Y’know, I actually still enjoy The Simpsons, but my cartoons don’t always agree with me.
But this is the last TNI strip! I told myself long ago I’d run until the 250th installment, probably “conclude” the old Robo-J.O.E. “storyline,” and here I’ve kept to my internal promise. I hope you’ve been enjoying them! Jay Cochran at ToyNewsI has always been a saint to me, and I had fun doing them as well. Good feelings all around.
Man, why did #250 have to land on the weekend we finish moving out of our house. That is the worst timing.
Are you going to put up an archive here for the TNI strips?
Probably not. I still consider that their online content, though they’ll of course continue to be collected in the books. Walkypedia has links to every single installment, if you require: http://walkypedia.com/index.php/TNI_Shortpacked
Sad to see them go. Sorry for all the fuckers who keep spamming the comments on them, the TNI strips were always great.
Did you get paid by TNI to do them or did you just shoot Jay Cochran an email one day saying “You have a website about toys, and I have a comic about toys…”?
They asked me!
Congratulations on 250 months of Shortpacked! at TNI.
I feel like I’ve been doing this all my life.
Hard to believe you only did them for 20 years, huh?
That was a typo. Willis has been doing this for 250 years.
You should’ve seen his comic about the Colonial Revolution!
Demoncat’s response was “George washington is sad because he won’t be able to drink any of the tea.”
Awww, where will I get my sunday giggles now?
Seriously, thanks for finally ending the Robo-Joe epic – man, I could’ve read a full year’s worth of that when you started it – but I’ll really miss having a little SP! fix (almost) every Sunday. Certainly won’t be stopping by TNI every week anymore.
TNI’s a pretty good site for toy news. A little hard to navigate but I’v seen some great pictures there when everyone else just had blurry cameraphone snapshots.
At least you won’t have to put up with those !@#%^&(^$ at TNI who critized you each and every week Walky. Find out where they live and sick Mike and Crazy-RA-Bitch from Dumbing of Age on them.
Thanks for a fun run of strips Walky! Hate not having it to look forward too each Sunday.
But if you feel bad you can make it up to me with that Sabrina Online/Shortpacked crossover I’ve been wanting for years
I MOURN THE END OF THESE STRIPS.
Really now, why else would I visit TNI? For news?
Its over?! B-But what will all those commentators on TNI have to bitch about now?!
Well, I really enjoyed these strips and its a pity to see them go. Good job man.
Sad to see TNI Shortpacked end! But it’s better to end ON TOP leaving them asking for more, than having them show you the door.
Now if only Matt Greoning would realize that and END the Simpsons and come up with something fresh and new. I think a Simpsons Finale has been long overdue. Seriously, the show should have ended in 2001 with Behind the laughter episode. It would have been a perfect closer.
It’s not up to Matt Greoning. It’s up to Fox. At least as I understand it, Greoning was originally signed to do animated shorts of his Life in Hell comics for the The Tracey Ullman Show. Then, he read his contract and discovered that anything he created for Fox became their property. So he turned his rabbit character from Life in Hell in humans for TV and called them the Simpsons. Thus allowing him to retain ownership of Life in Hell, while Fox owns the Simpsons.
Fox is unlikely to cancel the show as long as it continues to make money. Which it still does. So there’s no imperative to end it, despite a small but vocal minority who insist the show isn’t funny anymore, but continue to watch it anyway, seemingly just so they can complain about it.
Greoning used to occasionally mention eventual plans to end the show… I think the last time he even spoke the words was before the Simpsons Movie was released (since they originally had talked about doing a movie after the series ended, but the series never ended.) Supposedly the amount of hate mail and death threats and such that came in because he mentioned that the show might end someday was sufficient to remove that phrase from his vocabulary.
He didn’t turn the rabbits into the Simpsons. Binky is a single parent of Bongo. The Simpsons are clearly based on his own family.
congrats on #250! I’m sad to see it go, even though it’s for the best. At least now those ignorant, self-absorbed psuedo-intellectual snobs can shut up. Who will I yell at now?
I’m sad not because the TNI strips are ending, but because that means less Shortpacked! content in general. First the move to three strips a week in the main area, now no more TNI…Evil, evil scale-back.
Woah, 250! Well ya had a good run man. I enjoyed them.
Glad to hear you’ve moved in to your new place. Shoot me an email with your new addy, got something for ya.
Ouaou. This feels weird to have ended. And I was just one that were reading them.
Thank you.
A nice run may i say, it was a very nice run.
TNI was an awesome, fun little comic strip that made me reminisce on the fun I had reading Sunday funnies when I was younger. (Well, before all the good writers retired or moved on.)
This was a great comic, and I thank you for your work on it, Mr. Willis.
The only thing I will not miss about the comic are the horrible, horrible trolls that lived in that comments section. They seemed to live for their hatedom. I wounder if they cried themselves to sleep last night when they realized they would have to find something else to loath to distract them from their miserably lives.
Yeah – I’m really bummed these are ending. I enjoyed them for multiple reasons two of which being that it a) gave me a great “Shortpacked!” fix over the weekend (especially nice on a Sunday when nothing ever happens on teh internets) and 2) Because it typically offered the distilled essence of “Shortpacked!”.
I enjoy the story lines and the longer format of the regular comic but the three/four panel set up usually always took things back to the basic, toy-loving/hating joy of the early years.
All that being said, I was always impressed when you managed a 6 day run week in and week out for a while there and can imagine it would be nice to get a break (even though I know you usually had a buffer built in).
Good job, man. I won’t miss reading the comments by those trolls over there.
Wait…so when I read the awesomesauce that is Willis I won’t have to follow it up visually constantly with the stupidity of fucktards like ‘Spockshadow Vs Gorneyes’, ‘Gornshadow vs. Spockeyes’, and ‘Thejokerslastlaugh’???? THANK [whateveryouholdholy] FOR THAT!!!!!
I really enjoyed the Robo-Joe arc when it was first published, but had completely forgotten. Glad to be reminded of it.
Wow, 250′s a good run. Congrats, man.
Hey Willis, I didn’t know you were the cause of a massive rift in Transformers fandom, did you?
http://www.joecustoms.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=30089