That First Webcomic Love
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Hey all you loyal, lovely Gods & Undergrads readers. I unfortunately have something really tough to tell you -- I've decided to put G&U on a sort of permanent hiatus for the time being. This is a really difficult thing for ME to do, but I'm sure for all of you out there who've managed to stick with it all this time, it's way more obnoxious! G&U has always been the book I've been MOST passionate about and the majority of people have been the LEAST interested in, and it was only recently after interventions from some friends and colleagues that I realized it was time to throw in this G&U towel for the moment. Not because I don't think it's worth it to put time and work into a story no one reads - hello, I'm in comics - but because the story itself is now REALLY suffering from my lack of attention. So I need to grow up and realize it and do something hard . . . like ending my first comic.
I started Gods & Undergrads wayyyy back in the year 2000 when first discovering an early love for (and awareness of) webcomics. While working at my college's art office and photo lab, I alternated between reading Scott McCloud's Zot, Derek Kirk Kim's Same Difference, and Jason Little's Bee Comix. I especially loved Dylan Meconis's Bite Me and Faith Erin Hicks's Demonology 101, too.
But what all of these people DID with their web sagas I failed to do -- they eventually finished them. They moved on to other things. While I, also, moved on to other things, other stories I wanted to tell . . . and yet I still dragged Gods & Undergrads along behind me, bumping it onto every pothole and street sign along the way. Leaving months, even years between updates sometimes. The audience I'd managed to build up until that point put up with a lot of unknowns, changes in style, even going from its initial full color format to all black and white, . . . but eventually most people have stopped reading. That's just one of the troubles with continuing a story after 14 years (and intermittent shoe-horning between other comics projects). It gets lost among the shuffle and doesn't get the attention and care it deserves.
HOWEVER, one of the reasons for me to tie it off now and put an (abrupt) ending on this 14-year-long saga is not just to stop me from dragging it through the mud, but also to give myself a chance further down the line of resurrecting it in a newer, more planned out storyline (rather than its current Frankenstein one). Oh, did I not mention that I would totally reboot this? I WOULD TOTALLY REBOOT IT.
So anyway - sorry for the lame news, everyone. I'm going to be posting the final, abruptly-cut-short 10 pages of Gods & Undergrads over the next few weeks. Sure, if I'd pulled the trigger earlier I could've ended it at the end of Book 3, with Lelaina gone and seemingly dead but WHO WANTS THAT ENDING??
I'll still have the books for sale (tons and tons of books) and will do sketches and things for anyone who wants them. And the archives will all remain online indefinitely. A BIG, HUGE, HEARTFELT THANK YOU to all of you who've kept up with the story all this time! Again, this definitely isn't the END end of Gods & Undergrads . . . just the end for now. *sniff*
And, of course, I'll still be doing Bonnie twice a week. And other comics. And I love you guys!
***UPDATE: I've decided this last chapter will be a FULL chapter, hooray! 48 pages of fun coming your way, so stay tuned! You'll have more G&U for a while yet. :)