Welcome to Palmerwood, Minions.

I have a kind of love/hate relationship with Facebook.

When I first got on it, it was diverting enough, in its own way--a good way to find old friends, meet (virtually) other like-minded people, and see pictures of people's food.

But after that, it got a little boring. Hard as it may be to believe, even pictures of people's cheesy potatoes casseroles and the cavalcade of witticisms and drollery that issues from such pictures ("Mmmm good!" [like]. "What time should I come over?" [like]  "LOL!" [like] "ROFL!" [like] ROFLMAO!!!") eventually got a little stale.

More than that, it began to get a little irritating.

I began to suspect that most people's lives weren't nearly as perfect or as glamorous as some of their Facebook-filtered chronicles of  their existences would lead one to believe. Are there really so many people whose spouses are that gorgeous, whose houses are that cool, whose kids are that gifted, whom God has blessed so richly (that one always gets me. It's kind of gratitude by hubris: "Clearly God likes me better than you," is the implication, even if not always intended), whose careers are an endless cycle of promotions and pay raises, and who sit down to gourmet meals provided by said gorgeous spouse every night?

It began to gnaw at me a little bit, but I really couldn't confront people about it. It's not my place to call them out on their perfect lives nonsense, and who really wants to be that guy?

But I didn't want to just walk away from Facebook. It was fun to catch up with people you used to know and see where in the world they were. It was also kind of fun to get into fights about religion and politics with some of them.

So I decided on a different approach: mockery. I liked it because I thought was a little gentler and had the potential to be kind of funny.

I started by posting, "JIM PALMER really wishes whoever's sending all those ninjas to kill him would knock it off, because now who's going to clean up all those dead ninjas off his front porch?"

And that's more or less where anything resembling reality on my page ended.

Before too long, just being a simple killer of ninjas wasn't enough for me. From slaughtering ninjas, I moved on to defending the Republic which we all love so dearly from other nefarious threats: zombies, attack-trained birds of prey, intelligent air-breathing giant squid, supply-side economists, chupacabras, aliens, Creationists, and of course my archnemesis, the enemy of all that is good and pure and true in the world, that Canadian antichrist Bryan Adams. I was partying with A-list celebs like Kanye, Jay-Z, Madeline Albright, Diddy, and Paul Ryan's Olympic-calibre dressage horse Jana.

Along the way, my Facebook friends (whom, in the best tradition of all megalomanical supervillain types, I began calling "The Minions" or, when I was feeling magnanimous, "The Blessed 446" or however many friends I had on my friends' list at the time) learned that I lived NOT in a 1961 ranch house, but in a sprawling, historic, 40-bedroom Georgian country estate located in the rolling hills of suburban St. Louis: the luxurious but unfortunately-named Palmerwood. I drank 389-year-old brandy, collected Old Masters, smoked Cuban cigars, and flew across the world to do battle with evildoers on my yacht, or my hovercraft, or my G-4, or my helicopter. My status updates became daily, sometimes hourly, installments of ongoing adventures, misadventures, and swashbuckling tales of derring-do that stretched over days and weeks.

In addition to the villains--the ninjas, zombies, Creationists, attack-trained birds of prey, intelligent air-breathing giant squid, supply-side economists, and Bryan Adams--who threaten our way of life as freedom-loving Americans, a cast of characters began to emerge: my gamekeeper, Oliver de Baliviere. My executive chef, Bechamel de Bouillabaisse. My feeble-minded valet, Cubbings. My yacht-commander, Cap'n Stabbin, who spends most of his time belowdecks in his cabin. It's generally a good idea to stay away from Cap'n Stabbin's Cabin.

And, most terrifying of all, the yetis. You'll learn more about this terrifying menace in subsequent posts.

And then something interesting happened: my friends began to join in.

They began participating, adding their own comments and news about these adventures in the comments section underneath status updates. They actually began to join me on these fanciful adventures. Their participation led to more bellylaughs than a Three Stooges marathon. And they began to add to the mythos, joining me as characters in a sort of ongoing narrative that resembles nothing so much as a James Bond adventure set in Wonderland, written by someone on mushrooms, and performed by the Marx Brothers.

It got to be so much fun that I started illustrating these adventures. I'm not a good artist, by any stretch of the imagination. These are doodles. I have no gift for anatomy, perspective, shading, or any of the other skills that people who are actually trained and/or talented have. But I think the fact that they're so... well, bad... added to the fun of it.

A friend of mine told me that I should start a webcomic. Initially, I thought he was out of his tree, but the more I thought about it, I figured, eh, what the heck? Why not? It'll give me the chance to expound on the story a little bit, and it'll give, maybe, a slightly more accessible platform to those pictures and stories which, otherwise, get a little lost in the Newsfeed.




So welcome to the awe-inspiring grandness that is Palmerwood, the ancient and baronial seat of the Palmers. Who are likely the wealthiest and bluest-blooded aristocrats in the history of the world. Ever.

Come along, up the Grand Escalier. This way.



Just down the hallway a bit. I know. We've been walking for several miles, now, but do try and keep up.


And join me and some close friends in the magnificent, oak-panelled library of my luxurious but unfortunately-named country estate for.... Tales of Palmerwood.