Page Zero – Reboot Begins Here

by on January 19, 2024 at 9:18 pm
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Welcome to the all-new Unwinder’s Tall Comics! Unwinder’s Tall Comics, my beloved long-running webcomic which has produced nearly three years worth of strange and hilarious cartoons since 2008, is being rebooted for a 2024 audience! What does this mean? It means that we’re making a few changes, and recommending this page (actually probably the next page right after this) as a jumping-on point for new readers. Does this mean that we’re throwing away all the old comics from the archive? Not at all! There are lots of wonderful comics in there! But there are also a few awkward, ugly, blurry, ponderous ones, and after 16 years, with only occasional updates in the last decade, I am no longer excited to have comics I made in my early twenties be people’s first impression of my work. (We see a selection of old oddly-colored, smudgy panels and walls of text with the caption “A selection of panels deemed "prehistoric" under new Unwinder's Tall Comics standards.”) The main thing that will be changing is that “Unwinder’s Tall Comics” is now an overarching title that will still include long-form comics featuring Unwinder and his friends, but will also include other comics that I feel like drawing. You’ve probably seen some of these already if you follow me on social media, like The Santa Zone, Jingle, and Puberteen. These and others will now share an archive with Unwinder’s Tall Comics. I think that this is the best way to keep Unwinder’s Tall Comics alive in its original format, while also making it possible to fit into my life with a job and kids. (A few various comics, just a little bit too small to read. Don’t worry, this is just a visual to break up the text). There will also be a few differences from the continuity prior to this point, most notably: HORSE MAN’S FATHER is not a morbidly-obese drunk with a Mexican stereotype accent. He’s a former local late-night talk radio host (now podcaster). His show is about the paranormal and is mostly apolitical. He’s still Latino in a way that will never factor into anything. GOLDEN ELVIS no longer looks like an ill-considered racial caricature. She will now be some sort of slug thing. UNWINDER and MILDRED are not romantically linked and never have been. They’re supposed to be close to the same age, but Unwinder seems much older and the vibes are off, so we’re pretending that never happened. GAREN MINNESOTA is now located a little bit closer to Minneapolis than I previously imagined. In case I want to do a joke about the potholes on 53rd and University. BARBECUE SAUCE is no longer Eastern Orthodox. I have never linked Barbecue Sauce with any ethnicity associated with the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and this character detail has always stuck out to me as implausible. DR. MINIVAN is no longer silently dying of rectul cancer. I now realize it was arrogant of me to assume I knew how to write a character who is dying of cancer (I thought that it made sense for him to never mention his cancer). THE 400-PAGE STORY ARC WHERE THE CHARACTERS ALL GET SUPERPOWERS BASED ON THE FOUR HUMORS AND DEFEAT BLORKUS is no longer canon. And you all know what that means… Blorkus is still out there somewhere! COMBUSTIA, THE GODDESS OF CARS is no longer the creator of the Earth in the Unwinder’s Tall Comics canon. I don’t know why I thought this would be a good sci-fi concept, and in hindsight, this reveal was too much of a game-changer to just tack on. MANUFACTURING, DISTRIBUTING, AND OPERATING CARS is no longer the canonical purpose of life on Earth. It’s too difficult to write relatable characters in a world where the meaning of life is solved and universally accepted. Also, without the creation story involving Combustia, the Goddess of Cars, this no longer made sense. Aside from these changes, existing readers should be able to pick up where they left off with no confusion. And for new readers, I’ll try not to make any significant callbacks to earlier canon without explaining what’s going on. Thank you for reading, and here’s to another 16 years of whatever this is. -Eli Parker

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