Never Shall It Die

Hello; I am Matty Boy Anderson (b. 1972), American cartoonist and internet polemicist. I live in quite literally the most ethnically diverse square mile in the country, if not the world. The image attached to this page is the lettered and bordered SS #149/CFB #509. I ain’t gotta say what those letters mean, everyone reading this knows it. I posted this WIP because my lettering work is boss, look at that CRASH!. And barely bigger than a dime. Shit’s so cash. Doesn’t it make you wanna know what’s happening? I know I do!!!

Thanks sincerely as always for your support. This post has been heavily edited to remove personal details and links to a fundraiser that was wholly ignored by all but one person.

Brace Yourself

Here’s the skinny, folks; I asked and prayed for a miracle and I got one. So permit me to straighten the general public out on a few things.

I am officially shuttering the unfortunate phase of my life wherein I described myself as “unemployed”. The reason is not whether or not I have found a job; the reason is because I was an imbecile to let even a single person online know that my newspaper cartoon job ended last March. That was the result of my depression and the truth is that I should never have told any goddamn one of you.

Let me tell you a little secret about being unemployed as a professional artist. I can count on one hand how many people didn’t give up on me. Everyone else has treated me like a delusional idiot who thinks he’s too good to clean toilets. Hey- you know what most artists my age in my situation have done in the last five years? Died or killed themselves.

That’s what happens when people you thought were your friends just give up on you. Literally, thank God I’m now on the path I’m on. I was literally gonna walk off and kill myself, and let you assholes clean up the mess. You already think I’m a piece of shit; what difference does it make if you have to clean up my brains, too? Think of how cathartic it would have been, throwing my life’s work in the dumpster. You could grumble out all your resentments as you close the book on my legacy.

Hey, good thing suicide is the ultimate sin. Sorry I deprived you of the fun of gossiping about what a shady pussy I was, as you chat with my other “friends”.

Seriously folks; I’m angry on a level you have never imagined. This is all I can do to not tell the entire world to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.

So it’s like this. I am not, nor will I ever claim to be again, an “unemployed cartoonist”. The people nice enough to care about what I create, most of whom subscribe here, can tell you that except for eight months in that hated fucking year of 2024, I have been consistently creating cartoons. It was stupid of me to let anyone see me at my weakest, and I’m paying the price for being stupid. But let me tell you something right now, for goddamn free.

I’ve always known what I’m doing and what I need to do. The problem has always been when I can’t do it and/or when people decide to get in my way. No one under 40 years of age knows a goddamn thing about cartoons or art. If they did, they’d do something other than be little backstabbing quislings on social media all day, every day. But that’s all they do.

Here is a list of the only people qualified to criticize what I do or how I live my life:

1. Established artists or cartoonists older than 50 years of age
2. Art dealers, editors, or publishers older than 40 years of age

That’s it. I don’t have to acknowledge a goddamn word from anyone else about who I am or what I do. Everyone else abused their station. That “Be careful- everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about” shit makes my sides split. No one gives a fuck about your private battles. If anything, people want to know about your private battles in full detail, so they can diminish them and mock you for clout. No one has empathy or sympathy for you. They want to know you failed so they can feel justified for not trying.

Well guess what folks- if I failed, you wouldn’t be reading this. And PS: making real art won’t make you rich. So we can just quit with the false equivalency that if something doesn’t turn a profit, it’s worthless. Okay?

Is it not appalling how everyone has turned into a little internet grifter, trying to squeeze shekels out of “content” and “views” and getting absolutely nowhere? It’s been like a fucking Fool’s Gold Rush since the Dawn of the Podcast. Hey- has anything gotten better? No, huh? Gee golly pardner it’s such a mystery why that is.

I know how to fix it. As soon as the world cuts me a big enough check, I will. Until then, you figure it out. I’m busy drawing cartoons and art that people will actually give a shit about in 100 years. That’s on faith that civilization makes it for another 50, which I doubt, but I’ll be dead by then, so I absolutely don’t even give the slightest fuck.

Thanks sincerely to my supporters here and elsewhere. My work lives on thanks to you. If it wasn’t important to me, I probably wouldn’t have devoted over 50 years of my life to it. I will truly never grasp why some people can’t understand that.

Those of you out there who treated me like a spoiled child unwilling to work a menial, pointless job to survive, during the worst, most depressing chapter of my existence thus far; if you can find her somehow, go ____ your mother. I’m being semi-nice for the benefit of my supporters and guests, who’ve endured more than enough invective at this point, and you don’t even deserve the uncensored version of my insult.

Herewith concludes the final time I will share any details of my personal and/or professional life on social media, any website (including my own), or online whatsoever. Any person who claims a positive benefit from engaging in such practices is a moron. Thus endut the lesson.

Not For The Claustrophobic

Tomorrow morning I will be 53 years old. The latest CFB strip is up (from which the attached image is an excerpt). In the first and penultimate panels you can see lampstones being activated, using a device that holds two of them together, so that they glow. These particular lampstones are rarer and higher quality than Imperial issue. That indicates that this room, wherever it is, predates the Age of Dark Unmentionables (Refusaleth). This is an important detail that no one has any reason to notice.

The room has no doors or windows, but it does have small air vents in the ceiling, because I was lying awake at night writing this scene in my head, having breathing issues thinking about being trapped in a room with no doors or windows. Any time I have a visceral reaction while thinking up a scenario, I write it into the strip. Another example was the tunnel from an earlier strip, which the characters used to travel under a prison. I did my best to convey the anxiety and claustrophobia onto the page.

Etalun brought Daemir and Radish-Hoof into this room through “connective darkness”, the ability to move from one lightless place to any other. He can leave if the lights go out; they can’t. With the lights on, none of them can leave. This shifts the power balance, and unless Daemir or Radish-Hoof somehow learn how to traverse connective darkness, they need Etalun’s help to escape the room.

By the Law of the Unicorns, anyone who frees a Unicorn from captivity is granted a single Wish. So if Etalun were to pull Radish-Hoof out of the room to freedom, he would be owed a Wish. Etalun has a false headstone that allows the Empire to see whatever he does. He may be under direct influence of the Empress Nefaria. The possibility that he could wish for whatever he wants is a big deal.

With the proper Knowledge, you can look into any mirror in the Beyonding and become dressed however you want. This is why Etalun points out the mirror, and why it’s partly covered. All this is arcane info that longtime readers of the strip, if they exist, will pick up on. They might even get the idea that a certain “Dark Witch” will reappear soon.

Thank you as always for your support. I don’t know how to do anything else because I don’t want to. This is what I do. I’m the only one who does it.

Thanks for everything.

My Privilege

Oh man- let me see if I can’t rattle this off real quick on my lunch hour. I’m busting my digital hump on some design work right now so I’m kind of all over the place.

1. It’s a privilege to get to forge some sort of living by entertaining you fine people, however meager that living may be at the moment.

2. It’s a privilege to get to operate not one, but two websites with their own proprietary intellectual properties, and to have done so over a not-insignificant number of years.

3. It’s a privilege to get to fiddle with a bunch of flat black squares and a keyboard, with the result being a page, or an entire book. I was just holding one Wacom tablet in my left hand, while using the other one with my right hand, alternating between looking at my laptop screen and my desktop monitor, typing this, and playing the abominable Transformers Earth Wars on my phone. This must be, to myself at 13 years old, absolutely nucking futs.

4. Seriously, sincerely, it is a privilege to get to live out the pursuit of my own artistic vision, especially in times like these. I was tested, as were we all, and I learned that the only thing holding me back was myself.

5. It is a privilege to live this life the way I want to live it, afforded me by the people who created the circumstances for it to be lived, in the places I live it.

6. It is a privilege for me to create work for you to enjoy. It is a pleasure and not a burden. It brings happiness into my life. Don’t ever think I take that for granted. I draw stuff for money; that’s as good as life gets, without random and constant sexual intercourse.

Thank you for being here, from the bottom of my slate-frigid heart, and for your unyielding (as far as I know) support. As they say, the best is yet to come, but that’s an easy bet because progress is inevitable.

P.S.: The latest Ceaseless Fables strip is so late at this point I’ll probably wait to post it until Sunday. I gotta get back to work now, lunch break is over, and I didn’t even get to eat my Moroccan sardines with sriracha!!!

P.P.S.: BALLS!!!

May the 4th Be Yesterday

Howdy friends, thanks for stopping by. The completed version of Ceaseless Fables SS#143 is now viewable on the CFB site. We are now one page away from the end of the current Saga (“The Curse of the Death Stallion”).

First, a note for my paying Patron Saints; I have groceries thanks to you. Much obliged, sincerely. I literally have to eat food at least a couple times a day for some reason. I have no idea why this is. It seems impractical and costly. I ate late last night because I am a moron and I just shove food willy-nilly into this “body” thing, with no consideration for the after-effects. Also my eyes are slowly wearing out, but that’s neither here nor there. I use them all day, it’s expected.

Okay, moving on. The image is intended to highlight the amount of effort (and ink) that went into the latest CFB page. In some areas of cross-hatching, the lines almost became three-dimensional. I tried to get a picture of the texture but this was the best I could do.

Thank you sincerely as always for your support. It literally keeps me alive.