I like comics. I don’t mean comic books, I mean individual comics from newspaper-style options. Three to four frames, with a wry comment, some satire, a bit of a spin. Some tell more stories, some are single frame weird situations. Some are simple puns. But I enjoy them, even though I don’t subscribe to a newspaper.

Some ten years or so ago, I discovered GoComics.com. They have a ton of comics ranging from Peanuts, Andy Capp, B.C. all the way to Jane’s World and Bizarro, plus Dilbert, of course. You can view a bunch of them for free online, but if you subscribe for about $15 a year Canadian, they’ll send you a copy in an HTML email every day of the year. If it’s posted, you get it. Not every comic, just the ones you choose. A customized collection just for you.

I subscribe, and I have it set up to send me eight emails a day, all with slightly different content. I have tried ALL their comics over the years, deleting ones that I didn’t like, and keeping the ones that I do, separated into the emails by a series of obvious paramaters:

• Multi-frame comics (like Dilbert or Peanuts), with it split alphabetically A-M and N-Z;
• Single-frame comics (like the Far Side), with it split A-F, G-M, N-S, and T-Z; and,
• Political / editorial comics (like Jeff Stahler) split A-M, N-Z.

I split the MF from SF ones because they are easier to read in batches like that. In any given day, some of the emails might only be 1-2 comics; other days, it might rise to 8-9. Not all comics publish every day.

Overall, I read 23 multi-frame, 50 single-frame, and 22 political/editorial comic titles in a week. Yep, 95 comics in total. I’m reading them electronically, and sometimes I’ll get some that are 15 frames (like from a weekend feed), with lots of dialogue, small text, and my mind is simply, “Nope.” I’m looking for a quick smile, not some deep social commentary. Most days, reading them lasts about 10m.

And if I find a few I like, I save them and share them later on FaceBook.

Yet there are some that I absolutely love and save. Often ones that have some link to a moment in time and a year from now, I’ll ask myself, “Huh? Why did I find that amusing?”.

But I did. And I do generally with each feed. I find it more interesting when I might be behind a few days, go through them, and find almost NONE worthy of sharing. It tells me something about the mood I’m in, likely more than the crop of comics that week.

But it is light and totally unproductive. Just something I do for fun. For me. For a smile.

And that sounds like a good start towards more joy.