A New Endeavor

My son (age 8) told me recently that he thinks I should be a cartoonist. More recently, unprompted and out of the blue, he told me once again that he thinks I should be a cartoonist. Here goes.

Inspired by Ann Telnaes and feeling the ways I've been feeling about things recently (my standard response this week to "how are you?" is "there's a fascist in the White House and I'm in mourning for my country"), I got the idea of starting a political cartoon. Yesterday, Dark Times Comics was officially born with the release of "The Monologue".

I can't guarantee that Dark Times Comics will be good. I can't guarantee that it will be witty or incisive or clever or brilliant or influential or funny. It will, however, be emotionally honest and it will be my own work product (unless at some point I decide to invite additional contributors). I won't be using AI.*

I have no intention of being a willing tool of fascism. I have principles and I know right from wrong. I mean to stand up and say my piece rather than being cowed into submission or silence by the malevolent forces that are seizing power. That's really the impetus behind this, much more than what my son said.

I also can't guarantee that I will be prolific or even consistent in posting new comics. But, at the moment, I intend to do my best. I think of myself as the King of Unfinished Projects. Sometimes that means I abandon projects. Sometimes it means that projects are ongoing and don't reach a definitive conclusion. I hope this will fall into the latter category.

This web site** will be the official public-facing repository of Dark Times Comics. I will, of course, be posting these comics in my social network feeds, where they'll be seen by my small group of friends. If you want to share, please do. If there's no audience, then this is kind of pointless. It may be kind of pointless even with an audience. But an audience would be good.

Welcome.

* In fact, I just started using a suite of software that isn't Adobe, because I don't want their push towards AI to be intrusive, and because I don't want to be subject to their odious TOS which, as I understand it, was recently updated to assert that, in some legally and ethically questionable way, Adobe somehow is a partial owner of and has rights to the work of their users.

** At launch, I've invested very little effort in layout/design. I just picked a clean looking template and went live. There's a strong possibility that I won't end up liking this template and that the site will look very different a month or six from now. But the basic idea should stand.