Robot Face Smith
Webcomic Wednesday: Get checked!
There will be no Friday post this week because I am going on holiday. Please content yourself in the meantime with this very special announcement from your friend and mine, Robot Face Smith.
Webcomic Wednesday: Like I mentioned
The history of history: a reminder
So, I’m not going into the history of history in a lot of detail here, but I want to illustrate a point about it in the form of a quote. I may have done this before; if I have, apologies. This is from Tacitus’s Agricola, and it’s a commonly-quoted speech delivered by the British chieftain Calgacus prior to the battle of Mons Graupius in about 83 AD.
To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain’s glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.
That last part is typically quoted as “they make a desert and call it peace.” Pick your translation.
So … did Tacitus have, what, like a guy with a wax tablet standing behind Calgacus as he made his speech, scribbling away like mad and translating from Caledonian to Latin on the fly?
Did he bollocks. He just wanted to put some stuff into the voice of a noble barbarian chieftain that made people go “mmm, good point” and feel good about not feeling good about the Roman empire. In essence, Calgacus was the crying Native American of his age. And like that guy, he might not even have been real! It’s possible that Tacitus just made him up.
But here’s the other thing: no Roman reader thought that it was real either. Like, if they thought about it for a moment they must have known that there was no way on earth that Tacitus could have got the text of a speech Calgacus gave. Did medieval readers? I don’t know; a lot of people have based their thinking about medieval monks on the premise that medieval monks weren’t a bunch of credulous dipshits, which I’m not sure is accurate.
You can work out the implications for yourself, I’m sure.
Webcomic Wednesday: Apropos of nothing
Webcomic Wednesday: Robot Face Smith explains hospitality customs, kind of.
Webcomic Wednesday: Robot Face Smith tells it like it is
Robot Face Smith: Holidayish Special!
I’m not making this up, like I said. Loyalty Day! Pro tip: when someone says there are parades in communities like Batavia, that means they don’t have anywhere more exciting than Batavia to talk about.
Ah, I dunno. People want to have a parade, they went to celebrate the military, that’s cool; they should do whatever they want. It just irks me that millions of people turned out back in the day for that shit.
The return of a fan favourite!
And that, my friends, is called “giving the people what they want.”
Webcomics stardom here I come
As you know, I spend every day tormented by the thought that new media stardom is just outside my grasp. But finally I think I’ve figured it out. Behold the sensational character find of 2014:
Join that lovable scamp Robot Face Smith as he, I don’t know, meets history dudes or something.
I actually meant to draw Stephen Decatur, but force of habit, you know?
Anyway, what do you think? Some of that webcomics money gonna come my way?
The Gonzo History Project 