Joyce and Walky!

Oh, hey, look, it’s Roomies! Redux.

So, like, in 2004 or so, four whole years after Roomies! was over and done with, Keenspot did this thing with some newspaper in the middle of nowhere wherein … something.  I can’t remember what we got out of it.  Perhaps links?  I know I didn’t get paid.  Not that I expected to, I don’t think.  I was just a comic drawing fiend and wanted to draw comics to appear in a newspaper, even if it was only ever in a single newspaper which I would never read.

The newspaper didn’t want storylines, they just wanted gags, and so I grabbed up all of my stand-alone Roomies! strips and… huh.  Like, twelve.  A whole twelve strips out of Roomies! could be published as stand-alone gags.  AND SO BECAUSE I WAS INSANE I started drawing new Roomies! strips.  Stand-alones.  Well, some very loose continuity.

And since this was a newspaper, Keenspot had us encode the, uh, rating of each strip within the filename?  For example, today’s is rated n0l0v1o0.  I can’t remember what N stood for, L is obviously Language, V is Violence, and o is… Other, maybe?  Anyway.  I had a few V1s in my day.  Oooh, and I spot a V2.  Well, let’s face it, newspapers don’t care about violence.  It’s the language and sex that getcha in Hell.

Yadda yadda yadda, these strips take place at this point in the continuity.  All of the characters I care about (meaning everyone except Mary) are around to play with, so I got some pretty good strips out of it despite the restrictions.  Most importantly in the long run, I learned that if I want to play with these characters in this setting again, I kind of have to start over from scratch so that I have the most freedom.