For some reason, I have put a Phone Guys comic on this website every week for ten years. It is one of the weirdest projects I have one the go. I don’t even quite understand why I do it if I’m being honest. I have purposefully gone about it in all the worst ways. Most of them can barely be classified as jokes. I have occasionally caught myself and edited something to make it less of a joke. I created a cast page full of characters that never get mentioned in the actual comic and I created a cast of characters who do get mentioned that aren’t on the cast page. I did that on purpose. One year I created an ongoing plot that ran for a year, but I made sure the strip went back to being as dumb as possible. Every year I add a new set of clothes to the Guys’ wardrobes and as time goes on I try to make no pattern of clothes repeat, except when I want one to repeat to amuse me.

Hell, even behind the scenes I’ve done a lot of work for this dumbest of strips. I’ve made notes on the history of the town that the Phone Guys live in, but I’ve never mentioned the name of that town in the actual comic. I’ve written a character study about Pete for a university class. I did a comic strip in the “Other” section once starring Jeremy’s neighbours. I’ve used online mad-libs-style story generators to write out the kind of things Pete dreams about.

To be clear, I created Phone Guys back in the Contains2 days, so they are older than a decade now by some amount of time I can’t be bothered to work out. And most of the reason I brought them back at all was because I had a punchline I wanted to use (the “veteran Aryan” one) and I didn’t have anywhere else to do it.

Why am I like this? I don’t know. But I am, so maybe we’ll have another ten years of this or maybe I’ll stop halfway through a strip and never explain why. You can never tell what’s coming with Phone Guys because the only thing I know is that it’ll be dumb.

“I’m Devon,” said the old man, still holding his umbrella over Gladys. “Night guard at the warehouse. I’d shake your hand, but I’ve only got the one.”

Gladys noticed that his left arm did indeed stop just above the elbow. “Oh,” she said, “let’s go inside.”

Inside, they shook hands, then Devon gestured at the damaged storefront. “I thought someone had moved in, but until you started remodelling I wasn’t sure.”

“Yeah, we’ve been here a few months now, but it’s been slow going.”

“What kind of place are you putting in?”

“It’s,” said Gladys, “It’s a, uh, honey store.”

I should take a moment to note that I have reviewed fifty Fictional Beekeepers for this website so far. Let’s check in on them. When I was at 25, the average ranking was a mere 2.52 out of 5. I’ve checked the numbers and our average at 50 is:

2.68 out of 5.

Well. That’s not quite the level of improvement I was hoping for. Still a lot of work ahead for my quest of apiarist boosting.

It’s worth remembering that 2 out of 5 is the range that includes what a decent real-world beekeeper would achieve, so it isn’t anything to be ashamed of. And that is also the range where I’d place superhuman beekeepers who turn to villainy.

But I know I can improve that grade. I’m on the job.