Oh my, this is so very sad. May he rest in peace—condolences to his family and his friends.

Wow. Just heard the news.  One of my favorite authors on this site and on nifty (where I first encountered his work many years ago).  Now Justin will never finish telling Richie about his new life as a vampire.   So sad for all who knew and loved Comsie.  I only emailed back and forth a couple of times. I wish I’d gotten to know him better.  Pleased his work will live on. Seriously, I’m bummed to hear this.  One of the first authors of the genre I came across that was a real writer. ✍️ 

With the loss of Carlos Hazday still a presence on this site, the loss of Comicality is a fresh reminder that life is fragile and precious.    

Rest in peace to Comicality….may loving memories of those who knew him personally sustain them in this time of mourning, as we fellow readers will be sustained by the legacy of his stories. 

Comicality was a source of inspiration for many, and one of the reasons I began my writing endeavour. I'm in shock over here, and never expected to read such a thing. He was so enthusiastic and full of life. Such a kind guy, caring and open once you got talking to him. Rest in peace my friend.

Love and best thoughts to all of those (us/we?) who found something within Comacality’s contribution. He will be missed 💐

I only come to this site once every few months now, I turn 30 next month and I've been reading Comicality's stories since I was 15. That is literally half of my life. New Kid in school was one of my favorites, I also happened to transfer to a new school when I was 15. He's one of the authors I always looked for on here and seeing this post was not a great start to my week. I'm glad to hear he has positively impacted so many though, tragic as this loss is. 

Edit: A Class By Himself is one of my favorites, I've read most of his work but I confused New Kid in School with A class by himself. 

On 4/20/2024 at 4:03 PM, Welshdude said:

Speechless. His website and stories were such a safe havern for me when I was young teenager in the early naughties. Spent countless hours reading and re-reading his stories when I should have been sleeping on a school night.

 

Thank you so much Comsie x 💔

I swear I'm not laughing at you! Sorry.. I just remembered having a conversation with him about my doing that when I first found his stories. He was a genuine man and an amazing writer. 🩷

My condolences to his family and to all his friends. 

Although he and I never interacted (we existed in different orbits) he was an inspiration to so many, both readers and writers. His words and wit will be missed. 

R.I.P.

Such a loss for such a great community. 

I don't know exactly what to say.  Just thinking back on my exchanges of messages with Comsie and I feel really sad and my heart hurts at this news.  But I am also thankful that I know, thankful to his family for caring enough to reach out and let us know.  I've been thinking about him so much lately due to trouble with illness.  As many say, things won't be the same here without his unique way of expressing loving feelings.  I think about all of his amazing stories that have mean so much to me for so long.  He was such an awesome person with a huge heart.  I can't even start to recall all of the many feelings I've had which he generated through the many amazing stories he shared with us all.

I wish everybody the best in this trying time.  Love, Mikey

It feels like I’ve spent about a week writing this and re-writing this and adding to it and changing it. But eventually you just have to get it out there. You may see this cross-posted in a few different places. Just trying to reach out to different audiences.

Words for Comicality

It seems only a few weeks ago that I learned Comsie was going through such serious health issues. And now, just like that, he’s gone. It’s dreadfully unfair that he was taken from us with so much unfinished business. On NIfty, a site he contributed stories to for 26 years, his departure is marked by the message “Author Comicality passed away”. That’s it? That’s all after the hundreds of thousands of words he wrote? Comicality deserves more words remembering him. Hundreds of words. Thousands of words. All of the words. And I can’t write all the words he deserves, but I’m going to give my best effort at writing some of them.

I first stumbled across Comsie in 1997 or 1998? I can’t remember the exact date, but I started reading “New Kid in School” from the very first chapter. Then he started the website and got an email address and I reached out to him to say how much I liked the stories. The internet was a different place then. Everything seemed hand-made in Times New Roman, Facebook, Google and Amazon and their algorithms hadn’t taken over the internet, and communities were finding each other for the first time around topics like how hot teenage boys were.

I kept emailing him on and off ever since then. People you only know online tend to flitter in and out of your life - closest confidant one minute, vanished into the ether the next. But for over 25 years, Comsie was a constant. He’s the friend I’ve known the longest that I never ever met. Because I wrote to him so occasionally, I would write these long, rambling emails with many, many questions. And Comsie being Comsie, he would feel like he would owe me a decent reply, so sometimes it took weeks or even months for him to respond. They were always worth it though - my long emails sometimes got even longer replies.

Comsie was the exception to most of the authors you’d find on Nifty or Gay Authors or elsewhere. Through his forums and emails, he put so much of his own life out there, the good parts and the bad. Being so open brought on a lot of hate mail. I’m not sure how he put up with it year after year. He shared parts of his difficult childhood, the constant money worries of being a retail employee, his love for Chicago. I’m sad he never made it back there, but glad he was surrounded by family at the end.

You felt like you knew him, but maybe that’s the illusion on online-only friendships, where you only know the parts of someone’s life they share with you. Despite being so open about some parts of his life, he guarded his privacy zealously in others. In over 25 years of emails, he never shared a picture of himself with me. I visited Chicago a couple of times (he had numerous suggestions on where to visit, and was very amused by my attempt to eat a whole Chicago deep dish pizza by myself) but we never met up. Maybe it’s better that way: the Comsie in my head will probably be forever in his early 20s, the age at which we first started talking.

The Comicality writing process could be maddening as a reader. He never liked to focus on just one story at a time. I think he wrote chapters about whichever characters were interesting to him at the time. And he always had ideas for new stories. It seemed like for every story he brought to a final conclusion, he would start four more. And some of his series had epically long hiatuses between updates (“Taryn’s Song” had a SEVEN YEAR gap between chapters at one point). I used to joke that he never wanted to finish a series because he never wanted to say goodbye to the characters he created. Now my Comicality thoughts will be filled with questions that will never be answered.

• What was going to happen at the party and would Brandon and Billy ever get back together in “Billy Chase”?
• Would Artie and Scotty start talking to each other in “Jesse-101”?
• How was Eric and Dustin’s story going to end in “Untouchable”?
• Would Justin fulfil his vampire prophecy in “Gone From Daylight”? And how did Taryn and Alec get separated in “Taryn’s Song”?

I’m sure everyone has their favourite Comicality storyline that they wanted to see resolved. It seems somehow appropriate that Comsie’s legacy will be dozens of dangling plotlines. Even “New Kid in School”, the story that started it all, was still unfinished after 27 years.

If there’s one story I’m glad Comsie did finish, it was “My Only Escape”. It’s the most deeply personal story Comsie’s ever written, built on memories from a very dark part of his life. Being able to write from his real lived experience gave the story a reality and rawness I could never emulate on that subject.  From the first chapter to the last, it took him 21 years to finish. It was sexy and heart-wrenching and moving. I’d urge everyone to read it again - even just the very last chapter. I was in literal tears during Zack’s conversation with Mr Raffe. It wasn’t just a conversation between Zack and his teacher - it was conversation between Comsie and all the people both real and in his head that told him his stories weren’t good enough. Out of all his stories, I’m glad his readers got to see that one in its full, final, finished form. Did you know at one point the early chapters were adapted for Australian radio? Wild to think about.

Comsie did soooo much in his online life. It wasn’t just the stories. It was the website, the forums, “Imagine Magazine”, the advice to other authors, the advice to people young and old going through tough times, the YouTube channel, the gallery. I have no idea where he found the time, and the volume of work probably didn’t get nearly the appreciation it deserved.

He motivated me to write my own stories and share them (although very carefully). My major interactions with him over the last year revolved around submitting the chapters of “Dear Ronan” to “Imagine Magazine”. I told him I was holding the story hostage, and wouldn’t let him see the finished complete product until he published chapter 450 of “Billy Chase”. He laughed at my threats and happily ignored them.

He deserved better. He deserved longer. He deserved the time to finish all of the stories he started. I think I’ll always have regrets that I didn’t write to him more, that I didn’t tell  him everything I liked about his stories at every opportunity. I always wanted him to stretch himself, to challenge himself to be a better writer because he had that talent in him. I teased him about some of his tendencies as an author: like starting every new story with a three paragraph inner monologue from the protagonist, or his fondness for “wise sage” characters who dispense advice in long soliloquies. Like perhaps most authors, he remembered every negative thing I ever said about his stories. But I hope he remembered all the positive things I said too… like how much I like Ariel’s “voice”, or how hot the game of footsie on the couch in “Sneak Away” was, or how moving I found the conclusion to “My Only Escape”. 

I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife, but I’d like to believe in one for Comsie…. Something like “The Good Place”, where he has all the time in the world to finish all the stories he started, preferably with a cute speedo-clad teenager (or three!) by his side. And then when he finally puts his pen down for the last time, he could return to the universe with a sense of mission accomplished.
 

Omg, this is just heartbreaking! I'm in total shock. He is and always will be one of my absolute favorite authors. 

2 hours ago, StoriesByCirrus said:

It feels like I’ve spent about a week writing this and re-writing this and adding to it and changing it. But eventually you just have to get it out there. You may see this cross-posted in a few different places. Just trying to reach out to different audiences.

Words for Comicality

It seems only a few weeks ago that I learned Comsie was going through such serious health issues. And now, just like that, he’s gone. It’s dreadfully unfair that he was taken from us with so much unfinished business. On NIfty, a site he contributed stories to for 26 years, his departure is marked by the message “Author Comicality passed away”. That’s it? That’s all after the hundreds of thousands of words he wrote? Comicality deserves more words remembering him. Hundreds of words. Thousands of words. All of the words. And I can’t write all the words he deserves, but I’m going to give my best effort at writing some of them.

I first stumbled across Comsie in 1997 or 1998? I can’t remember the exact date, but I started reading “New Kid in School” from the very first chapter. Then he started the website and got an email address and I reached out to him to say how much I liked the stories. The internet was a different place then. Everything seemed hand-made in Times New Roman, Facebook, Google and Amazon and their algorithms hadn’t taken over the internet, and communities were finding each other for the first time around topics like how hot teenage boys were.

I kept emailing him on and off ever since then. People you only know online tend to flitter in and out of your life - closest confidant one minute, vanished into the ether the next. But for over 25 years, Comsie was a constant. He’s the friend I’ve known the longest that I never ever met. Because I wrote to him so occasionally, I would write these long, rambling emails with many, many questions. And Comsie being Comsie, he would feel like he would owe me a decent reply, so sometimes it took weeks or even months for him to respond. They were always worth it though - my long emails sometimes got even longer replies.

Comsie was the exception to most of the authors you’d find on Nifty or Gay Authors or elsewhere. Through his forums and emails, he put so much of his own life out there, the good parts and the bad. Being so open brought on a lot of hate mail. I’m not sure how he put up with it year after year. He shared parts of his difficult childhood, the constant money worries of being a retail employee, his love for Chicago. I’m sad he never made it back there, but glad he was surrounded by family at the end.

You felt like you knew him, but maybe that’s the illusion on online-only friendships, where you only know the parts of someone’s life they share with you. Despite being so open about some parts of his life, he guarded his privacy zealously in others. In over 25 years of emails, he never shared a picture of himself with me. I visited Chicago a couple of times (he had numerous suggestions on where to visit, and was very amused by my attempt to eat a whole Chicago deep dish pizza by myself) but we never met up. Maybe it’s better that way: the Comsie in my head will probably be forever in his early 20s, the age at which we first started talking.

The Comicality writing process could be maddening as a reader. He never liked to focus on just one story at a time. I think he wrote chapters about whichever characters were interesting to him at the time. And he always had ideas for new stories. It seemed like for every story he brought to a final conclusion, he would start four more. And some of his series had epically long hiatuses between updates (“Taryn’s Song” had a SEVEN YEAR gap between chapters at one point). I used to joke that he never wanted to finish a series because he never wanted to say goodbye to the characters he created. Now my Comicality thoughts will be filled with questions that will never be answered.

• What was going to happen at the party and would Brandon and Billy ever get back together in “Billy Chase”?
• Would Artie and Scotty start talking to each other in “Jesse-101”?
• How was Eric and Dustin’s story going to end in “Untouchable”?
• Would Justin fulfil his vampire prophecy in “Gone From Daylight”? And how did Taryn and Alec get separated in “Taryn’s Song”?

I’m sure everyone has their favourite Comicality storyline that they wanted to see resolved. It seems somehow appropriate that Comsie’s legacy will be dozens of dangling plotlines. Even “New Kid in School”, the story that started it all, was still unfinished after 27 years.

If there’s one story I’m glad Comsie did finish, it was “My Only Escape”. It’s the most deeply personal story Comsie’s ever written, built on memories from a very dark part of his life. Being able to write from his real lived experience gave the story a reality and rawness I could never emulate on that subject.  From the first chapter to the last, it took him 21 years to finish. It was sexy and heart-wrenching and moving. I’d urge everyone to read it again - even just the very last chapter. I was in literal tears during Zack’s conversation with Mr Raffe. It wasn’t just a conversation between Zack and his teacher - it was conversation between Comsie and all the people both real and in his head that told him his stories weren’t good enough. Out of all his stories, I’m glad his readers got to see that one in its full, final, finished form. Did you know at one point the early chapters were adapted for Australian radio? Wild to think about.

Comsie did soooo much in his online life. It wasn’t just the stories. It was the website, the forums, “Imagine Magazine”, the advice to other authors, the advice to people young and old going through tough times, the YouTube channel, the gallery. I have no idea where he found the time, and the volume of work probably didn’t get nearly the appreciation it deserved.

He motivated me to write my own stories and share them (although very carefully). My major interactions with him over the last year revolved around submitting the chapters of “Dear Ronan” to “Imagine Magazine”. I told him I was holding the story hostage, and wouldn’t let him see the finished complete product until he published chapter 450 of “Billy Chase”. He laughed at my threats and happily ignored them.

He deserved better. He deserved longer. He deserved the time to finish all of the stories he started. I think I’ll always have regrets that I didn’t write to him more, that I didn’t tell  him everything I liked about his stories at every opportunity. I always wanted him to stretch himself, to challenge himself to be a better writer because he had that talent in him. I teased him about some of his tendencies as an author: like starting every new story with a three paragraph inner monologue from the protagonist, or his fondness for “wise sage” characters who dispense advice in long soliloquies. Like perhaps most authors, he remembered every negative thing I ever said about his stories. But I hope he remembered all the positive things I said too… like how much I like Ariel’s “voice”, or how hot the game of footsie on the couch in “Sneak Away” was, or how moving I found the conclusion to “My Only Escape”. 

I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife, but I’d like to believe in one for Comsie…. Something like “The Good Place”, where he has all the time in the world to finish all the stories he started, preferably with a cute speedo-clad teenager (or three!) by his side. And then when he finally puts his pen down for the last time, he could return to the universe with a sense of mission accomplished.
 

Incredible tribute, @StoriesByCirrus!

5 hours ago, StoriesByCirrus said:

It feels like I’ve spent about a week writing this and re-writing this and adding to it and changing it. But eventually you just have to get it out there. You may see this cross-posted in a few different places. Just trying to reach out to different audiences.

Words for Comicality

It seems only a few weeks ago that I learned Comsie was going through such serious health issues. And now, just like that, he’s gone. It’s dreadfully unfair that he was taken from us with so much unfinished business. On NIfty, a site he contributed stories to for 26 years, his departure is marked by the message “Author Comicality passed away”. That’s it? That’s all after the hundreds of thousands of words he wrote? Comicality deserves more words remembering him. Hundreds of words. Thousands of words. All of the words. And I can’t write all the words he deserves, but I’m going to give my best effort at writing some of them.

I first stumbled across Comsie in 1997 or 1998? I can’t remember the exact date, but I started reading “New Kid in School” from the very first chapter. Then he started the website and got an email address and I reached out to him to say how much I liked the stories. The internet was a different place then. Everything seemed hand-made in Times New Roman, Facebook, Google and Amazon and their algorithms hadn’t taken over the internet, and communities were finding each other for the first time around topics like how hot teenage boys were.

I kept emailing him on and off ever since then. People you only know online tend to flitter in and out of your life - closest confidant one minute, vanished into the ether the next. But for over 25 years, Comsie was a constant. He’s the friend I’ve known the longest that I never ever met. Because I wrote to him so occasionally, I would write these long, rambling emails with many, many questions. And Comsie being Comsie, he would feel like he would owe me a decent reply, so sometimes it took weeks or even months for him to respond. They were always worth it though - my long emails sometimes got even longer replies.

Comsie was the exception to most of the authors you’d find on Nifty or Gay Authors or elsewhere. Through his forums and emails, he put so much of his own life out there, the good parts and the bad. Being so open brought on a lot of hate mail. I’m not sure how he put up with it year after year. He shared parts of his difficult childhood, the constant money worries of being a retail employee, his love for Chicago. I’m sad he never made it back there, but glad he was surrounded by family at the end.

You felt like you knew him, but maybe that’s the illusion on online-only friendships, where you only know the parts of someone’s life they share with you. Despite being so open about some parts of his life, he guarded his privacy zealously in others. In over 25 years of emails, he never shared a picture of himself with me. I visited Chicago a couple of times (he had numerous suggestions on where to visit, and was very amused by my attempt to eat a whole Chicago deep dish pizza by myself) but we never met up. Maybe it’s better that way: the Comsie in my head will probably be forever in his early 20s, the age at which we first started talking.

The Comicality writing process could be maddening as a reader. He never liked to focus on just one story at a time. I think he wrote chapters about whichever characters were interesting to him at the time. And he always had ideas for new stories. It seemed like for every story he brought to a final conclusion, he would start four more. And some of his series had epically long hiatuses between updates (“Taryn’s Song” had a SEVEN YEAR gap between chapters at one point). I used to joke that he never wanted to finish a series because he never wanted to say goodbye to the characters he created. Now my Comicality thoughts will be filled with questions that will never be answered.

• What was going to happen at the party and would Brandon and Billy ever get back together in “Billy Chase”?
• Would Artie and Scotty start talking to each other in “Jesse-101”?
• How was Eric and Dustin’s story going to end in “Untouchable”?
• Would Justin fulfil his vampire prophecy in “Gone From Daylight”? And how did Taryn and Alec get separated in “Taryn’s Song”?

I’m sure everyone has their favourite Comicality storyline that they wanted to see resolved. It seems somehow appropriate that Comsie’s legacy will be dozens of dangling plotlines. Even “New Kid in School”, the story that started it all, was still unfinished after 27 years.

If there’s one story I’m glad Comsie did finish, it was “My Only Escape”. It’s the most deeply personal story Comsie’s ever written, built on memories from a very dark part of his life. Being able to write from his real lived experience gave the story a reality and rawness I could never emulate on that subject.  From the first chapter to the last, it took him 21 years to finish. It was sexy and heart-wrenching and moving. I’d urge everyone to read it again - even just the very last chapter. I was in literal tears during Zack’s conversation with Mr Raffe. It wasn’t just a conversation between Zack and his teacher - it was conversation between Comsie and all the people both real and in his head that told him his stories weren’t good enough. Out of all his stories, I’m glad his readers got to see that one in its full, final, finished form. Did you know at one point the early chapters were adapted for Australian radio? Wild to think about.

Comsie did soooo much in his online life. It wasn’t just the stories. It was the website, the forums, “Imagine Magazine”, the advice to other authors, the advice to people young and old going through tough times, the YouTube channel, the gallery. I have no idea where he found the time, and the volume of work probably didn’t get nearly the appreciation it deserved.

He motivated me to write my own stories and share them (although very carefully). My major interactions with him over the last year revolved around submitting the chapters of “Dear Ronan” to “Imagine Magazine”. I told him I was holding the story hostage, and wouldn’t let him see the finished complete product until he published chapter 450 of “Billy Chase”. He laughed at my threats and happily ignored them.

He deserved better. He deserved longer. He deserved the time to finish all of the stories he started. I think I’ll always have regrets that I didn’t write to him more, that I didn’t tell  him everything I liked about his stories at every opportunity. I always wanted him to stretch himself, to challenge himself to be a better writer because he had that talent in him. I teased him about some of his tendencies as an author: like starting every new story with a three paragraph inner monologue from the protagonist, or his fondness for “wise sage” characters who dispense advice in long soliloquies. Like perhaps most authors, he remembered every negative thing I ever said about his stories. But I hope he remembered all the positive things I said too… like how much I like Ariel’s “voice”, or how hot the game of footsie on the couch in “Sneak Away” was, or how moving I found the conclusion to “My Only Escape”. 

I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife, but I’d like to believe in one for Comsie…. Something like “The Good Place”, where he has all the time in the world to finish all the stories he started, preferably with a cute speedo-clad teenager (or three!) by his side. And then when he finally puts his pen down for the last time, he could return to the universe with a sense of mission accomplished.
 

This was exceptional. 
Thank you for this. 🎁

Comicality was the first story I discovered when I was 15 years old. It also led to my discovery of Gay Authors, a place where I was able to connect with gay people for the first time from a very small, rural corner of Michigan.

I admit I have not read a story of his since then, but I wanted to say thank you for allowing me to discover this wonderful place where I found a community that led me to accept my own sexuality. I have no doubt many others discovered the community here in the same way.

May he rest in peace.

8 hours ago, StoriesByCirrus said:

It feels like I’ve spent about a week writing this and re-writing this and adding to it and changing it. But eventually you just have to get it out there. You may see this cross-posted in a few different places. Just trying to reach out to different audiences.

Words for Comicality

It seems only a few weeks ago that I learned Comsie was going through such serious health issues. And now, just like that, he’s gone. It’s dreadfully unfair that he was taken from us with so much unfinished business. On NIfty, a site he contributed stories to for 26 years, his departure is marked by the message “Author Comicality passed away”. That’s it? That’s all after the hundreds of thousands of words he wrote? Comicality deserves more words remembering him. Hundreds of words. Thousands of words. All of the words. And I can’t write all the words he deserves, but I’m going to give my best effort at writing some of them.

I first stumbled across Comsie in 1997 or 1998? I can’t remember the exact date, but I started reading “New Kid in School” from the very first chapter. Then he started the website and got an email address and I reached out to him to say how much I liked the stories. The internet was a different place then. Everything seemed hand-made in Times New Roman, Facebook, Google and Amazon and their algorithms hadn’t taken over the internet, and communities were finding each other for the first time around topics like how hot teenage boys were.

I kept emailing him on and off ever since then. People you only know online tend to flitter in and out of your life - closest confidant one minute, vanished into the ether the next. But for over 25 years, Comsie was a constant. He’s the friend I’ve known the longest that I never ever met. Because I wrote to him so occasionally, I would write these long, rambling emails with many, many questions. And Comsie being Comsie, he would feel like he would owe me a decent reply, so sometimes it took weeks or even months for him to respond. They were always worth it though - my long emails sometimes got even longer replies.

Comsie was the exception to most of the authors you’d find on Nifty or Gay Authors or elsewhere. Through his forums and emails, he put so much of his own life out there, the good parts and the bad. Being so open brought on a lot of hate mail. I’m not sure how he put up with it year after year. He shared parts of his difficult childhood, the constant money worries of being a retail employee, his love for Chicago. I’m sad he never made it back there, but glad he was surrounded by family at the end.

You felt like you knew him, but maybe that’s the illusion on online-only friendships, where you only know the parts of someone’s life they share with you. Despite being so open about some parts of his life, he guarded his privacy zealously in others. In over 25 years of emails, he never shared a picture of himself with me. I visited Chicago a couple of times (he had numerous suggestions on where to visit, and was very amused by my attempt to eat a whole Chicago deep dish pizza by myself) but we never met up. Maybe it’s better that way: the Comsie in my head will probably be forever in his early 20s, the age at which we first started talking.

The Comicality writing process could be maddening as a reader. He never liked to focus on just one story at a time. I think he wrote chapters about whichever characters were interesting to him at the time. And he always had ideas for new stories. It seemed like for every story he brought to a final conclusion, he would start four more. And some of his series had epically long hiatuses between updates (“Taryn’s Song” had a SEVEN YEAR gap between chapters at one point). I used to joke that he never wanted to finish a series because he never wanted to say goodbye to the characters he created. Now my Comicality thoughts will be filled with questions that will never be answered.

• What was going to happen at the party and would Brandon and Billy ever get back together in “Billy Chase”?
• Would Artie and Scotty start talking to each other in “Jesse-101”?
• How was Eric and Dustin’s story going to end in “Untouchable”?
• Would Justin fulfil his vampire prophecy in “Gone From Daylight”? And how did Taryn and Alec get separated in “Taryn’s Song”?

I’m sure everyone has their favourite Comicality storyline that they wanted to see resolved. It seems somehow appropriate that Comsie’s legacy will be dozens of dangling plotlines. Even “New Kid in School”, the story that started it all, was still unfinished after 27 years.

If there’s one story I’m glad Comsie did finish, it was “My Only Escape”. It’s the most deeply personal story Comsie’s ever written, built on memories from a very dark part of his life. Being able to write from his real lived experience gave the story a reality and rawness I could never emulate on that subject.  From the first chapter to the last, it took him 21 years to finish. It was sexy and heart-wrenching and moving. I’d urge everyone to read it again - even just the very last chapter. I was in literal tears during Zack’s conversation with Mr Raffe. It wasn’t just a conversation between Zack and his teacher - it was conversation between Comsie and all the people both real and in his head that told him his stories weren’t good enough. Out of all his stories, I’m glad his readers got to see that one in its full, final, finished form. Did you know at one point the early chapters were adapted for Australian radio? Wild to think about.

Comsie did soooo much in his online life. It wasn’t just the stories. It was the website, the forums, “Imagine Magazine”, the advice to other authors, the advice to people young and old going through tough times, the YouTube channel, the gallery. I have no idea where he found the time, and the volume of work probably didn’t get nearly the appreciation it deserved.

He motivated me to write my own stories and share them (although very carefully). My major interactions with him over the last year revolved around submitting the chapters of “Dear Ronan” to “Imagine Magazine”. I told him I was holding the story hostage, and wouldn’t let him see the finished complete product until he published chapter 450 of “Billy Chase”. He laughed at my threats and happily ignored them.

He deserved better. He deserved longer. He deserved the time to finish all of the stories he started. I think I’ll always have regrets that I didn’t write to him more, that I didn’t tell  him everything I liked about his stories at every opportunity. I always wanted him to stretch himself, to challenge himself to be a better writer because he had that talent in him. I teased him about some of his tendencies as an author: like starting every new story with a three paragraph inner monologue from the protagonist, or his fondness for “wise sage” characters who dispense advice in long soliloquies. Like perhaps most authors, he remembered every negative thing I ever said about his stories. But I hope he remembered all the positive things I said too… like how much I like Ariel’s “voice”, or how hot the game of footsie on the couch in “Sneak Away” was, or how moving I found the conclusion to “My Only Escape”. 

I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife, but I’d like to believe in one for Comsie…. Something like “The Good Place”, where he has all the time in the world to finish all the stories he started, preferably with a cute speedo-clad teenager (or three!) by his side. And then when he finally puts his pen down for the last time, he could return to the universe with a sense of mission accomplished.
 

That's a wonderful tribute.

9 hours ago, StoriesByCirrus said:

It feels like I’ve spent about a week writing this and re-writing this and adding to it and changing it. But eventually you just have to get it out there. You may see this cross-posted in a few different places. Just trying to reach out to different audiences.

Words for Comicality

It seems only a few weeks ago that I learned Comsie was going through such serious health issues. And now, just like that, he’s gone. It’s dreadfully unfair that he was taken from us with so much unfinished business. On NIfty, a site he contributed stories to for 26 years, his departure is marked by the message “Author Comicality passed away”. That’s it? That’s all after the hundreds of thousands of words he wrote? Comicality deserves more words remembering him. Hundreds of words. Thousands of words. All of the words. And I can’t write all the words he deserves, but I’m going to give my best effort at writing some of them.

I first stumbled across Comsie in 1997 or 1998? I can’t remember the exact date, but I started reading “New Kid in School” from the very first chapter. Then he started the website and got an email address and I reached out to him to say how much I liked the stories. The internet was a different place then. Everything seemed hand-made in Times New Roman, Facebook, Google and Amazon and their algorithms hadn’t taken over the internet, and communities were finding each other for the first time around topics like how hot teenage boys were.

I kept emailing him on and off ever since then. People you only know online tend to flitter in and out of your life - closest confidant one minute, vanished into the ether the next. But for over 25 years, Comsie was a constant. He’s the friend I’ve known the longest that I never ever met. Because I wrote to him so occasionally, I would write these long, rambling emails with many, many questions. And Comsie being Comsie, he would feel like he would owe me a decent reply, so sometimes it took weeks or even months for him to respond. They were always worth it though - my long emails sometimes got even longer replies.

Comsie was the exception to most of the authors you’d find on Nifty or Gay Authors or elsewhere. Through his forums and emails, he put so much of his own life out there, the good parts and the bad. Being so open brought on a lot of hate mail. I’m not sure how he put up with it year after year. He shared parts of his difficult childhood, the constant money worries of being a retail employee, his love for Chicago. I’m sad he never made it back there, but glad he was surrounded by family at the end.

You felt like you knew him, but maybe that’s the illusion on online-only friendships, where you only know the parts of someone’s life they share with you. Despite being so open about some parts of his life, he guarded his privacy zealously in others. In over 25 years of emails, he never shared a picture of himself with me. I visited Chicago a couple of times (he had numerous suggestions on where to visit, and was very amused by my attempt to eat a whole Chicago deep dish pizza by myself) but we never met up. Maybe it’s better that way: the Comsie in my head will probably be forever in his early 20s, the age at which we first started talking.

The Comicality writing process could be maddening as a reader. He never liked to focus on just one story at a time. I think he wrote chapters about whichever characters were interesting to him at the time. And he always had ideas for new stories. It seemed like for every story he brought to a final conclusion, he would start four more. And some of his series had epically long hiatuses between updates (“Taryn’s Song” had a SEVEN YEAR gap between chapters at one point). I used to joke that he never wanted to finish a series because he never wanted to say goodbye to the characters he created. Now my Comicality thoughts will be filled with questions that will never be answered.

• What was going to happen at the party and would Brandon and Billy ever get back together in “Billy Chase”?
• Would Artie and Scotty start talking to each other in “Jesse-101”?
• How was Eric and Dustin’s story going to end in “Untouchable”?
• Would Justin fulfil his vampire prophecy in “Gone From Daylight”? And how did Taryn and Alec get separated in “Taryn’s Song”?

I’m sure everyone has their favourite Comicality storyline that they wanted to see resolved. It seems somehow appropriate that Comsie’s legacy will be dozens of dangling plotlines. Even “New Kid in School”, the story that started it all, was still unfinished after 27 years.

If there’s one story I’m glad Comsie did finish, it was “My Only Escape”. It’s the most deeply personal story Comsie’s ever written, built on memories from a very dark part of his life. Being able to write from his real lived experience gave the story a reality and rawness I could never emulate on that subject.  From the first chapter to the last, it took him 21 years to finish. It was sexy and heart-wrenching and moving. I’d urge everyone to read it again - even just the very last chapter. I was in literal tears during Zack’s conversation with Mr Raffe. It wasn’t just a conversation between Zack and his teacher - it was conversation between Comsie and all the people both real and in his head that told him his stories weren’t good enough. Out of all his stories, I’m glad his readers got to see that one in its full, final, finished form. Did you know at one point the early chapters were adapted for Australian radio? Wild to think about.

Comsie did soooo much in his online life. It wasn’t just the stories. It was the website, the forums, “Imagine Magazine”, the advice to other authors, the advice to people young and old going through tough times, the YouTube channel, the gallery. I have no idea where he found the time, and the volume of work probably didn’t get nearly the appreciation it deserved.

He motivated me to write my own stories and share them (although very carefully). My major interactions with him over the last year revolved around submitting the chapters of “Dear Ronan” to “Imagine Magazine”. I told him I was holding the story hostage, and wouldn’t let him see the finished complete product until he published chapter 450 of “Billy Chase”. He laughed at my threats and happily ignored them.

He deserved better. He deserved longer. He deserved the time to finish all of the stories he started. I think I’ll always have regrets that I didn’t write to him more, that I didn’t tell  him everything I liked about his stories at every opportunity. I always wanted him to stretch himself, to challenge himself to be a better writer because he had that talent in him. I teased him about some of his tendencies as an author: like starting every new story with a three paragraph inner monologue from the protagonist, or his fondness for “wise sage” characters who dispense advice in long soliloquies. Like perhaps most authors, he remembered every negative thing I ever said about his stories. But I hope he remembered all the positive things I said too… like how much I like Ariel’s “voice”, or how hot the game of footsie on the couch in “Sneak Away” was, or how moving I found the conclusion to “My Only Escape”. 

I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife, but I’d like to believe in one for Comsie…. Something like “The Good Place”, where he has all the time in the world to finish all the stories he started, preferably with a cute speedo-clad teenager (or three!) by his side. And then when he finally puts his pen down for the last time, he could return to the universe with a sense of mission accomplished.
 

My Only Escape was very similar to my experience and sigh…. I’m still in denial he’s gone.. I keep looking for a new post, SOMETHING .😪

@StoriesByCirrus

That was incredibly beautiful tribute to Com. I too have been trying to put into words how he meant to me but not being the writer you or he is it's taking me a while! 

I too came across him on Nifty and like you have been penpals with him since almost the beginning. He was the first person I told I was gay and when I was panicing to tell my family he gave me the confidence to do it. He and I are/were same age only 1 month apart... him 2nd May me 3rd June.

He always did his best to stay upbeat for everyone and take the time to try and make everyone smile, even though most of us knew  his private life could be such a struggle.

It's a cliche but in Com's case very true, only the good die young, I will miss him terribly but remember him fondly always.

Rest easy Com!

I just heard the news — I’m devastated… I still cannot fully comprehend that he is gone…
I found Comicality about 4 years ago around the start of the pandemic, when I was 14. “New Kid,” which was the first story I read, was what led me to fall in love with his work. There was something about the way he wrote that drew me in — the way he wove together the characters to the point where it felt like I knew them in real life...
Over the course of these last few years, I’ve read just about everything Com has written. I remember I would read GFD late at night when everyone had already gone to sleep — when I was supposed to be sleeping as well. I’d only download 2-3 chapters a day and read them on my Kindle that night, stopping myself from going on until the next day. I would try to savor the story and make it last for as long as I possibly could.
I’m sorry that I never got to know him. I wish I could just tell him how much his work meant to me. I can only hope that wherever he is now, he knows how much of a profound impact he has had not just on my life, but on so many others. Rest in peace, Com.

Beautifully put @St4rlight I think Comsie knows how much he impacted you there are thousands and thousands of others he impacted the same way 

I remember my first time interacting with GFD, Gone from Daylight, I was still figuring myself out at the time as a gay teen. Comsie was a bright spot in a dark world. Later as an amateur writer, I learned he spread his knowledge about writing, experiences, and hope without filters or conventions across various platforms and groups.

RIP @Comicality You will be missed and hopefully you are enjoying the paradise of eternal bliss.

On 4/25/2024 at 10:01 PM, StoriesByCirrus said:

It feels like I’ve spent about a week writing this and re-writing this and adding to it and changing it. But eventually you just have to get it out there. You may see this cross-posted in a few different places. Just trying to reach out to different audiences.

Words for Comicality

It seems only a few weeks ago that I learned Comsie was going through such serious health issues. And now, just like that, he’s gone. It’s dreadfully unfair that he was taken from us with so much unfinished business. On NIfty, a site he contributed stories to for 26 years, his departure is marked by the message “Author Comicality passed away”. That’s it? That’s all after the hundreds of thousands of words he wrote? Comicality deserves more words remembering him. Hundreds of words. Thousands of words. All of the words. And I can’t write all the words he deserves, but I’m going to give my best effort at writing some of them.

I first stumbled across Comsie in 1997 or 1998? I can’t remember the exact date, but I started reading “New Kid in School” from the very first chapter. Then he started the website and got an email address and I reached out to him to say how much I liked the stories. The internet was a different place then. Everything seemed hand-made in Times New Roman, Facebook, Google and Amazon and their algorithms hadn’t taken over the internet, and communities were finding each other for the first time around topics like how hot teenage boys were.

I kept emailing him on and off ever since then. People you only know online tend to flitter in and out of your life - closest confidant one minute, vanished into the ether the next. But for over 25 years, Comsie was a constant. He’s the friend I’ve known the longest that I never ever met. Because I wrote to him so occasionally, I would write these long, rambling emails with many, many questions. And Comsie being Comsie, he would feel like he would owe me a decent reply, so sometimes it took weeks or even months for him to respond. They were always worth it though - my long emails sometimes got even longer replies.

Comsie was the exception to most of the authors you’d find on Nifty or Gay Authors or elsewhere. Through his forums and emails, he put so much of his own life out there, the good parts and the bad. Being so open brought on a lot of hate mail. I’m not sure how he put up with it year after year. He shared parts of his difficult childhood, the constant money worries of being a retail employee, his love for Chicago. I’m sad he never made it back there, but glad he was surrounded by family at the end.

You felt like you knew him, but maybe that’s the illusion on online-only friendships, where you only know the parts of someone’s life they share with you. Despite being so open about some parts of his life, he guarded his privacy zealously in others. In over 25 years of emails, he never shared a picture of himself with me. I visited Chicago a couple of times (he had numerous suggestions on where to visit, and was very amused by my attempt to eat a whole Chicago deep dish pizza by myself) but we never met up. Maybe it’s better that way: the Comsie in my head will probably be forever in his early 20s, the age at which we first started talking.

The Comicality writing process could be maddening as a reader. He never liked to focus on just one story at a time. I think he wrote chapters about whichever characters were interesting to him at the time. And he always had ideas for new stories. It seemed like for every story he brought to a final conclusion, he would start four more. And some of his series had epically long hiatuses between updates (“Taryn’s Song” had a SEVEN YEAR gap between chapters at one point). I used to joke that he never wanted to finish a series because he never wanted to say goodbye to the characters he created. Now my Comicality thoughts will be filled with questions that will never be answered.

• What was going to happen at the party and would Brandon and Billy ever get back together in “Billy Chase”?
• Would Artie and Scotty start talking to each other in “Jesse-101”?
• How was Eric and Dustin’s story going to end in “Untouchable”?
• Would Justin fulfil his vampire prophecy in “Gone From Daylight”? And how did Taryn and Alec get separated in “Taryn’s Song”?

I’m sure everyone has their favourite Comicality storyline that they wanted to see resolved. It seems somehow appropriate that Comsie’s legacy will be dozens of dangling plotlines. Even “New Kid in School”, the story that started it all, was still unfinished after 27 years.

If there’s one story I’m glad Comsie did finish, it was “My Only Escape”. It’s the most deeply personal story Comsie’s ever written, built on memories from a very dark part of his life. Being able to write from his real lived experience gave the story a reality and rawness I could never emulate on that subject.  From the first chapter to the last, it took him 21 years to finish. It was sexy and heart-wrenching and moving. I’d urge everyone to read it again - even just the very last chapter. I was in literal tears during Zack’s conversation with Mr Raffe. It wasn’t just a conversation between Zack and his teacher - it was conversation between Comsie and all the people both real and in his head that told him his stories weren’t good enough. Out of all his stories, I’m glad his readers got to see that one in its full, final, finished form. Did you know at one point the early chapters were adapted for Australian radio? Wild to think about.

Comsie did soooo much in his online life. It wasn’t just the stories. It was the website, the forums, “Imagine Magazine”, the advice to other authors, the advice to people young and old going through tough times, the YouTube channel, the gallery. I have no idea where he found the time, and the volume of work probably didn’t get nearly the appreciation it deserved.

He motivated me to write my own stories and share them (although very carefully). My major interactions with him over the last year revolved around submitting the chapters of “Dear Ronan” to “Imagine Magazine”. I told him I was holding the story hostage, and wouldn’t let him see the finished complete product until he published chapter 450 of “Billy Chase”. He laughed at my threats and happily ignored them.

He deserved better. He deserved longer. He deserved the time to finish all of the stories he started. I think I’ll always have regrets that I didn’t write to him more, that I didn’t tell  him everything I liked about his stories at every opportunity. I always wanted him to stretch himself, to challenge himself to be a better writer because he had that talent in him. I teased him about some of his tendencies as an author: like starting every new story with a three paragraph inner monologue from the protagonist, or his fondness for “wise sage” characters who dispense advice in long soliloquies. Like perhaps most authors, he remembered every negative thing I ever said about his stories. But I hope he remembered all the positive things I said too… like how much I like Ariel’s “voice”, or how hot the game of footsie on the couch in “Sneak Away” was, or how moving I found the conclusion to “My Only Escape”. 

I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife, but I’d like to believe in one for Comsie…. Something like “The Good Place”, where he has all the time in the world to finish all the stories he started, preferably with a cute speedo-clad teenager (or three!) by his side. And then when he finally puts his pen down for the last time, he could return to the universe with a sense of mission accomplished.
 

An utterly beautiful tribute, heart-rendering honest, and so lovingly written.  Thank you so much @StoriesByCirrus Xx

Very sad news. Comsie is, in my opinion, the best author when it comes to my favourite topic(s). I haven't read any of his stories for years now, too busy, but have always been planning to read all of them. So immense thanks to gayauthors for keeping the archive online. I am also willing to buy books with stories by Comsie (I'd prefer that even, over reading from a screen).

I'm very sad to read this news. Comsie was someone whose legacy will live on not only in the stories he wrote, but in the authors he inspired and the stories they wrote because of that inspiration.  I consider myself one of those who wrote because of him. I'm glad I was able to interact with him and tell him so. May his legacy continue to grow through those whose lives he touched.