Sluggite days.

I still remember the first Sluggy Freelance comic I ever read. It was this one. April 29th, 1998. I had met my wife by that point, but we were not friends. I was writing ten thousand words or so a day -- many of them crap. My job was a paper route. I was in a rough-and-tumble garage band, which for my part was mostly writing lyrics.

1998. Y2k jokes were starting to circulate. Backstreet Boys were still around, and I was not fond of them at all. I think I had just discovered some new bands, like KoRn. It would be another year before I bought my first Alice Cooper album (I can't even count how many I have now).

(A very typical guy/writer detail, too: I still own a couple of shirts from 1998 and they still fit.)

I came to Sluggy Freelance and I laughed and then said "What the hell?" and spent a couple of sleepless nights reading what there was of the archives up to that point. Since April 29th, 1998, I've read Sluggy almost every single day, unless something prevents me from it. And when I get back on the computer, the first thing I usually do is catch up on the few comics I may have missed.

I'm waxing slightly nostalgic about it, because today is Sluggy Freelance's 10th anniversary. It's hard to believe the web-comic's been going for a full decade, and equally hard to believe that I've been reading it for nine years of it.

Congratulations to Pete Abrahms and to Sluggy in general, and I look forward to another ten years being left in suspense over what the hell a "sluggy freelance" is anyway.