The Strange Sea Chronicles comic

137 - Changing Plans (SAT 06JUN2026)

136 - The Curse (FRI 29MAY2026)

135 - The Caring Company (MON 18MAY2026)

EmSoft started in 1984 in the founder's parents' garage, and wanted to differentiate itself from the other major players in the microcomputer OS field of the day, so it said it was "The Caring Company". The founder's parents were multimillionaires, and the "garage" had until that point housed Daddy's Formula 1 team, so don't imagine that this was quite a cottage industry. And the subsequent decades have profoundly undermined any of EmSoft's claims to actually care. About anybody, especially users of their products.

At this point, the company has decided that the potential PR disaster of abandoning the slogan and publicly announcing that, actually, they no longer care would cause more lasting trouble and damage than the constant trolling they get for still including such an bald-faced lie on their company website.

Nobody believes EmSoft cares. Not daily users, not toddlers first experiencing the deeply un-fun "EmSoft Toddler Fun-Play" app on mummy's tablet, not sapient technological creatures present in star systems within 42 light years from Earth. A paper published in Nature in 2021 proves that even planarians react negatively to EmSoft products. (Especially to Chippy[TM]!)

Despite this, their software is present on 74.2% of all microchip computing devices on the planet, including computers, smart phones, space stations, drones and orbiting space lasers. Their "don't actually care" is global. But it's also very, very personal.

134 - Malware (TUE 12MAY2026)

133 - More In Store (SAT 02MAY2026)

And Happy SCA New Year to those who celebrate it!

132 - Missing in Action (SUN 12APR2026)

131 - Drinking From The Firehose (FRI 03APR2026)

Lord Oliver and his pal Lady Antonia are eager to up their garb-game.

Well, Antonia is...

130 - Memoriam (TUE 31MAR2026)

What's truly important!

129 - Gang Aft Agley (TUE 24MAR2026)

When psychological sabotage proves ineffective, Lord Bartolomeo's Self-Defeating Voice is perfectly willing to resort to… more direct methods.

The title is from Robert Burns' 1785 poem "To A Mouse":
"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley" IE "often go wrong"

128 - Meeting of the Minds (SAT 21MAR2026)

The Self-Defeating Voice has a strangely "supportive" way of tearing Barto down - but he definitely gets there in the end!