#grimstone

Oops! Looks like I forgot an anniversary.

April 3rd marked 20 years since Grimstone returned after its first years-long hiatus. Eschewing the four panel daily gag strip format, the revamped Grimstone — originally a complete reboot — was now a serialized comic book, with a new page posted MWF.

You can read that story, "Dawn of the Morningstar," for free. You can also click over to the Grimstone Store and purchase all five issues of the original Grimstone comic book in digital or print editions.

CHARACTER OF THE DAY: Bull

Series: Grimstone (UFO 50 game)

CHARACTER OF THE DAY: Doc

Series: Grimstone (UFO 50 game)

CHARACTER OF THE DAY: Lee

Series: Grimstone (UFO 50)

Kick Club, as I said, softlocks, though I can still get the Nostring. Block Koala on the other hand...

Also, Mooncat nostring is an illustrious achievement since text only appears when you get an egg, which is the end goal. It still technically works though.

I didn’t end up doing anything to mark the occasion like I wanted to, but my silly little and oft-neglected webcomic turned 25 years old today.

I didn’t use to hate my birthday. But I have dreaded it since my twenties and usually don’t do anything to celebrate it. This year is no exception.

But why do I hate my birthday? I used to love it. This used to be my favorite time of year. Autumn, my birthday, Halloween. Best time of the year. When I was kid, it also meant new school year, new classes, new teachers, new friends, new clothes, all that. Television began a new season of shows, brand new cartoons would appear on Saturday mornings.

But all that is gone now. I’m long since out of school, TV doesn’t have seasons like it used to, and Saturday morning cartoons are a relic of another age. That’s still not why I hate my birthday though, but it does contribute to why I don’t enjoy this time of year like I did growing up. See also how Halloween season starts in August now and by the time we’ve gotten to October, everything is already moving on to Christmas.

None of that has to do with my birthday though. Is it just getting older? A little bit, but we’re always getting older, every day of our lives. And while I do think more about my own mortality these days, death can come for us at any age.

No, it’s none of these things. The reason I hate my birthday is because it’s an annual reminder of my failure to realize the only thing I ever truly wanted to do with my life.

You see, twenty-five years ago today, I started a webcomic. It grew out of characters and comics I had been drawing since I was about 9 years old. And I made the grave mistake of launching it on my birthday, so the anniversary of its existence would forever coincide with my own.

And in these last 25 years, I have not done nearly what I wanted to with it. Hell, it’s been six years exactly since I last posted anything to the site. There are only 264 comics in the entire archive. That’s about ten and a half comic strips a year. That’s pretty sad when this was supposed to be my life’s work.

So yeah, that’s why I hate my birthday. It’s not actually got anything to do with it being my birthday. It’s because another year has rolled around and I haven’t accomplished jack shit with my creative projects.

And this year is the worst. Twenty-five years! I should be celebrating a milestone for my comic. I wanted to finally complete the first collection of strips to commemorate the anniversary. I wanted to do something. But I didn’t. Like I have always done, I could not find the combination of time and energy to do what I wanted. My executive does not function properly.

And so, another anniversary goes uncelebrated and the comic will probably never get finished. And I will eternally feel like I let down that little kid who had such big hopes and dreams and was never able to make them come true.