On Feb 9, I made the following comment on my Mastodon:

still can't believe the shithead behind Pupkin managed to get his webcomic turned into a movie with Jennifer Lopez

Nobody responded to this in any way, because, quite frankly, nobody who wasn't an absolute fanatical follower of webcomics discourse 20 years ago has any idea what the fuck this means. Hell, I barely understand my feelings about this. But to do them justice, we are going to have to unpack 25 years of webcomics history.

The process of researching and writing this has rearranged my view of the formative years of webcomics. I've done my best to cite my sources, but primary sources are not always readily available anymore. I ended up using the Wayback Machine so much that it locked me out for a few hours. Support the Internet Archive.