Simon Says 004: A Retrospect.

Before I start today I wanted everyone to know that New England Web Comic Weekend is...well this weekend. Might be too late to get tickets if you're in the area, but since you are reading this you may like web comics so it's worth a look see. If things had gone according to plan myself and Dwayne might have been attending this. Although that's a big might. It could have happened though, guess we will never know. Anyway here is the link to their official website:

New England Webcomic Weekend.

With that out of the way we move on to today's strip called "Lost in Translation." I consider this strip to be the first real success. A lot of people liked this one, and a lot people that had just sat back and said nothing before were now telling me how much they liked this one. I was pretty stoked after the positive feedback and went on to write a huge amount of comics in a short amount time after being propped up by the new found confidence that brought. It was after this comic that I really started to think about trying to save back the money to buy a domain and dedicated space for the comic to reside.

That of course would have been the first step into making any money off the comic. With that we could have sold ad space, and maybe had a few t-shirts or bumper stickers printed up and sold those through an E-store or something. And then of course the trade paper backs we could have had printed up and sold when we got enough comics to fill one. After covering the monthly costs and then splitting the profit down the middle with Dwayne 50/50, I figured making some money off this was better then making no money off this. And in studying other web comics like Penny Arcade or Shortpacked! I found one could actually make a living off doing this if they could get enough readers. I was very excited at this point. I thought a whole new world was about to open up and make life better for me and Dwayne.

I was wrong.

The comic its self is pretty straight forward. Pretty much anyone that's been in a relationship has had this happen to them before. Hell doesn't even have to be sexual relationship, but could be a friendship. This is all too common and I just put to paper what is happening almost everyday to couples someplace in the world. As every man in the world knows the words "I'm Fine." is not something you want to hear, and of course those guys want to know how that will effect their ability to get the booty. All of this was straight forward, but also honest and I think that's why people liked it so much.

This comic also shows what would be the theme of Simon Says had it continued. Geeks in Love. And this is a theme that I still use today on the rare occasion when I think of something funny and write it down in comic form. A normal, or as normal as could get with these two, relationship, but full of the odd pop culture references that only another geek would really understand.

Next we are looking at Simon Says: 005 "It's Nerf or Nothing." and sadly this was the last Simon Says ever made.

-Matt