RATFARTS! The Journal of Jim Finch, October 25, 2022.
A lot going on in the background of this site so I’m bringing everyone up to date as to decisions made and why I made them.
For the longest time, I haven’t been proud of my work. For whatever reason, I’ve put up my comics and after a while, get weird about them take them down, never to be seen again… until I’d put them back up, muddle over it and take them down again. Rinse and repeat.
As is, a lot of the work has been down for the good part of a decade. I had always intended to redo the older comics and remaster them using the latest technology, but frankly, you can see from the old comics that I’ve already tried that multiple times and each time I did that I’d get bored and move the story away from what I was recreating and onto something new.
Last year I made the conscious decision to put the TechTV related parody content back up. It coincided with the relaunch of G4/G4TechTV/TechTV/Whatever. When I ran out of content, I launched “Good Morning, Sunshine (…and Happiness!)” as a quasi-sequel to that series using pretty much brand new characters for the first time in a long time.
Much like the TechTV series was a parody of TechTV and the later series were a parody of the media and media personalities, “Good Morning, Sunshine” focuses on parodies of YouTube, Tik Tok and social media creators in a shared bubble universe. Most of the characters are amalgams of famous creators who I may or may not follow, but in no way are they more than parody.
One of the characters, Alpha Maile, is loosely inspired by the actions of a YouTube creator but is no way a representation of that person in real life. While I’ve posted images of Alpha Maile in humorous situations on Discord servers I take part in and have featured him here in now three comics, Alpha Maile is a parody and I’ve made it clear that his actions are in no way representative of the person he’s loosely based on. I am repeating that and stressing that for a reason.
There’s no wrong-doing here. No one ordered me to add the character to the series. Believe it or not, ideas can live in a vacuum with no connections to other ideas, organizations, people, etc. Alpha Maile was created on a lark, used to parody and was a one-trick pony as he’s been used in my works.
That said, I was late with the new issue of ‘Good Morning, Sunshine’ this week as I feel the need either to write Alpha Maile out of the comic or change him in a way that I can use him again at some point. The person the character is loosely inspired by is going through a terrible time with mental and legal challenges and frankly, he has begun a pattern of filing frivolous lawsuits made (IN MY OPINION) to annoy, bully, demean and simply leech off of other creators who challenge him.
Just to be safe, the character is taking an unexpected break. I am not removing any previous media nor comic strips. I am not admitting wrong doing. Parody is constitutionally protected. There are enough differences between the character of Alpha Maile and this person to hold up should he get litigious. Plus, frankly, this is an obscure non-profit site. There’s no money to be made here.
It is a sad state when someone who states that they’re trying to protect the first amendment uses the legal system to stifle the same freedoms in his critics. The amount of damage this person attempts to inflict on our very basic freedoms and rights as Americans is staggering. While he has not directly contacted me as of yet, we’ll play it safe for now, but if a fight is coming, the fight will come.
That said, while there’s nothing left to lose, I’m also bringing back my old works. The first two issues of ‘The Media Elite’ are up now (Photoshop restored to a format you can read) and the first special is going up this afternoon. I’ll be going through all the series in order with a new old issue up every day until we’re out of content. There may be a couple of editorial changes here in there (I no longer posses the old production files or art so not too much), but the stories will be the same.
Reading Order:
- One Day at TechTV
- The Media Elite
- Jim Finch’s Universe
- Starshine Downs
- @insanity
- Amazing Incredible
- Retro Retro Retro
- Good Morning, Sunshine (…and Happiness!)
Thank you for supporting me for 21 years now and let’s see what the future holds.
Jim