Simon Says 005: A Retrospect.

This was the most popular Simon Says, or that was how it seemed to me at the time. This was called "Nerf or Nothing" with the nothing being the electric bill. I think this one did so well because everyone has seen those Nerf Guns in the toy aisle and no matter how old you are wanted to buy them and then just lay a barrage of darts into someone. It's almost a primal base need. You can shoot someone, without hurting them. It's like murder you can't go to jail for. How can that NOT be fun?

Also I think the idea that someone would neglect their bills in order to buy this is also something that people can identify with. At one time or another all of us have put off a bill to buy or do something we really didn't need to. When these two things, that everyone has done, combine into one funny situation it seems to be a kind of magic.

Posted on Dec. 20 2009, this was the last Simon Says ever. Why did it end? I wish I could tell you, but the truth is I don't even know. I was never given a reason. They just stopped showing up on Facebook and by the Summer of 2010 I had given up seeing anymore comics and stopped sending what I wrote along. Was it because I was a hard to work with egomaniacal prick? Maybe. I didn't think I was, but I wasn't told one way or the other. It is possible though.

One thing I do know is that if I had even half the talent Dwayne did, I just would have kept going myself. So instead of lamenting the end of something that died before it ever got started, I'd instead be looking forward to the one year anniversary of the strip.Thing is I don't have that talent, and I know I don't. I know the limitations of myself.

Despite all the other projects I've worked on as a writer, I am still the most proud of Simon Says. It is my favorite. My baby. I never once had writer's block on it, or got sick of it and wanted to stop doing it.Writing it was like second nature to me, and I think that's why I still do it to this day. Sure some times I'd get depressed and think what was the point. Maybe even consider deleting everything I put down on paper and act like it never existed. But in the end I always ended up right back here. This was like home to me.

-Matt