Shirts and Wheels

by on April 15, 2016 at 7:00 am
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Well, here we are, exactly seven years after the launch of the original Utopian webcomic and four years after the launch of its quasi-sequel/spinoff, The Utopian Foundation, re-launching Foundation because, well, of numerous factors.

I created and posted 133 Utopian Foundation strips between April 15, 2012 and August 21, 2013, at first semi-weekly and then weekly, and then just … stopped. Not because the story ended. But because life got really complicated. I’ll save you the long story here, but let’s just say I don’t recommend trying to launch a business without a really good plan and a lot of financing. Nor doing so without paying yourself for two years.

So, even though the strip stopped updating, for the first year, I still updated the blog on the website, updated the “Upcoming Appearances” sidebar, and generally continued planning for the strip’s return from unintended hiatus. I plotted out the entire rest of the comic, scripted at least the next 10 strips, and expected the return to happen sooner than later. But it didn’t. And then I stopped paying attention to the website altogether.

One day, after getting my personal/business life in relative order a few years later, I finally returned my focus to the Utopian Foundation, and found the website broken. The plug-in I’d been using for posting and managing the webcomic outdated and obsolete. The 16 months of strips gone from the website. It was both somewhat defeating and a wakeup call.

So here we are, with the re-posting of the first Utopian Foundation strip, which will be followed by the rest of the original 133 strips, posted daily Monday through Friday until we get to the new, never-before-seen strips from 134-on, which should be in about six months. If you’re new to The Utopian Foundation, then this is all new to you and a perfect jumping-on point. And if you followed it before, well, it’s also a perfect time to get refreshed and caught up (because, honestly, do you remember what happened three years ago??).

And, as always, you can purchase the entire first volume of The Utopian in a sexy trade paperback from Pop! Goes the Icon, or if you happen to catch me at convention or book festival near you.