Back in college, and off and on after that, I spent a lot of time talking to my friend Chris about goofball adventure stories, pastiches of 80s movies, and all sorts of things that might make entertaining comics. We had a few pretty good ideas, including a lighthearted fantasy adventure called Little Girl & Robot Boy, an 80s-inspired action series about a cop called Willie Law, and a bleak, existentialist noir series called Apocalopolis.
In 2012, I decided to try to get over my hangups and just start drawing, and the result was a messy, one-page-a-day comic that that I drew quickly and posted after I got my kid to bed at night. It was an exercise in just getting things done. It came to an abrupt end just when I thought I had a handle on the story, about 60 pages in, because a lack of access to a scanner and an internet connection took the web out of webcomic.
It seemed like a great time to take a hiatus and retool, but the hiatus never ended and life moved on.
Fast forward 10 years, and my baby is now almost a teen. He encouraged me to bring it back, and so it’s been restored, as Apocalopolis: Issue #0. I’m also porting the 300 odd whiteboard drawings that I did to entertain co-workers as another comic series called #whiteboard385 (the hash tag that I used on Instagram, after my office number).
If all goes well, more series will follow, including one that my older kid has a hand in, and maybe a revival of those original ideas with Chris, but done properly this time.