It's been one good year for POPsickle comics. On May 29th, 2008 I decided I would release at least one comic per day, every day of the week. A good painter will tell you that the fastest way to get better is quantity over quality. If you try to make your first thing perfect, you'll never get to your second. 557 strips later, I've released about 1.5 strips per day. Most of them bad, a few of them good. I don't know if I've gotten any better, but I sure got a lot of practice. On May 29th, 2009 I decided it was time for something new.

Now it's time to make good on a promise I made to my readers at the beginning. I said I would never fall into a boring rut or a stale routine. It's time for a change. It's time for me to push myself. It's time to learn how to draw. This next year, you'll see me continuing to experiment with humor styles. I will work to improve my drawing skills while developing new styles of artwork. In fact, it will be easier to list the things that will not change. This site will continue to have the most boring web design in webcomics and I will continue to offend my fellow webcomic artists with periodic tasteless parodies.

The truth is, when you've been doing something every day for a year, it hurts to stop. I still feel the compulsion to attempt a funny picture each night. However, I feel the POPsickle style has came into fruition. Compare my first first stick figures with my last. It's about simplicity, efficiency, principles, and the naked truth. POPsickleSTICKs are drawn with a regular optical mouse, eleven lines, and no borders. I can't take it any further. I can only enter the POPsickleUNIVERSE and bring back stories of Dude. I can no longer develop that universe. It is what it is.

909sickle is not so much a comic as it is an anti-comic. If everyone else goes pop, I plan to go anti-pop. And if you flip POP around, you get 909. Although website traffic has doubled about every month, my goal is still to avoid popularity. I do not wish to scare everyone away, only those looking for a cheap laugh. There are plenty of gag comics on the Internet already. I know I could loose many readers by starting over from scratch, but those are the ones I want to loose. This is an experiment in experimentation, not a quest for a predictable demographic. So that's why /s is changing. That, and... you guys don't donate worth shit and you're costing hundreds of dollars a month in bandwidth. So maybe this will scare enough people away that my host doesn't kick me out on the street. But mainly it's all the artsy stuff. (Although, much thanks goes out to the few who have contributed. You give me hope for the Interwebs.)

/s is just a side project. It's for fun. To everyone who has asked nicely and/or threatened my safety if I don't continue making comics, I say this - let's work together. Give me ideas on how I can do this for a living. I'm not much of a business dude. I'd rather just make comics. Until my comics can support themselves, I'll be on the "Abstruse Goose schedule", meaning I'll release new comics whenever I damn well feel like it.

For those who were just getting to know Dude and Tech Dude, fear not. I have a feeling they will be coming back in a big way.

Update: I felt bad about that crack I made about donations. Of course they're always welcome, and they do help, but I understand that donations are awkward and inconvenient. Obviously, I would take the site down if I didn't want to share my comics. The real hero here is my host, in particular, Matt. Without his help, this site wouldn't be here. It would really make me happy if you took the time to write him a thank you email, letting him know his efforts do not go unnoticed. Or even better, try out his hosting service. HostTDS is the best. =] Let him know Steve sent you - this is actually a practical way you can support the comics.