Thursday, November 20, 2008

November 19, 2008: New calendar and other good stuff

The holidays are upon us, and I would be rather remiss if I didn't have new stuff in the store! So, if you need gifts for the online comics fan in your life (yourself probably), wander on over there. The 2009 wall calendar is out, and has a literary theme, and I think it's the best yet. And, there are new t-shirt designs, with election and holiday themes, depending on what form of joy you're basking in right now. Happy shopping and happy holidays!

April 24, 2008: Why the posting has slowed down: a bit of an announcement

I guess I do owe you, my audience, an apology and an explanation for why things have gotten slow around here!

The fact is, it's been ten years since the strip began as a semi-daily project of mine, and longer than that since I first started working with the characters. I created them when I was 19 years old. I'm 31, now; the characters have been daily features of my life for more than a third of it.

And, I'm a different person and a different artist than I was at the start of it all. It's been an amazing adventure, being a web cartoonist, and it's been an honor and privilege getting to write and draw for an audience of tens of thousands for so long. But I do have other things I want to do, and I've begun doing some of them, both on and offline.

Quite simply, I've been posting strips as often as I'm able to deliver good ones that are up to my standards. The fact that that's become less often is quite significant.

I don't think comic strips, or creative projects in general, ought to continue long after the creator has mentally moved on, and it's always tragic when they do ("Peanuts," "The Simpsons"). I always said I'd know when it was time for me to move on. I'm afraid that time is fast approaching.

I want to get out while I can still give the characters the ending I feel they deserve, and I'm going to do the best one I possibly can. That's going to be this year, and there'll be a final book collection to go with it, and after that the daily strip will come to a close.

After that, I strongly suspect I'll revisit the characters from time to time, perhaps in longer-form comic stories, which I'll also post here. (I still want to see what the characters will be like in high school. There are still avenues I think would be fun to explore.)

My goals in life and art have evolved over time. "Ozy and Millie" has been like a graduate level course in cartooning. I look forward to applying the things I've learned from it to other projects. Of course, even after this ends, you will not have heard the last of me.