time, he was lower than we were on the Top Web Comics list.) When he found out about it, he sent me a string of angry emails including one that read, “ok #38 lol” (38 was our ranking on TWC at that point), implying that the reason I made the comic was because I was jealous of his recent rise in TWC popularity (which was paradoxically impossible unless I could see into the future, which I could, but that’s beside the point). He called my webcomic “worthless, lol.” I followed up by saying, “That’s our joke for us. You can’t call us that without looking like an idiot. That’s like when a fat guy jokes about how fat he is, and then some asshole comes out of nowhere and says, all nasal-pitched, ‘You’re fat, neener neener neener.’” He explained why his comic was utterly unlike and thus vastly superior to Penny-Arcade. “My comic has six panels, PA has three. My comic runs daily, PA runs three times a week. My comic is drawn on paper and colored in Photoshop, PA is drawn in Adobe Illustrator.” And so on. Seriously, he said these things, I swear to god! I retorted: “Ethan is Gabe, Lucas is Tycho. The Linux guy is the Mac guy. The X-Box person is DIV. I never had a problem with your art, ever, so I don’t know why you’re throwing that into the mix, but FYI, Gabe draws on paper, scans the drawing, and photoshops it just like you do.”

(Click for the full version of Parody #2)

A little context for the line: “I’m not some Mike Krahulik-looking gimp!” That’s something that Mr. Timothy “Absath” Buckley honestly said, word-for-word, once upon a time at the old Buzzcomix forums. See, somebody had written an unflattering (although quite respectful) review of Ctrl+Alt+Del, the link to which was posted at the BC forums as if to say: “Hey, look at this.” Sensitive, old Absath found out about it and, deeply hurt by the ordeal, proclaimed that the reviewer was “probably a virgin.” Well, that makes sense, right? Because anyone who reads and loves (not to mention makes) Ctrl+Alt+Del is obviously astronomically experienced when it comes to sexually pleasing the ladies. (Never mind the irrefutable fact that most of CAD's readers are under the age of thirteen with severe learning disabilities to boot.) Anyway, as a result of the virgin comment, a huge internet brawl exploded like a flaring hemorrhoid onto the forum scene. One unnamed forumer begged the question, “What if he’s not a virgin? What if he just doesn’t like your comic?” And then proceeded to explain why the reviewer might not like Absath’s comic. Absath said, “You wouldn’t talk like this to me if you saw me on the street. What do you think I am, some Mike Krahulik-looking gimp? I would knock the fuck out of you kid.” (Emphasis mine.) Which of course was referring to the Penny-Arcade artist and co-creator, Gabe, A.K.A. Mike Krahulik. But it was also referring to the fact that Absath thought of himself as being incredibly attractive and muscular, hence he posted a picture of himself half-naked in a do-rag flexing his muscles in the dark then entered the “Sexiest Gamer Contest” a while back and pleaded for his legions of fans to vote for him—which they did. (And don't forget this abomination.) But I digress. At this point, I jumped into the forum fray to criticize Absath, as is my wont. I explained in meticulous detail why Ctrl+Alt+Del is a rip-off of Penny-Arcade and why the review didn’t go far enough in shitting on his comic. I think my exact words were: “Absath, please be reasonable. There are two absolute facts in this universe: 1) You are a pussy. And 2) Your comic is a rip-off of Penny-Arcade.” Of course, as a result, he flew into a rage and told me he’d “hit me so hard that the little boy whose picture I was beating off to last night would fall into a coma.” Clever girl, as the guy from Jurassic Park would say. I made a joke pretending that he had actually said: “I’m gonna hit you so hard your cum shoots out!” and subsequently thanked him, but no thanked him, for the proposed (and undoubtedly mismanaged) handjob. Finally, everybody everywhere was piling onto Absath, including Squidi of A Modest Destiny fame and the Bigger Than Cheeses creator who revealed that, not only was Abs Buckley a webcomic thief, he also, at one point in time, stole the code for his website to attain the all-too-amazing visual design he was going for. That’s when Absath ran far away, never to return, and up from the foruming crowd came a thunderous cheer that cracked the internet half. It was pretty awesome.

(Listen to the asshole, people! Vote Worthless.)

Long story short, I really, really don’t like Ctrl+Alt+Del.

(Some other fantastic CAD moments that I had nothing to do with, but enjoyed reading about immensely, are here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

#3) We also made fun of Mall Monkeys not once, but twice. IN A ROW. It’s not like their comic was terribly made or a huge rip-off of anything in particular (perhaps South Park and Mallrats?), but the creators were blatantly homophobic/racist assholes that their fans purported to be geniuses. You want to see genius? Look into my eyes, they're full of sweet lullabies.

#4) Alas, we didn't really make fun of any other comics as cruelly as we did the preceding ones. (Not that we didn't mention one or two or twenty.) Why? Good question! Lord knows there's no shortage of terrible fucking webcomics to choose from, and perhaps that has something to do with it. Perhaps there were just too damn many, and making fun of all of them would've taken too many lifetimes and way too many resources. Which isn't to say that I would be averse to making fun of webcomics via my own webcomics in the future...

The Infamous Worthless Meetings: One of the most enjoyable aspects of having an awesome website with an awesome team of awesome friends was just being able to get together for our semi-regular—and incredibly infamous—Worthless Meetings. They typically took place at Hass’ house (unless the team was separated by ninety miles of road, in which case they took place at a Pizza Ranch in Sigourney, IA) and occasionally ran all night long. They were, for want of a better analogy, the eighteen-year-old male equivalent of a young lady’s slumber party. Besides meeting to seriously discuss certain aspects of the comic—schedules, stories, scripts, what have you—we also played a shit ton of the game of “Life,” read aloud through the ever-growing Worthless Archives (for our own admittedly very nerdy pleasure), and continually made fun of Spencer for being a dick and Dan for falling asleep at a moment’s notice.

(Click for big.)

200th Strip Spectacular

(Click for big.)

I recall, quite fondly I might add, one meeting in particular. The “pre-launch meeting.” We were supposed to finalize our first few comic concepts and figure out exactly where to go from there, but for some inane reason, Spencer invited his ex-ex-ex-girlfriend and her brother—in the familial, not colloquial, sense of the word—over for quality hang-time and videogame-playing. The rest of the team was all like, “Okay, fine, whatever—it’s 9 p.m. and we’ve got all night to get down to business (i.e. biznaz). A couple minutes hanging out with the Asian edition of the Wonder Twins won’t totally undo what it is we’ve come here to do.” Then, in very Spencer-esque fashion (read: as dickishly as is physically fucking possible), Spencer “Spence-Dawg” Higgins proceeded to hang out with his ex-girlfriend on Matt Hass’ lawn for the next six fucking hours. Doing nothing! But looking at the stars! For SIX WHOLE MOTHERFUCKING HOURS!!! Needless to say, at the end of the six hours, after which Spencer and his ex-ex-ex-ex (now with an extra ex) girlfriend made out for two minutes tops, the Worthless team was as livid as the day is long, and probably even more livid. It was 3 a.m. when Spencer decided to come inside and have the meeting. Mere hours from dawn. Mere moments from when everyone’s brains, specifically the right sides of their brains, would shut down for the night. Then, when you thought it was impossible for Spencer to get any more terrible, the generous gentleman acted like, “What? What’re all you guys looking at? Why do you guys all look so incredibly angry at me for no particular reason whatsoever?” We made a joke about him hanging out with his quadruple-ex-girlfriend outside, laughed about it, and Spencer said, “You guys are such assholes” in that semi-serious tone of his. To which Bradyn brilliantly responded, “Oh, yeah, that’s right. We’re the ones who’ve been lying on the ground outside looking at the stars for the past six hours while we were supposed to be having a meeting with a bunch of people who were waiting for us the whole time. That was us, not you. We’re so sorry.” More laughter ensued, uproarious this time, followed by the kicking of the google-ex-girlriend/brother duo out of the house, followed by a couple hours of meeting, followed by a lifetime of grudges against Spencer.

I mean, come on, Spencer! It’s one thing to take this girl out to the lawn and make out with her for two minutes and then get back to the meeting. It’s another altogether to waste six hours of everyone’s time for two minutes of make out at the end. Asshole.

The Patented Worthless Style: In terms of format, Worthless-Online was sort of a combination of “the typical webcomic” and the action adventure comic books of yore. We typically alternated between one-shot comic strips—relying heavily, sometimes entirely, on being hilarious, most commonly with a punch-line at the end for old time’s sake—and storylines—relying heavily, but not entirely, on plotting and actions scenes (usually as a finale). Neither format trumps the other, and both have their shining examples of unequivocal success. Por ejemplo:

SINGLE STRIP

(Click to make big.)

STORY STRIP
Halloween Story Strip

(Click to make big.)

Speaking of storylines, the Top Ten Worthless Storylines are as follows:

#10: Jealousy Has a Name, and It Is Spencer!
#9: 16-Year-Old and Old Men Don't Mix
#8: A Worthless Christmas Carol
#7: Lesbian Girlfriend
#6: Ben and Hass: Japanese Detectives
#5: Robot Dan
#4: Mrs. Daulton’s Secret
#3: Return of the Draft
#2: Tales Through Time!

And of course, no Top Ten Worthless Storylines list would be complete without...

#1: A Worthless Halloween 2: Dan’s New Neighbor

I take full responsibility for the order of these storylines, and would gladly include lists as created by Spencer, Hass, Bradyn, and Dan (maybe even those other sons of bitches).

The Ben/Hass Worthless Colaboraciones: This might sound gay, and so fucking be it if it does, but some of my fonder memories of working on Worthless came from my creative collaborations with one Matthew C. Hass. Which isn't to say that I didn't have equally gay and incredibly fond memories of working with the others. (You can bet your sweet hunk of ass I did.) It's just that...my work with Hass was the stuff of Worthless legend, and thus deserving of special attention in the annals of Worthless.

It's debatable what determines A Ben/Hass Collaboration. However, there are a couple stories that undeniably fit the Ben/Hass bill: First, A Worthless Halloween 2: Dan's New Neighbor. Second, Ben and Hass: Japanese Detectives. Both were stories Hass and I concocted whilst staying up all the night braiding each other's hair, and both heavily featured Worthless Ben/Hass interaction, which was fairly rare in the Worthless Universe prior to the former's existence. Naysayers will no doubt spout that Hass and I created these stories for the sole purpose of making Worthless Ben and Hass major players in them (perhaps they will even say that real Hass and I were—gasp—biased toward our comic counterparts). Not true, says I. Undeniable though our self-love is, it had nothing to do with the decision to use our own characters to tell some of the greatest stories ever told. Rather, we used the characters because the fact of the matter is, whenever you put Ben and Hass in a room together, even if that room is imaginary and drawn using Macromedia Flash MX, you're guaranteed to create comedic goddamn gold. (In a way, we were alchemists...of hilarity.) My point being, it was more out of charity than narcissism that we wrote primarily about "ourselves." You're welcome, by the way.

The Return of the Draft falls into a gray area—it's not quite A Ben/Hass Collaboration (after all, there's hardly any Worthless Ben/Hass interaction to speak of), but then again, no one else at Worthless worked on it but Hass and myself. Make of that what you shall.

The End of Worthless As We Know it...OR IS IT??: The last year of Worthless consisted primarily of me trying to finish Ben and Hass: Japanese Detectives which was really long, difficult, and at times incredibly artistically advanced. (Mostly just the last comic, though, which took me days upon days to finish.) Once that story was done, I moved onto The Great Worthless Adventure which, like the Return of the Draft before it, interweaved multiple story arcs within a grander story. As Spencer would put it at the time, it was basically the Worthless response to Tiny Toons' epic summer adventure from way back in the day. No idea what I'm talking about? That's because your mother was a whore.

In The Great Worthless Adventure, a mysterious, red-eyed mechanical being (hmm, I wonder who that could be) is murdering effeminate males all across Americana, looking for...someone.

(Click for The Return of....)

Meanwhile, Ben and Spencer decide to go to Chicago to kill Roger Ebert, whom Ben despises because he always gives mediocre fims 3 stars out of 4—like Vertical Limit, that terrible mountain-climbing movie with Chris O'Donnell. Chris O'Donnell for Christ's sake! Little do Ben and Spencer know that a Council of Doom, with members that have all been wronged by Ben in one way or another (including Roger Ebert), have set their sights on Ben and are out to destroy him...

(Click for Road Trip of Doom.)

Back in Ottumwa, Bradyn gets a new job at a gas station, which really happened to real Bradyn, and is subsequently sent to prison for...doing something or other. I don't really know, to be honest?

(Click for Bradyn Goes to Jail.)

Baryd and Stuart have a Mark Twainian adventure down-river, only in modern, Worthless fashion. (I'm just saying—if movie executives really did do a modern retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim would be a gang-banger.)

(Click for The Adventures of Stuart Sawyer and Hucklebaryd Finn.)

And last, but not least, Dan moves to Boston for the summer to work for his uncle...only, it's not actually his uncle. A couple of hick-town weirdos have intercepted Dan's Dad's letter asking his Bostonian uncle to take care of Dan for the summer and are using him (which is to say, Dan) for free work. Poor Dan. He was so pure and beautiful before the...well, you'll see.

(Click for Dan Goes to Boston.)

I never finished the story.

Unfortunately, when I moved to Iowa City to attend University, my academic workload became too much and I quit Worthless mid-arc. (Can you blame me? We were basically making negative dollars off the venture.) Part of me wishes I hadn't quit. Part of me knows I had no choice. The only Worthless activity to come after The End was via the main page and commentary and the occasional guest strip by Becca, which were all of them delightful. The thing I regret more than anything, though, was not ending Worthless-Online with the BANG that it deserved. Instead, it ended with a whimper, a casual shrug, and a metaphorical, "Eh, what're you gonna do?" And for all that, I do apologize.

But words are just words! They're nothing more and they're nothing less. Which is why I'm going to apologize not just by saying I apologize, like I just did, but also by finishing that last Worthless-Online storyline—The Great Worthless Adventure—concurrent with my production of Jorge Jackson Goes to Hollywood. Trust me, it'll be worth the long, long, long wait.

Post-Worthless Worthless: There were so many wonderful Worthless stories we wanted to tell. More "Spencer has an awful, soul-ruining experience with a girl" bullshit, more science-fiction weirdness, more Halloween-themed tales of horror. More everything. I even had an endgame for Worthless planned wherein everything would come full circle and...well, that would just be really uncouth of me to reveal anything more, now wouldn't it?

And let's not forget my vague preliminary designs/concepts for a new Worthless webcomic with (for the most part) the same Worthless characters in the same Worthless universe! Instead of talking about it ad nauseum, though, I'll just let the rather brilliant designs speak for themselves:

(Feast your eyes)

(Satanic Ben first appeared in Tales Through Time!)
The Trash Car Back Window!

George-Lucas-Style Revisionism: To coincide with the launch of Worthless 2.0, I sort of went “George Lucas” all over a lot of the old comics, for various reasons. (Going “George Lucas” all over something isn't as sexual as it sounds. Rather, it means you went back to your old creative work and changed or added something to it, much like George Lucas himself did with the Star Wars trilogy, time and again. Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, Soviet Russia, and Walt Disney's frozen corpse also did this, to varying results.) Most of the changes to the comics were small and vaguely cosmetic, thus you probably even won't notice the difference. That is, if you ever read the original comics in the first place. Some of what I changed was entirely cosmetic, by which I mean I redrew the entire goddamn thing, but otherwise didn't change the comic. I think I only did this once. Some of the changes involved adding a comma or a capital letter D in place of a small letter d—that kind of bullshit. Then there's Tales Through Time!, which didn't “change” so much as “get more demons in the background of a couple strips.” But perhaps the most drastic changes were made in the Return of the Draft storyline, where I replaced a single crappy comic with several much more awesome comics (here, here, here, here, here, and here).

The End...of The History of Worthless: Twelve-hundred pages of Worthless history are enough for now, don't you think? I'd love to leave you with some grand statement about the mysterious machinations of life that makes you feel more special as a person, but then I'd just be really jealous of you (you show-boating bastard). Thus, I'll be keeping any and all artificial insight to myself, thank you very much. To anybody looking for information on where the other Worthless folk are right now and what they're doing with their lives, I'll just say that I don't give out that kind of information...without being paid a whole lot of money ahead of time. I mean, what kind of person do you take me for?

Until next time, reader.