25th anniversary

If you follow me on Bluesky, you know I’ve been sharing memories from my career in comics for the last 25 days, counting down to today. 

How it started…

Twenty-five years ago today, I posted my first comic on the Web. Greystone Inn first appeared on a GeoCities site on February 14, 2000.

 

On April 16, 2001, it began running in the Philadelphia Daily News. I self-syndicated the strip to other newspapers, and by 2008, I estimated that my comic was being seen by about 1.2 million readers a week.

 

Greystone Inn ran online Monday through Saturday until the end of June 2005. The next day, Evil Inc was launched.

 
 
At the beginning of 2016, the comic-strip format was retired in favor of a comic-book approach and the site began updating twice a week in half-page chunks.

The past 24 years have also seen the rise of some other projects I'm very proud of. Courting Disaster, a single-panel strip about sex and relationships was launched on Jan 12, 2005. It was originally created to accompany a sex-advice column that ran in the Philadelphia Daily News.

 

It ended in 2012 when I left that newspaper, but it was reinvented as Courting Disaster Uncensored, a NSFW feature available only to Patreon backers and in printed collections. Today, the general concept lives on — in the form of the bonus cartoons I post on Mondays.

 

Phables was a full-page comic about life in Philadelphia which started on Feb. 25, 2006. It was nominated for an Eisner Award for best webcomic the following year. It lost to an advertisement for a video game. I'm not making that up.

 

And, of course, Evil Inc After Dark, my first NSFW series, was launched officially in April 2015.

Along the way, there have been dozens of other projects I've been proud of — Webcomics.com, Arch Bros, Webcomics Weekly, Surviving Creativity, ComicLab, How to Make Webcomics, Webcomics Confidential, Tales from the Con, The Webcomics Handbook, The Everything Cartooning Book, Hey Comics — Kids!, teaching classes in both sequential art and entrepreneurship at Hussian College School of Art, teaching Storytelling and TV Story Analysis at University of the Arts, winning the award for Comic Book Writer of the Year at the Philadelphia Geek Awards in 2012, back-to-back nominations for Best Online Longform Comic from the National Cartoonists Society, and winning a ’Ringo Award

Whew! It's been a busy 25 years!

And none of it would have been possible without your support — on my sites, at comic-convention appearances, and here on Substack. You folks have been with me every step of the way, and I couldn't be more grateful.

Valentine’s Day Sex Drive

Click here to see the Evil Inc NSFW Valentine

Brad Guigar – Evil Inc

Jaycee Knight – Bloomin’ Faeries

Centcomm – Datachasers

Team Lady Valiant – Lady Valiant

MonicaNG – MoonSlayer

Julie Devin – Monster Soup

Julie Devin – Bisque

Amy Letts – Epic Fail

Midnight – Danger Zone One

Lou Graziani – Cy-Boar

Darksh1ne – Monstroniverse Adventures The

Letter M – The Restless Dead

Blue Dragon – Dark Horse

The Jab Archives – The Jab Archives

Lightfoot – Pulse

Stilldown – Ariane Eldar’s Personal Place

Stilldown – Theater Of The Bloody Tongue Utzsar – Rocks

Holly Laing – Terra Incognita

The Exiern Team – Exiern Valentines Day Sex Drive 2024 Reading Order Read Me First! (This Page Safe for Work!)

The Exiern Team – Exiern (Read this page 1st after the Reading Order page! Then vote for Exiern on Top Webcomics 2nd!)

The Exiern Team – Exiern: Dark Reflections (Read this page 3rd! Then vote for Exiern on Top Webcomics 4th!)

The Exiern Team – Dark Reflections – Zen (Read this page 5th!)

The Exiern Team – Dark Reflections – Chaos (Read this page 6th!)

The Exiern Team – Exiern Extras (Read this page 7th!)

The Exiern Team – Exiern v1.0 (Read this page 8th!)

Hentai High – Hentai High

PronQuest – Pron Quest

Barry Linck – Phineus+ Magician for Hire

MiraKirall – The Ace of The Spades

David A Webcomic – David: A Webcomic (2024)

David A Webcomic – David: A Webcomic (2025)

Kawaii Kissu – Kawaii Kissu

Sheryl Schopfer – Sharpclaw

Sheryl Schopfer – Deer Me

sidaragasum – Locked in Imagination

Momoru – Mildreth of the Night

Microraptor – Cryptida

rulerbrain – Selling Smiles

Mark Egan – Bata Neart

Mark Egan – Back Office

Ben Bourbon – Devilbear: The Grimoires of Bearalzebub

SpaceGoblin – By The Book

Gojiramon – CKarrus

Nick Greaves – The Great Isle of Prentil

Dizzaster Juice – Offworld: The Crease

Marshall Reeves – Yesterday Bound

Sean Harrington – Spying With Lana

John Harrington – Super Rivals

Lirvilas – Grinder$

J.E. Draft – The Challenges of Zona (2024)

J.E. Draft – The Challenges of Zona (2025)

yellowgerbil – Zoe the Vampire

Stef Marcinkowski – Sarah Zero