Scott Meyer

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Learn Your Lesson

I have had arguments that have lasted for years. Decades, even. They’ve endured long after the person I was arguing with probably forgot the conversation, or even my name. That is not a good thing. If you disagree, please don’t tell me. See the beginning of this paragraph for a clue as to how the conversation might go.

I know I am not alone in this. I have a cousin who refers to his s...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How To Deal With Life’s Setbacks

It’s not a powerful effect, black licorice raising my blood pressure, but it is measurable enough that I’ve had to pace myself with my massive trove of the black gold. I don’t understand why it affects my system this way, though it has been suggested that it’s just my body being angry at me for subjecting it to that flavor.

On an unrelated note, words can start from the same root ...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Give Your Superhero Story an Optimistic Tone

Golly, I wonder what has me thinking about superhero stories with an optimistic tone?

In my opinion, this has been the best summer for superhero movies in a long time, and the tone, overall, was surprisingly light. The chief villain in Thunderbolts turned out to be depression, and the last half hour is the closest thing we may ever get to Psychonauts: the Movie. Superman...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Use Your Own Ignorance as a Source of Entertainment

I remember the first sporting event I ever attended. I was young enough that I don’t remember how young I was, just that I wasn’t in kindergarten yet.

My older brother was in the very earliest pee-wee baseball team at school. We went to watch one of his games. At some point, I went to an Igloo cooler bigger than me (at the time) to get a drink. As I fiddled with the little plastic spi...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How To Understand Our Differences

There is something infinitely sad to me about the idea that women need purses because their pants and dresses have been made less practical in an effort to make them look more feminine, yet men often won’t carry a shoulder bag (which is an extremely useful item) because they’re afraid it will look feminine.

Nothing in this world is less manly than worrying over whether what you want t...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Evolve Your Position

All I’m saying is, if Harlan Ellison . . . Harlan Ellison feels the need to defend women from your advances, that’s saying something. It’s like saying “Neil Gaiman would have had me, but luckily, Louis C.K. was there.”

On to more pleasant subjects.

I feel like I’ve been writing a lot of comics about sci-fi TV and movies lately. I have, at times, been self...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to See What Was Really Happening

The car was a 1978 Subaru DL Wagon. It was not, by the standards at the time, impressive. But it was a GREAT car. Dependable, economical, pr

The car was a 1978 Subaru DL Wagon. It was not, by the standards at the time, impressive. But it was a GREAT car. Dependable, economical, practical; none of the things an eighteen-year-old guy wants.

One of its interesting quirks was that the s...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to React to an Obvious Falsehood

A lot of people will tell you that Big Ben is the name of the clock, not the tower. A real pedant will explain that Big Ben is the name of the largest of the bells that are housed in the tower, presumably while pushing up their glasses and smiling in an aggravating manner.

My position is that if you show a picture of “Elizabeth Tower” to 1,000 random people and ask them what it is, 99...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Draw Attention to a Terrible Wrong

This is maybe one of those comics I did just for me. I hope you enjoyed it too, but really, it is just four panels of me reveling in my own geekery. But come on! Look at the guy’s IMDb page: It’s bonkers!

A few other notable projects he has appeared in:

Game of Thrones

Troy

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Recalibrate Your Expectations

Occasionally, I start watching one of those shows about the paranormal because I find the topic interesting. I tend to lose interest when my BS detector goes off, which is usually within the first three minutes.

I don’t believe any of this stuff, but I do find it interesting. When I was a kid, my brothers and I would run in from playing outside every Sunday at 6 p.m. to watch the one-ho...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Appreciate an Unrealistic Premise

WARNING: this commentary gets a little blue.

Sometimes a comic will come directly from an entire conversation. Other times, the bit that makes the comic is just the usable tip of a funnier, but unusable iceberg.

Here’s an example.

Ric mentioned his love of romantic comedies. We joked around about this. Eventually, he said that liking romantic comedies doesn’t mean he belie...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Predict the Future

It is true that an A.I. tried to blackmail a person into not deactivating it.

The article Ric read makes brief mention of the incident, but links to a paper from A...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Handle the Unexpected

Back in the original run, Mullet Boss played the trombone. I took the trombone away from him and thrust it upon Rick for three reasons:

1. Mullet Boss doesn’t really show up anymore. I didn’t deliberately choose to write him and the angry client out of the comic; it’s just that I don’t work in a traditional office or deal directly with customers anymore. I am self-employed, and th...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

How to Analyze a New Discovery

My mother was a divorcée, raising three boys. She always put food on the table, but if you’ve raised (or been) a teenage boy, you know that the concept of “enough food” is theoretical at best. Anything remotely “yummy” that came into the house didn’t last long, and there was no guarantee that it would be replaced any time soon.

The situation was alleviated a bit when I got a ...

One Line from a Future Comic Taken Totally out of Context

I recently did an interview with a student journalist. I think it came out pretty good! Please give it a look-see if you’re interested.

How to Eliminate the Unnecessary

My father is an enthusiastic and prolific curser, but not an imaginative one. He has a few favorite phrases that he leans on, shuffling them seemingly at random, like a magnetic poetry kit you buy at a thrift store that’s missing most of the words. Any illusion of real creativity is lost by the third time you’ve heard one of his tirades. If he’s working on a woodworking project or some au...