There's a good amount of practice and learning you can do before you inflict your work on others. Jon forgot to do this, and now people keep asking when he's going to publish the first two years of his comic strip. A compilation of that chicken scratch (no pun intended) wouldn't be good for any of us.

Hey Jon, do you actually believe that? I mean I get the feeling you do believe it to an extent, but I've been reading older strips lately a lot. Do they look bad? Not terribly. Do they look worse than today? Well sure. Are they as well written as today? Not really. But they are still good.

There have been a lot of overarching stories that have really excelled lately, but those old strips have a lot of single strips that are some of my favorites at least. I picked up on Goats pretty early on and it's those early strips that got me hooked. It's some of those early strips that are illegally printed out and taped to things.

I can understand that in terms of a book, a bunch of disconnected pandering strips doesn't make a nice secure set of material. But honestly, I'd guess that at least half of the people who buy your books would still buy the early ones for completionism and to support you, if not purely because of the artistry involved.

That leads me to believe that the main reason that you wouldn't want to publish those is because for posterity, you'd rather have the newer better stuff out there. Which I understand I guess, but I don't know if I believe it's for the best.

Sorry for the seriousness!

I assumed (I know, I know) that Jon would be putting all the strips in book form only because he started with Book 4 then 3, going backwards. The art and stories from day one through today have evolved and I figured he wanted to start at the "end" to hook new readers and get them to the website, only then unleashing "Book 2 and 1" upon us.

That's Diablo talking. I take no responsibility for his statements.

In Response to jon (#4021):

He's not asking if you take responsibility for Diablo's statements.

He's asking if you *agree* with them. And he's not even asking if you generally agree with all of Diablo's statements. He's specifically asking if you agree with Diablo's assessment of the first two years worth of Goats strips.

In Response to zamphir (#4022):

I don't take responsibility for Zamphir's statements either.

In Response to jon (#4026):

That makes two of us.

In Response to jon (#4026):

Well, that said, would you please take responsibility for publishing the first two years' strips in book form? I, too, think some really great material will otherwise get skipped, and I would hate to burn through several hundred pages of printer paper just to "complete" my shelf collection with inferior, morally ambiguous pseudo-books.

In Response to mea37 (#4042):

Didn't jon answer this one already once? I'm sure he did...

I'd buy two[1] of the old books also. So much would I buy one that I actually worked out once how much it would cost to save each file and then print them myself[2].

[1] My investment plan. The new books would diversify my holdings so a mint copy of each would be a sensible choice.

[2] It wouldn't cost much but damn I am lazy, and plus this was before the real ones started coming out, for cheaper and _less_ effort. oh yeah and supporting artist and site and keeping artist in beer and so on and so forth of course.

In Response to tor (#4046):

Didn't jon answer this one already once?

Dunno. My cross-referenced database of Everything Jon has Ever Said isn't complete yet.

In Response to mea37 (#4049):

Well, get cracking, then.

If you promise not to tell anyone else, I'll let you know what the...

Man. That's weird. My cat is snoring.

Anyway. This isn't an official announcement, and things are subject to change until I make one, but we're probably going to be putting out a book of older material later this year. I can't say when. because unlike the previous books, I'm going to have to go and rescan most of the material, which is a bitch.

There are some other juicy details that make the next volume different than the ones before that I will neglect to mention so as to leave you tantalized with intriguing possibilities.

In Response to mea37 (#4049):

Didn't jon answer this one already once?

Jon said something along the lines of "the next book won't be out before late summer because I have to re-scan the old strips."

Can't be bothered looking up the message, but I reckon that Goats vol. 1 & 2 are pretty safe bets.

Cheers,
Graham

In Response to mea37 (#4042):

How about a Goats: Greatest Hits, and a forum is started for people to vote on the top 50 strips from the first 2 years? That would put some stress testing on the new search feature...

In Response to albionsoft (#4061):

Of course, my last post looked so much more useful when I didn't know Jon was posting while I was typing it up...

Cheers,
Graham