For a number of years I’ve had the idea to do a comic about my experience in retail but I was never confident in my art or driven enough to make a real go at it. After quitting my part-time job I decided I would fill all this new found free time with a comic. So after drawing for about a month straight I got frustrated and stopped. A few months past, and I was able to work through the artistic frustration that stopped me. At this point I decided the hell with it I was going to do this. I bought a website www.retailcomicstrip.com not knowing what I was going to name my comic strip.
Now I had a website but no strip. I had the grand idea all thought up but no cast, no direction. So with money already laid out to pay for the website and the hosting I went to town coming up with a cast and a number of storylines. At that time I settled on Surviving Retail as the name of the strip and bought www.survivingretail.com. This was about mid October. Due to my day job (or night job as it is) I knew that there was going to be no way I could create a new strip every day, let alone come up with ideas for a new strip every day. I settled on three days a week, enough to develop storylines and enough so that if I was going to keep up on it I’d have to do some sort of work on it every day.
I knew that especially with the holidays approaching there’d be some weeks that I’d not have the time to focus on my strip so I made the decision to wait until after the holiday’s to post my first strip. In the mean time I was adamant on building up a backlog of strips for those busy weeks. After spending 2+ months working on my strip and equal time testing out my website, purposefully crashing it and bringing it back from the dead, I was ready to go.
On December 29th 2008, I posted my first strip. The art wasn’t perfect, the comedic punch line wasn’t perfect but I had achieved what I had set out to do, partially. Now the goal is to continue what I started. To what end? I dunno, til I run out of stories, til I get so many new ideas that I decide to start doing it 5 days a week, til I get bored and quit (hopefully not). I’ve made a good start and have noticed a significant progression already.
I have plans in the future, perhaps near future to start to monetize the site. I don’t expect much to begin with, but I think if I stick with it over time I’ll have a significant product. I have plans to offer books, tee shirts and stickers down the line for those superfans who can’t get enough. But the comic strip itself will always be the focus of the website and will always be offered free. I hope you enjoy it. I promise to keep making it better if you promise to keep on reading.
