A quick note
If you want to ask a question or point out a typo on a page, please don’t put in the comic comments, send me an email, or chances are I won’t see it. The comments are increasingly popular, which is great, but there’s a point where the scrutiny and feedback gets to be a bit too much for me and we blew through that point around Christmas.
I could turn them off, but I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun, so I’m going to stop reading them. As I am currently the sole moderator, this will be an “experiment” but I think it’s probably safe.
We’ll miss you in the comments John, interacting with(/getting validation from) the author is half the fun of posting in there! I suspect they may no longer be increasingly popular without your presence. But yeah, your perspective makes sense, shame the nitpicking could drown out those of us who enjoy your comments section for the jests, puns, nostalgia and SGR esoterica.
It’s no one’s fault, it’s just a lot for me to process and lately I’ve felt like I should step back. I don’t think many people are there hoping I’ll chip in!
Smash cut to the comment section turning in to one of those parties in American comedies where the parents are out of town for a week. Next time John checks in there’ll be a motorcycle in the pool, a horse in the bathroom and a drunk teen tapped to the ceiling
Taped, Veronica. Just taped. We promised Jesus we’d only put him up for ONE night…
I’ll adopt the horse if nobody claims it.
I’m glad you’re doing what you need to to maintaining some semblance of sanity, but I suspect there is a larger contingent of people hoping to see you chime in than you think, considering even some of your relatively mundane comments garner some of the highest “like” counts.
Anyway, thanks for keeping us in the loop (and for keeping the comments section open).
I tend to relentlessly mock the low-effort nitpicking posts when I see them, but then I have no skin in the game. Reading responses is an unnecessarily hard part of being a content creator and I’m all for you maintaining your sanity by noping out.
There’s a back story for Sandra, I bet. Former Olympic archer? Retired special agent for MI5?
Ohh, I like both of these! How about former Olympic archer, then special agent, then hired by Bitsy and stayed for some reason.
Pretty sure John just wants the nitpicks directly by e-mail so he knows exactly where to send the invoice for each new hamper.
Oh well, time to sell my Fortnums shares 🙁
“So we hear there’s a new book in the works, John. Can you tell us the title?”
“‘Healthy Boundaries.'”
“Oh, we just LOVE those titles with two entirely unrelated words.”
Don’t blame you in the slightest. Running gags aside, it must be insufferable to endure so much unnecessary pedantry and absence of object permanence. I recall well that hyper-vigilant examination of the work to please that audience drove Rob Balder (and his succession of illustrators) quite mad, and I’m glad you’ve charted the more sensible course of not engaging with that nonsense. All of this is quite futile if you’re not going to read it, of course, but – maybe I’ll email you or something.
I am still reading the comments under the news posts as they come under “any other business” and may require an official response. Thank you Jonathan.