The Original Web Comic

It's September, the anniversary of the longest-running web comic, Kevin & Kell. It's older than the Web.

Back in the happy days when I was sysop of the CompuServe Comics and Animation Forum, Bill Holbrook emailed me that he had a comic strip that his syndicate, King Features, wasn't interested in. He wondered if we could do something with it online. In those days, sysops were paid based on the amount of time customers spent in our forums, and it occurred to me that a daily comic strip would be a way of reminding people that there was a reason to visit a forum every day. So I sold the strip to other sysops for a monthly subscription fee, and we were off.

Of course, when CompuServe went away and the Internet became free, Bill had to come up with another way of getting paid, which he did with great imagination and enthusiasm. Books and swag are helpful; there was even an origin comic book. Bill developed levels of sponsorship, where sponsors get the day's strip at midnight each day (that's my job; I just got through scheduling the emails through September 28), and at the highest level, you can get written into the strip.

It's all a lot of fun, and I'm delighted that it has lasted so long. I feel privileged to work with someone who is so talented that he can write and draw three comic strips...and Bill writes them all himself. I don't believe he has ever bought a gag from another writer.