R. K. Milholland | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Randal Keith Milholland November 25, 1975 [1] |
| Occupation(s) | Author and Artist |
| Years active | 1999 - today |
| Notable work | Something Positive |
Randal Keith Milholland (born November 25, 1975 [1] ), better known as R. K. Milholland, is an American webcomic author. His works include Something Positive , New Gold Dreams , Midnight Macabre, Classically Positive and Super Stupor. In 2022, he took over as author of the Sunday edition of the Popeye syndicated comic strip. [2]
Raised in Bedford, Texas, Milholland attended Harwood Junior High and Trinity High School in neighboring Euless, Texas. [3] During high school he won several awards for his editorial cartoons. [4] [5] He went on to enroll in the art department at the University of North Texas where he spent four years.
Milholland moved to Boston in the spring of 1999. He worked odd jobs, including stints at a dot com startup, scientific non-profit, medical billing and medical research companies. During this time he started the Something Positive webcomic, in response to a criticism from his friend, voice actress Clarine Harp, that he should "do something positive" with his life. The protagonist in this comic, Davan, is loosely based on Milholland and the stories are often inspired by real life experiences. Davan's best friend Aubrey Chorde is based on Harp.
In June 2004, faced with increasing complaints about his lateness in updating the comic, Milholland challenged his readership to donate enough money to pay for a year of his salary so that he could quit his job and become a full-time cartoonist. [3] [6] [7] To his surprise, this amount was reached and surpassed in less than a month, making Milholland one of the successful pioneers of micropatronage. Since then, his webcomic has expanded into many realms of merchandising. [8] [9]
Milholland has relocated to Texas and travels the con circuit frequently. He also sometimes performs in community theater, especially children's theater. In 2017, he moved to Georgia. [10] In 2019, he moved back to Texas following the signing of Georgia House Bill 481, a so-called "fetal heartbeat bill", into law. [11] [12]
Something Positive started its run on December 19, 2001. As of December 21,2023 [update] , it is still being actively updated.
Starting on September 7, 2007, Milholland launched a third spin-off from Something Positive, this one also taking place in the same continuity as the original but taking place many years earlier. Something Positive 1937 follows the relationship of Fred's father Vester Macintire and his cousin Davan (Davan of S*P's namesake, first mentioned in the comic's May 8, 2007 strip. [13] ) The comic is in black and white and for a time featured in a sidebar next to the original, with archives available on the same page as the original strip. Milholland said in news posts he expected the story to last for a few years, and provided it with its own website [14] on September 24, 2007. The strip stopped updating in 2008.
Midnight Macabre is another spin-off from Something Positive. It features Gaspar Baugh, the father of Something Positive secondary character Lisa Baugh, as he attempts to resurrect a horror TV show presenting Midnight movies.
New Gold Dreams is a strip that spoofs the conventions of the heroic fantasy genre. It also ties in with Milholland's interest in role-playing games, as the comic is portrayed as a game run by Pee-Jee, one of the main strip's cast members; some of the characters in New Gold Dreams have the same appearance and personality as regular S*P characters. The comic started on April 2, 2004 but has been entirely on hiatus since the 20th issue in August 2005.
Super Stupor is a superhero comic, which mocks the conventions of the genre. Four self-published volumes of the strip are currently available from the Rhymes With Witch store.
Popeye is a newspaper comic strip from King Features Syndicate, starring an ornery sailor and a large cast of quirky characters. In 2022, Popeye's 93rd year, Milholland took over the Sunday edition from Hy Eisman as the latter retired. [2]
In January 2024, with Mickey Mouse's original version of Steamboat Willie becoming public domain, Milholland released the webcomic Mousetrapped. [15] Set after the events of the short, the story follows Mickey struggling to make ends meet after getting fired by Pete and features a cast of other public domain cartoon characters. The series ran through February 2024 before being discontinued by 2025 with the website going defunct.
Mickey Mouse is an American cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime icon and mascot of the Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large shoes, and white gloves. He is often depicted with a cast of characters including his girlfriend Minnie Mouse, his pet dog Pluto, his friends Donald Duck and Goofy, and his nemesis Pete.
User Friendly was a webcomic written by J. D. Frazer, also known by his pen name Illiad. Starting in 1997, the strip was one of the earliest webcomics to make its creator a living. The comic is set in a fictional internet service provider and draws humor from dealing with clueless users and geeky subjects. The comic ran seven days a week until 2009, when updates became sporadic, and since 2010 it had been in re-runs only. The webcomic was shut down in late February 2022, after an announcement from Frazer.
Bluto, at times known as Brutus, is a cartoon and comics character created in 1932 by Elzie Crisler Segar as a one-time character, named "Bluto the Terrible", in his Thimble Theatre comic strip. Bluto made his first appearance on September 12 of that year. Fleischer Studios adapted him the next year (1933) to be the main antagonist of their theatrical Popeye animated cartoon series.
Elzie Crisler Segar, known by the pen name E. C. Segar, was an American cartoonist. He created Popeye in 1929, introducing the character in his comic strip Thimble Theatre.
Tijuana bibles were palm-sized erotic comics produced in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1960s. Their popularity peaked during the Great Depression era.
Sinfest is a long-running American webcomic by Tatsuya Ishida. Updating daily, Sinfest started as a black comedy strip in January 2000. It has featured a wide range of perspectives over its long history, including on American politics, organized religion, and radical feminism. Shaenon Garrity's 2012 review in The Comics Journal observed that "raunchy strips about strippers are followed by cute cat-and-dog gags are followed by religious humor are followed by autobio strips are followed by shit-stirring political cartoons are followed by spoken-word poetry are followed by lessons in drawing Japanese kanji, one of Sinfest’s signature running features", and that "Sinfest is always, first and foremost, about what Ishida wants to cartoon at any given moment."
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide. King Features Syndicate also produces intellectual properties, develops new content and franchises, and licenses its classic characters and properties.
Narbonic is a webcomic written and drawn by Shaenon K. Garrity. The storylines center on the misadventures of the staff of the fictional Narbonic Labs, which is the domain of mad scientist Helen Narbon. The strip started on July 31, 2000, and finished on December 31, 2006. On January 1, 2007, Garrity launched the "Director's Cut", an "annotated replay" of Narbonic. Narbonic was part of the subscription-based Modern Tales website for several years but moved to Webcomics Nation in July 2006, where it resumed being free-to-read. The comic is also a member of The Nice comics collective.
Shannon Wheeler is an American cartoonist, best known as a cartoonist for The New Yorker and for creating the satirical superhero Too Much Coffee Man.
Castor Oyl is a fictional character, created in 1920 by cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar for his comic strip Thimble Theatre, now known as Popeye.
Brad Guigar is an American cartoonist who is best known for his daily webcomic Greystone Inn and its sequel Evil Inc.
Forrest Cowles Sagendorf, better known as Bud Sagendorf, was an American cartoonist, notable for his work on King Features Syndicate's Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye comic strip.
Popeye the Sailor is an American animated series of short films based on the Popeye comic strip character created by E. C. Segar. In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios, based in New York City, adapted Segar's characters into a series of theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. The plotlines in the animated cartoons tended to be simpler than those presented in the comic strips, and the characters slightly different. A villain, usually Bluto, makes a move on Popeye's "sweetie", Olive Oyl. The villain clobbers Popeye until he eats spinach, giving him superhuman strength. Thus empowered, Popeye makes short work of the villain.
Savage Chickens is a webcomic created by Canadian cartoonist Doug Savage. It is a single panel comic drawn on yellow sticky notes, often featuring alternative humor. Savage Chickens has existed since 31 January 2005 and it contains at least a thousand comics. The page is generally updated daily Monday through Friday. Whereas situations in the comic are primarily carried out through cartoon chickens, other characters, such as Timmy the tasteless tofu, and a mock-up robot boss named PROD3000 are integral characters. Savage supplements his cartooning income with a day job, and has claimed that by day he "edits software manuals in the dark recesses of a giant corporation".
Popeye the Sailor is a fictional cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar. The character first appeared on January 17, 1929, in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre. The strip was in its tenth year when Popeye made his debut, but the one-eyed sailor quickly became the lead character, and Thimble Theatre became one of King Features' most popular properties during the 1930s. Following Segar's death in 1938, Thimble Theatre was continued by several writers and artists, most notably Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf. The strip continues to appear in first-run installments on Sundays, written and drawn by R. K. Milholland. The daily strips are reprints of old Sagendorf stories.
Sluggy Freelance is a long-running webcomic written and drawn by Pete Abrams. Starting in 1997, it is one of the oldest successful webcomics, and as of 2012 had hundreds of thousands of readers. Abrams was one of the first comic artists successful enough to make a living from a webcomic.
Look Mickey is a 1961 oil on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Widely regarded as the bridge between his abstract expressionism and pop art works, it is notable for its ironic humor and aesthetic value as well as being the first example of the artist's employment of Ben-Day dots, speech balloons and comic imagery as a source for a painting. The painting was bequeathed to the Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art upon Lichtenstein's death.
Girls With Slingshots is a completed webcomic series by Danielle Corsetto that premiered on September 29, 2004. The series follows several friends as they deal with life events like unemployment, marriage, and their sexuality. Corsetto self-publishes Girls With Slingshots on her website and has released ten volumes of the collected strips through Lulu.com and TopatoCo. Corsetto has received praise for her depiction of LGBTQ characters and characters with disabilities.
The history of webcomics follows the advances of technology, art, and business of comics on the Internet. The first comics were shared through the Internet in the mid-1980s. Some early webcomics were derivatives from print comics, but when the World Wide Web became widely popular in the mid-1990s, more people started creating comics exclusively for this medium. By the year 2000, various webcomic creators were financially successful and webcomics became more artistically recognized.
The business of webcomics involves creators earning a living through their webcomic, often using a variety of revenue channels. Those channels may include selling merchandise such as t-shirts, jackets, sweatpants, hats, pins, stickers, and toys, based on their work. Some also choose to sell print versions or compilations of their webcomics. Many webcomic creators make use of online advertisements on their websites, and possibly even product placement deals with larger companies. Crowdfunding through websites such as Kickstarter and Patreon are also popular choices for sources of potential income.
Immediately after that, my wife and I will be packing up our stuff, cats, and probably our baby and moving from Savannah, Georgia to San Antonio, Texas