Some words from Private Thomas Strother of the USCT, writing the Christian Recorder, the 19th century paper published by the African Methodist Episcopal Church:
To suppose that slavery, the accursed thing, could be abolished peacefully and laid aside innocently, after having plundered cradles, separated husbands and wives, parents and children; and after having starved to death, worked to death, whipped to death, run to death, burned to death, lied to death, kicked and cuffed to death, and grieved to death; and, worst of all, after having made prostitutes of a majority of the best women of a whole nation of people...would be the greatest ignorance under the sun.
“At the beginning, I assumed that, to be successful, I had to sort of pander to these ideas that were coming out of Digg,” Inman told an interviewer this month. Digg, of course, is no longer the social media giant it once was, but posting his comics there was responsible for much of his early success. Inman said he regrets that blatant pandering now, but his comics still seem to be written according to that formula — simply pointed at Reddit, Digg’s bigger spiritual descendent.
But Inman has had a complicated relationship with Reddit. Two years ago, Redditors discovered he had been posting his comics to the site himself, and, in his past job as an Internet marketer, had posted his linkbait quizzes and comic infographics designed to draw traffic to his SEO clients. If there’s one thing Reddit hates, it’s spammers, and after Inman’s Reddit activity was outed in a thread for a webcomic satirizing The Oatmeal’s pandering, there was a veritable Reddit backlash against his comic.
Inman reacted by rickrolling readers who had been linked to The Oatmeal from Reddit.
Soon he stopped, and Reddit, apparently unable to resist a webcomic from a sharp traffic guru aimed squarely at them, resumed serving as a major source of traffic. But the damage was done. Inman mocked his critics, but in the end, when his bottom line was threatened, his business sense forced him to capitulate.
INHUMANOIDS is one of those cartoons that is better than it appears at first. It was an attempt to launch even more toy-friendly cartoons in the late 80s (see also, GI JOE, She-Ra, He-Man, Rainbow Brite, Transformers, etc) but drew on Lovecraft for inspiration. It featured unstoppable evils from the bowels of the Earth and an anime-inspired design.
It was also heavily serialized, with an actual continuity running from episode to episode.
Check out this episode's synopsis:
In a reckless PR stunt, Senator Masterson and tabloid-TV journalist Hector Remirez, together with a menagerie of inept celebrity goons, mount a live televised "journey to the center of the Earth" aboard a fleet of dirigible vehicles, promising to rescue the Statue of Liberty from Metlar's abduction. Auger and company are content to let the inevitable televised chaos unfold, instead busying themselves with the marriage of their teammate, Derek Bright, to actress Stella Blaze, a fiery redhead recently rescued from the adoring clutches of Tendril... who also decides to crash the wedding. From his hospital bed, recovering Air Force pilot Brad Armbruster recounts how his plane was downed by the serpentine monster, Sslither, in the skies over Angkor Wat. Earth Corps consult the Redwoods for more information, learning the dark history of Sslither's dominion over the Inhumanoids before Metlar finally rebelled, managing to trap his slithery overlord within a shell of lava. Meanwhile, predictably, Masterson's subterranean team find themselves in over their heads, first being captured by stone warriors, then being made hostage to Blackthorne's ambitions. Earth Corps forms a reluctant alliance with Nightcrawler to combat the threat of Sslither and rescue Masterson's group just as Metlar arrives to pummel his hated ancient foe, who slithers away in defeat. Lady Liberty is later returned to the surface by Metlar's own accord when he finds himself less than enamored by her incessant nagging.
