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Today, Sometime Alone has effectively restarted, rebooted, relaunched, refurbished, and respawned.
All the other comics have been moved to the Rejects page, which I really should rename because “rejects” has bad connotations. The Warded Masquerade is on the Short Stories page as before, and all future comics will now be displayed on the front page like any normal site. I will be updating Monday-Wednesday-Friday from now on, as that is the optimum schedule that I can manage and keep up the quality.
Also, I think this is a good time to introduce myself, which is something I really haven’t done properly yet.
I’m not the most photogenic person . . .
My name is Matthew Dawson, I am 23 and live in Midlothian, Virginia. It is just outside of Richmond city limits, so it is far enough away to be quieter than the city and to make you have to put up with a car if you want to go anywhere.
I was never really all that into comics growing up. That is possibly because the major publishers ruled at the time (DC and Marvel) and almost all of the material they were making was ultra-gritty, violent superhero stuff designed for people who were a couple of decades older than I was at the time. After playing around with making a very rough webcomic in high school, I began to despair because all of the successes back then (this was about 2003) seemed to be video game-based strips that were already several years old. Even then, I knew that I couldn’t beat those guys at their own game, and if I even wanted to come close it would take five to six years of constant work. And in high school, five years is forever.
After abandoning webcomics for a couple of years, I decided to give it a go once again in the fall of 2008. That was when my family finally ditched the 56k modem and went straight to a high-speed connection. Suddenly, I was exposed to a wild array of webcomics that not only were successful, but had nothing to do with video games at all. Not only that, but some of them were making great headway on only their third year or so of regular updates. I felt like I could actually make this work for me and my first comic went up on my old Webcomics Nation account on Christmas Eve 2008. Although I have really bumbled through my first year – changing anything and everything – I have yet to ditch the comic-making life since then and hope to continue on indefinitely.
Having really botched to first year, though I learned a lot, I am really beginning again and wiping the slate clean as far as continuity is concerned. Though, if you’re a new reader it might still be beneficial to skim through the old comics because many of those characters and ideas might make a return in the future. It isn’t essential, but it might give you a little insight on how I come up with some of my ideas. And now I will off and let you enjoy all the silly nonsense I’ve managed to collect over the many months on this site as well as the comics to come.
Not got much to show for myself, because my rotten scanner has been giving me heck. It started tossing errors my way after scanning these couple of pictures, so this is all you get for now. I am very interested in doing everything by hand holding pencil for the next comic, so I need to get this all sorted out if I’m going to give it a go.
Sometime Alone, as of this moment, is going on hiatus.
It might be a week. It might be a month or more. I don’t know, because it will take as long as it needs to take.
This past week I have been preparing for a relaunch of this comic and the date of the big restart was to have been Monday. Yet after making a couple of comics and a number of sketches in preparation, I have become more and more convinced that I would not be ready in time. And also that something is missing from this comic in total.
And what is missing is my love for it.
If I didn’t care about these characters and this little world, then I’d toss them aside and move on with my life. But I can’t stop drawing them. I can stop thinking of new adventures and different angles for new stories. I can see this vibrant little world in my mind’s eye and I know that all I have to do is put it out there and people will like it. Because I love it.
The problem stems from the execution of it. My inner Brad Guigar tells me that I can make this huge if only I can put it out there in a way that is well-made and appeals to readers. That’s why over the past year I have tried so many formats and sizes and art styles and ways of telling the story. Because I know it can take off, if only I can let it do so.
And I hate doing this. This thing where I keep changing stuff. Where I go on hiatus, only to come back prematurely and then go away again. Yet, each time I do this more of the pieces fall into place in my mind. And this time I can almost taste it.
I just need more time to train myself, to make better art, to learn to write better. I know that patience does not exist in great quantity among those who read comics on the web, but it is what I must ask of you if you want a comic that can live up to what I promise
