One of my longtime friends (and fans) told me this last week when I told her what I planned on doing with the comic strip over the course of the next few months. With my third book in the can and me landing a spot in the small press area of this year's San Diego Comic-Con, I was looking over the current material to see if I could put together a short book to sell at Comic-Con based on my cancer storyline from last year. What I found was a mess and explains why I was having so much trouble writing the last few months.

Basically, I wrote myself into a paper bag from which I couldn't get out.

The original story of Harold getting cancer had splintered off into several different storylines that were heading nowhere. A cat scan with career-related issues. A nosy reporter with a desire to tell the greatest story ever. A best friend who doesn't understand what's going on in her friend's head. It just went on and on. It didn't help that I introduced an all-new storyline where Eebo had been orphaned. Not very smart when you've got several unresolved strings going already. Too much was going on at once and there wasn't much point other than to keep it going.

So I ended it by canceling the comic strip. Not the most elegant way of doing it, but it did give me an opportunity to stop, pull back, and take a look at what happened. I was a bit surprised that readers didn't complain too loudly when I ended it and most offered words of support for my next project - helps that I explained I was feeling very uninspired by what I was writing and needed to end it. The feeling I was getting was that the strip was becoming more and more of a disaster the more I wrote to keep the various storylines going. It was the wrong road to go down and one thing I have learned over he years is it's better to start all over than it is to keep trying to fix something that's broken.

Looking over the material, I found I had major issues with the original storyline. Because everything was so new and I was trying to absorb a lot of life experiences at once, I wasn't able to gain any perspective on it and the story just kept snowballing in unexpected ways that were very difficult to manage. I think the major problem I ran into was how to deal with an imaginary undead character coming down with cancer and why that would be a problem for it. Logically speaking, it isn't possible and doesn't work. Then again, this is a comic strip and, well, screw logic.

The way the original story plays out, it brings SuperCaz back from her premature retirement to announce 'Evil is everywhere' then jumps straight into Harold announcing he has cancer, then losing direction as it becomes more and more apparent that Harold will be having nothing more than blood tests, X-rays, and CT scans, just as I was in real life. Story problems I ran across:

1. I had originally wanted SuperCaz to be done with because she was too much like an overblown version of Iris. I didn't need two characters like that. Thus, I wanted Cassidy to remain the red-headed girl Otis falls for much like Charlie Brown does - by reintroducing SuperCaz, I screwed that up and ended up introducing a half-baked storyline where she becomes a reporter on the trail of the cat scan. Not something I wanted or needed in the comic strip.

2. I hadn't resolved how Xana was going to 'see' Harold since Otis is the only one who can see him. She wears a helmet at first, then I inexplicably dropped the concept. If I had been paying attention, there was a much simpler way of dealing with it since her family supposedly has been spending generations on studying cases like Harold's. What I've come up with is a more elegant solution and makes a lot more sense in the context of the rest of the strip.

3. I should never have had Harold revert to eating human flesh. It was a dumb idea and yielded some really bland zombie strips. I should have gone back to my original strips of Harold and used those as a basis for a story where he becomes a vegetarian zombie who switched away from eating flesh to avoid getting cancer, yet gets it anyway, and allows me to talk about how a character who would have never thought he would get cancer, gets cancer.

4. When I introduced Iris into the original storyline, she made it sound like Otis had been missing for several days. I didn't like that and didn't resolve it very well (or not at all). Iris is Otis' best friend and she should be better informed about what's going on in his life so she can give her love and support.

5. Cairo the Cat Scan is a fun character to write. However, what I do with him in the original storyline detracts from Harold's experience and it ended up becoming a major storyline that was heading nowhere fast and down a track that would have been near impossible from which to come back.

So, consider this rewrite a step backward in an attempt at stepping forward. It'll take a few months to play out, but I think it will be worth it. Plus, it'll be fun to compare and contrast with what I had before. Besides, it's not often you get to see a story re-written while in the public domain like this.

Stupid allergies. They've been building up slowly the last couple of weeks before finally crashing hard on me Sunday while watching Art School Confidential. Fortunately, they weren't bad while down in San Diego visiting the Zoo down there for the first time. I haven't been able to post comics the last couple of days because my head's been so stuffed up - I'd rather sleep and/or stare blankly at the computer screen than draw or write. I *did* draw one this morning, but I don't want to post it until I'm done - just been getting in the really bad habit of posting comics before they're finished lately (for the record, last week I finished 2 of the 3 that were posted unfinished).

So, after hearing about this web site, I had to take this test myself since I've had all sorts of questions about religion and faith of late. The results are pretty interesting because I scored higher in Neo-Paganism and Reform Judaism than Christian Protestant, which is the type of church I've been attending the last few months (though Quakerism is a variant of Christian Protestant as well):

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Liberal Quakers (97%)
3. Secular Humanism (89%)
4. Neo-Pagan (82%)
5. Reform Judaism (82%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (77%)
7. Baha'i Faith (70%)
8. Sikhism (67%)
9. Theravada Buddhism (66%)
10. New Age (65%)
11. Mahayana Buddhism (61%)
12. Jainism (60%)
13. Nontheist (57%)
14. Orthodox Quaker (55%)
15. Islam (51%)
16. Orthodox Judaism (51%)
17. Hinduism (50%)
18. Taoism (47%)
19. Scientology (46%)
20. New Thought (42%)

The test can be found doing a Google search for 'what religion are you' or here:

http://www.selectsmart.com/PRO/beliefnet/index1.html

I got official word today that I've been cancer-free for one year now!

It went a lot faster than I thought it would, but so much happened in that year. My parents moved from Houston to Hawaii. The girl I was seeing at the time of my surgery has since dropped out of my life to figure out what she wants to do with her life. That was nine months ago. The neighbor who took care of me during that period, Tara, moved away in September and I've lost touch with her as well. A fan of Innies and Outties I met a couple of years ago, Debbie from Long Beach, passed away from breast cancer. Another friend, Paula, who came up with the name Innies and Outties, just finished radiation treatment for breast cancer. And another friend, Laurie, is also recovering from treatment for breast cancer. My former chess-buddy and one of my main pillars of support this past year, Wynn Martin, passed away last month. Not sure of what, but it wasn't cancer. Finally, my dad passed away in August from vasculitis.

Just so things aren't all death and destruction: I was interviewed for Broken Frontiers by Neil, participated in the Comic-Con panel for the documentary 'Adventures Into Digital Comics,' was a featured artist for the Cancer Survivors show at Cabaret Voltaire, raised almost $1000 for the Cancer Dance-a-Thon in September, started attending church regularly for the first time in my life, bought my 2006 Mazda MX-5 in November, completed my third 'Innies and Outties' book that same month, and went back to Bangkok as a photographer for the Bangkok International Film Festival for the second year in a row.

A lot of stuff stayed the same, thankfully: same apartment, same job, same comic strip, same drawing group, same swing dancing venues ... etc.

Whew... get tired just writing about it...

It's difficult to remember what life was like before I had a webcomic - it's been six years since I started and it takes up about two hours out of my day, five days a week.  It's a major time investment, but when I look at the three books I've written on my shelf, it's worth it. 

Readership peaked out somewhere around 1,100 readers a day, but that was several years ago when websites looking for content ran Innies and Outties on their sites.  Times have changed and my readership is barely 1/3rd of what it was at its peak with more than half of those readers coming from my mailing list.  I can blame only myself for not promoting the strip and, worse, delivering content that has been too aloof for most people to really relate to, though diehard fans will probably disagree with me here.  Book sales dipped to zero last year thanks to a lack of public appearances and new dead tree editions. Worst, these past few weeks I lost complete interest in the storyline I had been writing. 

It's amazing how much leaving town for a few weeks can change your attitude toward your work.  Truth be known, I'm not the same person I was twelve months ago.  I've been through too much this past year to not have been affected at all.  As a result, I was finding that I was no longer relating to what I was writing in Innies and Outties and I figured it was time for a shake up. 

After several weeks of thought, I came up with a solution.  I decided to end the comic strip in its current form and remove the characters from their fantasy world and place them into my world - that is, with me here in Los Angeles.  I'm not sure how this is going to work or if this is going to work, but I like the challenge and the story/humor possibilities look endless. 

Oh, it's still going to be called Innies and Outties because it retains the main three characters and their personalities, but it throws me into the mix as well.  It's a fictionalized me along with fictionalized versions of people I know and will be a combination of past, present, and imaginings of the future.  

It ought to be interesting to see how it develops to say the least.