Randal, Randy, RK – Milholland is Called to the Drawing Board
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Something*Positive [link added] is a ‘day in the life’ webcomic that follows the main character of Davin MacIntire and his group of friends. Started in 2001, it is loosely based on the life and friends of creator Randal “R.K.” Milholland, and is darkly funny, skewering everyone and everything it can. It is sweet and sad and preposterous and honest: sometimes all at once.
Milholland is a geek just as much as I am. In 2022, he was hired to do the Sunday comic strips for Popeye [link added], which he’s been a fan of for most of his life. I asked him (as he wore a shirt with the character on it) how that came about. “They had an anniversary event in 2018/2019, and I did a strip for that,” Milholland said. “I actually did six strips: they chose one. It was very well received. They said it was the most-viewed comic on the Comics Kingdom site for the year. I wanted to take over the daily strip, because that’s been rerun since 1992. They asked if they could run the package on the website. Again, it was heavy traffic. But the strips are not in enough papers. And so they shortlisted me for when Hy Eisman decided to retire because he was doing the Sunday strip. So basically, when he decided he was ready to retire, they had someone to step in. And when he said, ‘You know what? I think I’m done,’ they called me up.”
Angie Fiedler Sutton for The GEEKiary interviews cartoonist Randal “R.K.” Milholland.
Randy currently creates the Sunday Popeye, a weekly (Thursday) Olive and Popeye installment, the Something Positive webcomic, and the Mousetrapped webcomic starring the public domain Mickey Mouse.
When Milholland started Something*Positive, you still had to explain what a webcomic was. Nowadays, of course, they are everywhere. I asked him what it was like doing it in 2025 versus back then. “Probably not as profitable,” he said with a grimace, “but at the same time freedom. I mean, I still make a living, which is nice.
I asked why he still does it in 2025. “Because you need to,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’re going to do it anyway, why not try to get paid for it? I mean, most of us will be drawing no matter what. This is just what we do. And a lot of us have a need to tell a story. We need to put art out there. We want to talk. We want to present things. So why not? And, you know, I like it, and it has given me a lot of freedom in ways I didn’t expect.”
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