Your strip has been rejected by a record 311 consecutive newspaper editors. At this point, word is getting around and the rest of them are becoming kind of morbidly fascinated. You have editors calling you constantly asking to see a sample of your strip, but mostly they're just jumping on the bandwagon and keeping the self-fulfilling prophecy of your eventual demise alive. You even have a Wikipedia entry under the title "Most Rejected Comic Idea Ever."

You've been syndicated for about two years now, but so far haven't broken the three-dozen newspapers barrier. You have a small group of loyal fans, which initially excited you, until you found out it consisted entirely of about eleven members of the Sci-Fi club at the local community college. It seems they, like you, are fans of Battlefield Earth. That brings the film's total fan base up to an even dozen. This wasn't exactly what you were hoping for, but you'll take what you can get at this point.

You have a solid presence in about 100 papers east of the Mississippi and are doing passingly well. You've tried talking your syndicate into putting your first book together, but they seem hesitant. After poking a little, your editor explained they use the same publishing house that put out Lena Dunham's new book and, according to her, "they can only put out so much stupidity at a time."

Your second book was just published and is selling reasonably well, for a comic strip anthology. Your syndication numbers are up, hovering around 800 or so. Because of your growing popularity and the consistent technology references in your strip, Wired just asked for an interview. You hope your budding success might convince your parents to lighten up on the threats to make you pay them back for the cost of your computer science degree.

You just won the Rueben award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year for the second year in a row. You're syndicated in well over 1,000 newspapers and your stuff is about to be translated and published in some European papers. Bill Watterson even poked his head out of self-imposed exile and asked if you were interested in collaborating on a couple weeks of dailies for your strip.