Unbelievable

DailyInk.com outdoes themselves. Twice.

The Golden Rule says "Those who have the gold make the rules." This rule apparently applies to the syndicates. This is part of the e-mail I received from our good friends at DailyInk.com yesterday:

We pride ourselves on offering the best comics you will find anywhere. Starting on December 15, 2010 the annual subscription rate will change from $15 to $19.99. To thank you for being a loyal subscriber to DailyINK, we would like to invite you to renew your subscription for an additional year before the new price goes into effect. If you renew now, your additional year will start when your current subscription expires. You will also receive a 10% discount on a DailyInk comic print! (sic)

Yeah, the last site to charge for comics, also the site with the most downtime and the fewest sharing features, is raising it's annual price by almost 20%.

But wait — there's more!

Watch for the new and improved DailyINK to be unveiled in 2011, providing you with an enhanced user experience, better functionality and exciting new ways to enjoy your favorite comics. Look out for email announcements or click here to become a fan of DailyINK on Facebook for updates.

They're raising it before they even have a solid date on when their site might join us in the post iPhone and Facebook world. (Remember - the last update was in 2002.)

This is a comics site though, and I need to deliver a laugh. Here it is. This arrived a few hours later:

You should have received a letter earlier with news from DailyINK and an early renewal offer. Some users have experienced difficulty with the subscription form. Please note that upon clicking to the renewal page, you must first log in with your username and password to avoid any error messages.

You see, if you followed the link in the original mail it would have guided you through paying for a new account, instead of extending your current one. Genius.

I don't have a problem paying for comics. As a matter of fact, $20 or so dollars a year might be a fair price for access to King Feature's new and archived content. It's the downtime, the horrendously designed and neglected site, and the fear of someone actually seeing their content that sticks in my craw.

Let's get to some comics.

How To Be Happy

I've been a fan of Shannon Wheeler and Too Much Coffee Man since before he showed up in comic strips was still in comics and magazines. The strip has been updated pretty sporadically lately. Nice to see the strip, and it's titular character, back.

Little Iodine

Little Iodine is one of the strips that DailyInk has added to their vintage section lately. I love the pencils — especially the poses and character designs. (Click through to see the full size image.) The Wikipedia article on Little Iodine refers to her as a female precursor to Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace, but I think the situations she creates are funnier than anything I've seen in Menace, and I'm old enough to remember when it was supposed to be good.