Tuned to a Dead Channel

Patrick Farley wrote and drew The Guy I Almost Was in 1998. Webcomics were still fetal then; it was long before the medium could sustain giant charity cons and make Time Magazine. I don't remember the first time I encountered the comic, although it must have been at least five or six years after being published. I was, at the time, younger than the protagonist and safe in my own dreams about how Fucking Awesome the future is going to be.

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I clearly remember reading William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer for the first time. I downloaded a copy off IRC, stuck it on my Palm Pilot and read a few chunks during one particular cybergoth night at the Pyramid. It was too early for the crowd, so we were just lounging around, all blaring music and club-smoke on an empty dancefloor. It was great – reading about the Panther Modern punks while intermittently peeking up to see if anyone interesting had showed up. My hearing was probably as bad then as it is now, so having a conversation with my friends without screaming “WHAT?!” every few seconds did not enthuse me. I'd play game after game of Yar's Revenge on the all-in-the-joystick Atari console at the bar (not being old enough to drink or slick enough to chalk my ID yet) and eventually, enough people would make the dancefloor tolerable and I'd finally hit it, grooving to the sweet sounds of And One and Wolfsheim. It was the closest to /feeling/ cyberpunk I'd ever encountered in my life. Whether the inherent isolation (reading books and playing video games at a nightclub) reflects poorer on my life or the concept itself is up for decision. I had fun.

Anyhow, back to the comic. TGIAW isn't just about cyberpunk, or a simple indictment of it. It's a personal story, kicked off by the protagonist's fleeing some angry housemates:

When school ended last month, I had to live somewhere. Of course, with a terrible credit rating like mine, (that trail of busted credit cards littering my passage through an "academic career") and no money for a deposit, it wouldn't be easy to find a place. My current housemates, fortunately, didn't check my credit or ask for anything upfront... they naively assumed that since I was in college, I must be a solvent young bourgeois like themselves.

I did nothing to disabuse them of this illusion.

It is about failed escapism from the dregs of being 20-something and not having a god damned clue. About the realization that people who share your dreams and fantasies aren't necessarily going to be your best buddies, or even tolerable human beings, for that matter. There's even a few dense pages of counterculture/media-theory rambling in there, but hell if it wasn't planted with the seeds of truth. And who can't love the irony of not having enough money to fund a neo-luddite lifestyle?

Anyhow, just read the damn comic. The illustration is a bit rough, but keep in mind this guy was carving out new territory as he was writing and drawing it. If you like it, make sure the give the author a shout.

(Thanks to Francis for reminding me it existed.)