Seems like this is the media’s new fascination: Lone-wolf terrorist types, as if they’re watching Netflix movies and taking spoon-fed information from single sources (who are also watching Netflix while brainstorming their stories) instead of digging for facts and doing shoe-leather reporting.

Ohhhhh, wait. That’s exactly what they’re doing.

It’s nothing as cool or interesting as a conspiracy. It’s just laziness and self-serving antipathy toward the people for whom these institutions are supposed to be working. It’s simple human nature — and good fodder for a cartoonist!

Wow, the first HeroIsUm post in more than a year. I thought I had a great idea for a new comic and figured I’d give it 30 strips to catch on or bore me. It didn’t even take that long. Changing jobs in the middle of last year also necessarily took time away from making unfunny comics, so I let www.sageoffstage.com die an early death.

But I love making comics, even if I’m the only one who gets them. And I love the concept of superheroes, especially mine. They’re probably much more humorous and dynamic in my own head, but I want to try to get that translated to the strip, no matter how long it takes.

And, unfortunately, that’s probably going to be a little longer than usual because my comic-making computer died, taking with it my copies of Adobe CS2. I’m on a newer machine now, but it’s incompatible with those old Adobe programs. I’m trying to make a new, less expensive suite from Serif work for me. This strip was lettered and prepped in the new programs, but it took a while. It felt like a right-handed person trying to write left handed.

Anyway, the train is rolling again, ever so slowly. …

We now return to regularly scheduled programming after the Henry Cavill/Superman diversion of the last two strips.

Thanks for indulging me. …