I found it very hard to follow any of the arguments in this thread.
Tim Buckley supports your troops in Iraq. It's not about supporting the war, or supporting killing people with bombs, it's about knowing there are people in another part of the world putting their lives on the line every single day to protect the freedoms you have. It is part of the military culture to write things on bombs. They probably do it for several reasons - to keep themselves sane by trivilising their incredibly heavy responsiblities they have, or maybe it's just because they don't care about killing people. You can't accurately assess what their intentions were when writing the message. In the latter, it is clearly not a good thing. But would you deny them the former? I sure as hell wouldn't.
Whoever wrote that message is a CAD fan, fair enough. Do you consider that fact to instantly lower their character? If so, you should seriously consider your priorities when judging people. Or heck, stop juding people before you know them. You think Tim put the photo there because he loves himself - I think he put it there because he's grateful people are out there to defend the freedoms he has to put that photo there.
So, Tim makes money from CAD. How the hell have you reached the conclusion that he does it just for the money? Because it's simular to PA? There are litterally thousands apon thousands of comics, and a huge amount that have a similar premiss to PA. And by similar, I mean video game related. As for Tim saying he didn't know about PA before starting CAD? I didn't know about PA before reading CAD, and I started reading it within the first month it was started, and I wasn't new to web comics at that time. I'd been reading PvP, MT and BtC, among others (sucks to you if you don't know the acronyms).
It's not like he's providing a half baked comic for a fee, and just because you don't find it funny doesn't make it so. Tim has simply realised he has a talent for it, and people are willing to pay money for it. He's also seen the potentional for his work to really go places, and he's already got books and an animated series. How is this a bad thing? Are you upset because you work at Walmart on a meger salery while Tim spends just about every day working on material for his website? Because you run Linux and feel the world should be free? Sorry to burst your bubble, but no. I'm sure Tim could break even on the cost of hosting with ads, but that isn't going to pay the rent. Put food on the table. See where I'm going with that? Cudos to Mike and Jerry for consistently maintaining a free comic, but they do make money, by selling merch, ad space, and doing promotional work. They have books, too. They also get paid to do comics for game companies and even the ESRB. To put PA on some kind of moral high-ground simply for keeping the strip free is not a good argument. It's just like regular radio versus satellite radio. They both make money, they just do it differently.
As for Tim's apparent character, he's confident in himself and his work. This is a bad thing? I suppose you might say he's not as modest as the PA guys, but I'm unable to see where this is evident. Tim simply has the motivation and the aspirations to do great things. And I truely hope he does. I'm finding it hard to keep going on this part of the argument simply because it's such a weak argument.
Retorts, please, but I sure do hope that first paragraph of mine isn't going to turn this into a debate about wars and freedoms.
You Can't Kill What You Can't See
-Beware of the FantomJedi
