WH!TLESS

Wh!tless is a comic strip created for and about the reader community of Whitney Matheson's "Pop Candy" blog, at USAToday.com. It ran weekly from February 2008 to July 2008.

For the Candycon meetup in June in Vegas, I produced a book featuring all of the episodes of Wh!tless through the middle of May '08 (the end of the Gremlin Crisis War story arc). The book shows each episode as well as comments by me about each strip. In order to share that content with everyone, I've added the comments in the book to the individual comic pages. So if you click on the links in the "Previous Strips" section (below) for the older strips, you can read the comments as well as see the strip. If you'd like a printed copy of the book, you can order one here .
The intro and acknowledgements from the book follow the latest strips.

Dedication:

This book is dedicated to Whitney Matheson, who not only created and writes a compelling web blog, but also continues to provide a connection for a diverse group of previous strangers.

It is also dedicated to that group of strangers; the regular readers of USAtoday’s “Pop Candy”, whether quiet browsers or frequent commenters, who have created the most incredible, friendliest, most welcoming community on the World Wide Web.

Introduction: Can I get a Whitness?

It was the autumn of 1973, and I was drawing cartoons. OK, so I was six, and trying to copy the roadrunner on my scribble pad. The point here is, I knew what I wanted to do; I wanted to be a cartoonist. And none of this has anything to do with this book.

It was the autumn of 1989, and I was drawing cartoons. I was a Senior Illustration major at the University of Massachusetts, and I was drawing a single panel strip called “Buzzworld” for the student newspaper. I knew what I was going to do: I was going to be a cartoonist. And none of this has anything to do with this book.

It was the Autumn of 2007, and I was drawing cartoons. I had spent the previous ten years as a typographic designer, and seven years before that as a graphic artist. I spent none of those years as a cartoonist. But, I spent the previous few months meeting a group of people online who instigated and encouraged my creativity. I was a regular reader and commenter on Whitney Matheson’s “Pop Candy” blog. I owed them a lot, and I wanted to give something back. I didn’t have any gifts, but a long time ago I did: cartoons. So I started drawing again. I drew “Wh!tless”, a comic strip for and about the Pop Candy readers. I was drawing again, and I loved it. And that has everything to do with Whitney and the Whitnesses. That’s a gift they’ve given me, which I can never repay. But if I can make them laugh a few times in these pages, that would be a good start.

- Jason

Acknowledgments:

I would like to thank Whitney Matheson and the readers of Pop Candy, who warmly welcomed me into their community, when I probably didn’t deserve it.

I would also like to thank my wife Lisa and my daughters Ella and Maya, who do the previously stated on a daily basis.

click here to Check out the online character guide, where you can see each character separately, and find out who's who