Jeremy Mattocks

We could fit more text in this. Don’t say we can’t. ‘Cause we can.

We’ve nearly reached the halfway point in our snowy adventure. Twists and turns await!

As you may have noticed, we couldn’t quite pop out the next page of Snow Day this week. Talon offers this comic as an explanation.

I, for one, don’t buy it. Despite the vomit. So much vomit.

I love Walter’s expression in that last panel.

My goodness, look at all this continuity. Disgusting.

Part 4 will (hopefully) be up on Thursday.

I hope this is starting to pique your interest. Part 3 will be up on Tuesday.

Page 1 of our new It Gets Worser short story: Snow Day. Page 2 on Thursday.

The song, by the way, is the Cherrytree Sessions version of Poker Face.

Someone you’ve never met has died. How does that make you feel? Clearly, the rational response is to talk only about that death for the next week, or at least until Charlie Sheen does something weird again.

Spoiler alert: we’re all going to die. On a cosmic scale, we’re going to die very, very soon. The human species as a whole will one day perish. Before or after that, the earth will be devoid of all life. The cosmos as we know it will likely end in heat death. That’s a part of life. When there are over 6 billion people on the Earth and 70,000 of them die every day, how odd that someone in the public eye would be the thing to ruin your day.

Obviously I’m not talking about people who were close to the late Elizabeth Taylor. Let’s be clear: we mean no disrespect toward her or her bereaved family. But celebrity death is a strange thing to affect a culture. I’m not making a judgment call. Just sharing an observation.

A Prayer

Emerald City Comicon, we give you thanks for reminding us what tremendous nerds we are. Sometimes we forget the heights of nerdom to which we’ve ascended in this life.

Thanks be to KC Green, Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub, Evan Dahm, Gordon McAlpin, Aaron Diaz, Doug TenNapel, and the saintly patience of someone we assume to be Arthur Culang, for letting us awkwardly hobble around your booth without being visibly revolted by our barely suppressed hero-worship. Your art brings us joy — what more can we say?

See you all next year?

Thanks also to my friends for being huge nerds, themselves, and not making me feel like a complete social pariah for my passions.

Amen.

I bet you think that’s a stuffed bear. Ha!

Let’s have an informal poll. Who do you suppose Mitch is pretending to destroy?

(Note: “everyone” is an acceptable answer.)

Speaking of destroying things, have you played Minecraft? Ten minutes in, I’m ready to give up my entire life and career just to play the game. I want to play it forever. DO NOT let your friends play Minecraft. I haven’t even started making things yet. Punching dirt and trees is addictive enough that I can’t pull myself away long enough to look up how to build things. Thus far, I have created a cube-shaped mountain fortress. And some sticks.

Crap. I need to go play Minecraft now. Goodbye forever, I guess.

Hey guys, it’s me- the artist again. You should already notice that Thursday’s comic is late. Yeah- sorry bout that. I’m busy working on that right now and should get that up for you guys sometime today or tomorrow. It’s a humdinger. Worth the wait. Which it should be, because I’m taking next week off…

Now hold on! This could be a good thing!

Both Jeremy and I have been seeing some shifts in our everyday schedules recently, and recently those changes have been impacting the updates of the comic.  So we’re going to fix that. By taking next week off for updates, doesn’t mean I won’t be working on comics. I’m getting ahead. Don’t worry guys, both Jeremy and I love this comic and we aren’t going anywhere. We just want to make sure that it’s something we can stay on top of while our lives get crazier.

To tide you over, go back and read that Fairy Ride strip again. I have it on good authority that there’s a pun in there if you look hard enough.

Trust us. The less said about this one, the better.

This is the stupidest script I’ve ever written. I mentioned this idiotic gag idea, and Talon laughed, and then I couldn’t talk him out of it, and now here we are.

“No, dude!” he said, “It’s gonna be awesome!”

“No, dude,” I replied. “It’s gonna be stupid.”

“Seriously! I can make it work! It’s visual humor!”

“Okay,” I said, “If you can make it more funny than stupid, I’ll post it.”

I’ll let you be the judge: have I made the right choice? I think so.

The question we ended last comic with remains unanswered. If anything, the question is somehow less answered. This anti-answered question has even spawned its own child questions, namely “Just what was the question?” and “Why am I reading this?”

The singular answer to all these questions will be revealed in the next comic.* However, each answer will create twice as many new questions, and so forth, until all possible questions have been asked at which point the unanswered questions can only be answered in a way that invalidates all previous answers and reopens the original questions.

You may find this logic questionable, but I assure you, sir: yes it is. And therein lies the trouble. If you question my logic, you’re only playing into my hand.

This one is actually based on a true story. It happened one day at a Starbucks. (Shut up! I had a gift card!) Talon and I overheard a man’s order and immediately burst into laughter.

We couldn’t help it. It was too absurd to exist in this universe.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worser, it did: the man, upon receiving the coffee, complained about the temperature, which was at least two degrees hotter than requested.

There was no more laughter. There was only confusion. Had we stumbled into an alternate universe where the specifics of hot bean-water was deathly important?

“Do you get this a lot?” I asked the barista.

“You have no idea,” she said with weariness in her voice.

That’s when we knew we were, indeed, in an alternate reality where absurdity is the norm. In fact, we realized we had always been in this reality of incessant absurdity. And what a glorious world it is.

Walter’s Public Image

This boy is angry. He’s tired of the world and everyone in it. He claims his obvious intellectual superiority causes him agony, like his skull is full of bees buzzing around. There is nothing that interests Walter, nothing that makes him feel any emotion other than cynical angst tempered by a growing numbness. Walter knows no joy.

Walter’s Private Life

This child watches, enjoys, and sings along with the theme songs of nigh every cartoon on television. He grins ear to ear, fantasizes about battling alongside young ninjas, staying in a home for imaginary friends, and visiting a pineapple under the sea.

Walter’s SUPER SECRET Private Life

Walter also watches iCarly. He is prepared to kill to keep this information from reaching the public.

I would like to put aside my usual commentary for today’s comic to make a couple of personal notes. The above comic has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. It was just a funny exchange of absurdity I wrote up on Thursday, long before any of this mess started. The comic is not, in any way, a jab at anyone but this fictional character’s own cynicism.

There has been some mess (caused entirely by me) in my professional/personal life, mostly involving the way in which the two clashed. Unexpectedly, It Gets Worser has been used by some persons in an attempt to damage my career. Specifically, it seems the Christmas Special has become quite unpopular.

I want to make a few notes to address this.

1. This comic has absolutely nothing to do with how I function in my day job. Despite the blurring of boundaries between professional and private life caused by the strangeness of social media, I consider this comic to fall clearly into a separate category of my life from my professional career as a social media rep. Yes, I understand that this comic is visible, and I have no desire to hide it from anyone. I believe in authenticity and transparency. But I also believe in respecting boundaries.
2. If you don’t like this comic, that is totally fine. It Gets Worser is meant for a very specific demographic. If you’re over thirty or under eleven and had a happy childhood of much joy and mirth, you probably won’t like this at all. That’s fine. I’m entirely comfortable with people not liking this comic. What makes me uncomfortable is people reading this comic, finding it unfunny or irreverent, and then deciding that I am unfit to represent them in the social sphere. I’m not passing out business cards for this comic. It Gets Worser does not affect you so long as you choose not to read it — and no one is making you.
3. As much as I hate “explaining” our work, I feel the need to draw your attention to the nature and function of It Gets Worser, since there may be some misunderstandings there. This comic is satire. This is not a statement of my opinions or the opinions of Talon, my partner in crime and one of the nicest and most cheerful guys I know. These characters are no stand-ins for us, nor do the things they say actually represent our opinions or personal philosophies. This comic is a way of looking at the mess that was adolescence and accepting it by laughing at it. Think of this comic as Peanuts, the next generation (with infinite respect to Charles Schulz). This is not a manifesto of despair. This is not meant to entice children to commit suicide. This is a coping mechanism. This is laughing at the pain of being an awkward American teenager so as not to cry. This is not a way for either of us to say “look at depressed we are” or “life is pointless.” Neither of us believe life is pointless. Both of us believe life is beautiful and should be cherished. Even if you don’t like this comic, and even if I feel hurt and frustrated that it’s been used as a weapon against me and my career, I don’t want to make enemies. I want to make friends and help people through laughter. If you don’t find it funny, that’s fine. But you and I can still get along. Can’t we?

Jeremy out.

Merry Christmas, dear reader. Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas? Are you now left with that hollow feeling, that sense that the having doesn’t justify all that wanting? Do you now envy your tree, now barren of gifts and still standing unchanged?

Have you considered Buddhism?

Of course not. That’s why you’re going to make sure your gift list for next year is more precise.

(By the way, I know the prose is a bit sloppy in this one. It was written between gulping down eggnog and snatching up last-minute Christmas gifts. We’ll be updating this soon.)