Matt Shepherd’s Man-Man: The Blog

Born Feb.27th, 2009!

Yo ho!

If you’re a fan of action, adventure, and piracy of most noble vintage, you may be interested in Captain Blood — an adaptation of the classic novel by Rafael Sabatini, written by me and illustrated by Mike Shoyket.

Coming this summer! Get on board, me hearties!*

*Nobody actually says “me hearties” in the comic.

This thread makes me wonder how many gags I have inadvertantly ripped off over the years, and how the Long Arm of the Internet may judge me for posterity.

Granted I’ve never (knowingly) cut-and-pasted punchlines, or at least when I have it’s been pretty obvious pastiche/tribute stuff, but it’s a bit nervewracking to see one of the webcomic longbeards get raked over the coals like that.

Well, mixed feelings here.

This is obviously the end of Man-Man, after nearly a decade of Internet-driven madness. I probably shouldn’t say “the end,” because James and I may well decide to revisit the world and its characters, but knowing my own track record for following up on dropped projects, I have to be honest and say that there isn’t a huge potential for more runs at ol’ Drake.

It has, obviously, been a lot of fun working on this, and I’ve learned a lot as a writer: the most important thing I think being economy — writing a strip comic that adheres pretty rigorously to a four-panel format means there are no words to waste, and since I’m a terribly sprawling and self-indulgent writer that was a massive, massive challenge.

I’ve also learned that I’m not terribly funny — funny enough,, I suppose, but not Kristopher Straub funny or Ryan North funny. Funnyish. It sounds weird to say that one thing I learned from writing a comedy strip for seven years is that writing comedy strips is not my forté, but there you go: I can do the funny, but doing the funny every fourth panel, every day, year in and year out is a rare and amazing gift, and I definitely recognize that talent far more now than I ever have before.

James has poured heart and soul into it, and if you go back to the earliest strips you can see the growth there (it’s easier with artists!) and now he’s rocking his own daily strip at Pitabow Comics, which everyone should bookmark and visit daily. Man-Man got me in touch with Roy Boney, which led to Dead Eyes Open, which has in turn led to a lot of little comics sidelines that are starting to bear fruit for me, so I owe this strip for all of that.

On the whole, warts and all, I think the strip has been a success. It started from a very simple premise, and from there James and I built a full-functioning world, a huge cast, an internal logic and a massive through line: a story arc that starts off being about Paul, but kind of ends up being about Man-Man. I like the way this wraps up. It’s open-ended and inconclusive and weird and uncertain, which is a lot like life.

I think I’ll miss Gutsy and Vivisectus the most.

So what can you do when there’s no Man-Man around? Well, James’ daily strip is excellent (see link above), and I’m going to be MUCH more diligent about posting at my blog. I’ve got two comics coming out in ’09, one an adaptation of the novel Captain Blood from SLG, the other a sci-fi/adventure series from Ape called RPM. Rise, Kraken! has sort of hit a stall, but hopefully we’ll pull out of it and get that book out there this year as well. Updates will always be at my blog, so please do pull and RSS feed out of there and keep in touch.

Thanks for reading.

Letter here. Response below.

Please tell every dog or cat owner you know. Even if you don’t have a pet, please pass this to those who do.

Aug ‘07
Over the weekend the doting owner of two young lab mixes purchased Cocoa Mulch from Target (A French owned Company) to use in their garden. They loved the way it smelled and it was advertised to keep cats away from their garden. Their dog Calypso decided that the mulch smelled good enough to eat and devoured a large helping. She vomited a few times which was typical when she eats something new but wasn’t acting lethargic in any way. The next day, Mom woke up and took Calypso out for her morning walk. Half way through the walk, she had a seizure and died instantly.

Although the mulch had NO warnings printed on the label, upon further investigation on the company’s website, this product is HIGHLY toxic to dogs and cats.

Cocoa Mulch is manufactured by Hershey’s, and they claim that ‘It is true that studies have shown that 50% of the dogs that eat Cocoa Mulch can suffer physical harm to a variety of degrees (depending on each individual dog). However, 98% of all dogs won’t eat it.’

This Snopes site gives the following information:http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/cocoamulch.asp

Cocoa Mulch, which is sold by Home Depot, Foreman’s Garden Supply and other Garden supply stores, contains a lethal ingredient called ‘ Theobromine’. It is lethal to dogs and cats. It smells like chocolate and it really attracts dogs. They will ingest this stuff and die. Several deaths already occurred in the last 2-3 weeks. Theobromine is in all chocolate, especially dark or baker’s chocolate which is toxic to dogs. Cocoa bean shells contain potentially toxic quantities of theobromine, a xanthine compound similar in effects to caffeine and theophylline. A dog that ingested a lethal quantity of garden mulch made from cacao bean shells developed severe convulsions and died 17 hours later. Analysis of the stomach contents and the ingested cacao bean shells revealed the presence of lethal amounts of theobromine.

PLEASE GIVE THIS THE WIDEST DISTRIBUTION!!!

Thank you for the heads up. Why is it relevant that Target is a French-owned company? It isn’t, by the way — see http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/target.asp for details. Weird that this e-mail starts off with a Snopes-debunked falsehood and then returns to Snopes to confirm that cocoa mulch is bad for dogs. So, by the way, are Poinsettias. I dread next Christmas and an inbox flooded with messages about the deadly red flower from Target (teh FRENCH CUMPANY) that kills kitteh!

If cocoa keeps cats away, why is there a danger of cats eating it? Who were this unnamed couple, and why is one of them “Mom”? Is this letter written by one of their children, and if so why do they start off writing about their mom and dad in the third person?

Why in God’s name would a “doting” set of pet owners stand there while their puppy eats “a large helping” of mulch? It’s mulch! If my dog (I do not own a dog, but there is a nice beagle in my mind named Baxter that is my imaginary dog in such scenarios) were to start eating weird chemically scented mulch, I wouldn’t be standing by going “hey, check out my mulch-eating dog!” I would be saying “For the love of God, Baxter, don’t eat mulch! It’s full of dead leaves and sharp twigs and pointy things and is probably not good for dogs!” Letting your dog eat cheap artificially scented mulch from Target (French owned Company) moves you right out of the “doting” category, in my book. “A dumbass let their dog eat mulch and it got sick” isn’t much of a story, but for Pete’s sake, it’s mulch. Mulch is not food.

And who in the world would want a garden that smells like cocoa? “I love my garden! The only thing that could make it better was if it SMELLED LIKE CHOCOLATE!” What? I like my couch, but I don’t want it to smell like baked beans. I love my bicycle, but I don’t want it to smell like bacon. Why in the world to people want chocolate-scented gardens? Shouldn’t gardens be kind of flower-scented anyway?

This whole thing smells like a scam, and if it weren’t for the Snopes link I’d think it was more spamfakery. The blatant anti-French slur (Target is a FRENCH company and therefore obviously CAN’T BE TRUSTED) off the top kind of stinks. The whole thing is super weird.