Back in 1998, when I was in grad school in England studying WWII cartoon propaganda and working at the British Cartoon Archive, I was putting together my first 50 or so "Sheldon" strips. My intention was to submit them to syndicates when I got home...but somehow, somewhere, I stumbled upon Steve's comic strip online, at Melonpool.
Now, you have to understand: For me, this was so inventive and awesome. It was the first time I had ever seen a comic strip online. It had never even occurred to me to do it. But once I saw Steve doing it, I had to give it a try! So I sorta-kinda taught myself to scan, sorta-kinda taught myself to use MSPaint or Photoshop 2.0 or whatever it was I using back then... and got my first overly-pixelated gifs up online!
(Super-duper fun fact: The first Sheldon Website in 1998 was at http://www.ukc.ac.uk/djk3 — a site for which I've never been able to find an archive or duplicate of. So here's a fun offer: If you can find an archived page from that first Website — and trust me, it'll be tricky to find — I'll give you a free Sheldon original of your choice!)
Anywho, in one of those kismetic, "What a small world we live in" moments, Steve and I now live about 1/2 of a mile apart from each other, and meet up for pancake-fueled shop talk every now and again. So please don't forget: If you enjoyed today's strip, drop Steve a note to thank him for today's awesomeness!
I'm very pleased to see a strip by Steve. He's been one of my favorite web cartoonists (I have all of his compilation books) for quite some time. Unfortunately, he hasn't been cartooning on Melonpool lately (though I still encourage others to read all the archives). It's a real treat to see something new from him, even if it's a guest strip rather than new Melonpool strips.
As far as I can tell, Dave, the problem is most internet archives don't keep much from governments or universities for legal reasons. Looking for http://www.ukc.ac.uk/djk3 is hurting my brain. It took five minutes to find several davekellett.com, but this....
