The End...?

The first Evil Inc comic appeared on May 30, 2005. The strip has been posting 5-6 days a week, continuously since that date, making it officially 10 years old.

During that time, we've seen alternate dimensions, other worlds, and domestic conflicts. Countless characters have been introduced, past secret revealed, and personalities deepened. There have been relationships that have ended (Lightning Lady and Keagan), relationships that have started (Desdemona and Iron Dragon), relationships that have deepened (Cap and Miss Match) and relationships that have been revealed (Commander and Ms Amazing). We've seen new faces added as Oliver joined Oscar as his little brother / other-dimensional doppleganger. And we've seen old faces, like Evil Atom's, weather fortune, ruin and redemption.

And hopefully, we've shared a few laughs along the way.

But 10 years is a *lot* of storytelling — a lot of continuity. And I have to admit... I'm at a crossroads. This is a perfectly good time to wrap everything up, and move on to another project. (Don't panic... keep reading...)

While I was at Special Edition: NYC a few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to spend some time with Phil Foglio. This was especially therapeutic for me on a number of levels. The popularity of an X-rated version of Evil Inc caught me mostly by surprise, and I wanted to get the thoughts of someone who had "been there." (If you've never read Foglio's XXXenoverse graphic novels, I highly recommend them. They're the gold standard for adult comics.)

I shared with him that I was feeling a little lost where the Evil Inc comic strip was concerned. And the NSFW comics were adding a considerable wrinkle to that. Should Evil Inc, the strip, end to make way for Evil Inc After Dark? Would ending the strip harm EiAD? Do I really want to end Evil Inc — or do I want to evolve it?

"That's the problem," said Phil, "most of you webcomics guys are still riding your first horse."

That's true. Although "Greystone" was technically my "first horse," it evolved almost seamlessly into "Evil Inc."

The discussion then turned towards examples of creators who had failed to evolve over time — and the effect that this failure to embrace change had on their art, their comics and their careers.

That locked it. Staying the course just wasn't going to sit well with me. So, I've decided to evolve.

But — to be completely honest — I've yet to decide what shape that evolution will take.

Ending Evil Inc

No. Not yet, at least. I like this universe too much. Evil Inc will continue. The question is: "How"?

Rebooting Evil Inc

I'm really leaning towards this option. There are characters I want to re-imagine and relationships I'd like to re-address. Evil Inc 2.0 would likely see Captain Heroic and Miss Match unmarried. In fact, all of the current relationship would likely dissolve. Characters like Lightning Lady, who have aged throughout the comic, would probably get younger. Oscar and Oliver — if they appear at all — would be someone else's kids. Evil Atom is a good character, but the recent storyline with Dr. Whoosh and Death Fog convinced me that he'd be better as a combination of himself and Dr. Whoosh — who seems to effortlessly glide between wisdom and dementia from sentence to sentence. I love Memo, but the storytelling possibilities are quite limited with him.

Scott Kurtz rebooted PvP — and made it a much better strip as a result. The same is true of Kris Straub's Starslip.

I dunno. It might be time to do this with Evil Inc.

Wait... "might be"...?

Yeah. I still don't have a clear image of it in my mind. And as a result, I've had several weeks of the most severe Writer's Block I've experienced in 15 years of daily comics.

So, I've started a storyline this week that's going to face me to address the issue.

And although I have an idea of how it's going to end, it is very much written in sand.

The end of the comic strip?

Beyond rebooting the universe from a storytelling aspect, I've been spending a lot of time re-thinking how I approach Evil Inc as a comic.

There were two reasons Evil Inc was presented to you as a comic strip. First, I come from a generation that equated success in comics with being published in a newspaper. And, over the past 15 years, I've had that to varying degrees. At its peak, Evil Inc was appearing in four or five newspapers in America. It has been at the top of the comics page of the Philadelphia Daily News since 2001.

But there's so little money in newspaper syndication (or, in my case, self-syndication), that I don't even bother with outreach anymore. The little bit of income that self-syndication was generating was easily replaced by Patreon within the first couple months.

The second reason Evil Inc as a comic strip was that, in 2000, when the comic launched, that was the best way to generate a dedicated readership on the Web. Daily updates brought readers back at such a frequency that, sooner or later, you'd bet added to someone's bookmarks (or, later, RSS reader)... and that made you a daily stop for that reader for a long time to come.

But people don't consume Web entertainment the way they did in 2000. Since Google killed off its RSS reader, that has become a smaller factor in overall readership. Heck, I'm beginning to doubt whether younger Web-users even use bookmarks anymore.

So... why am I doing a daily comic strip?

What else would you do?

When I look at Scott's Table Titans, I get really excited about cribbing that approach for myself. It updates twice a week with an expanded chunk of storytelling — usually two rows of panels. What you might not know is that Scott plans these updates as half-pages of the Table Titans graphic novels. When it's time to prep the book, he assembles the half-pages into full pages and he's off to the printer. He even sits down at the beginning of each new chapter to plot out the breakdowns of those half-pages... so the final pages look great and work as an overall book.

It would mean a more story-focused Evil Inc, and less set-up/punchline/set-up/punchline. And, after 15 years of daily punchlines, I have to admit, I'd like to write humor that went a little deeper than the current format allows.

What do you think?

But, like I said, none of this is final, and I'm still wrapping my head around it. What I want to know *now* is... what do you think? I know readers hate change. I know the first reaction is to keep it the way it is. But, I've got to tell you, I've seen less and less book sales at comic conventions. If that's an indication that I need to re-think my approach, I want to stay ahead of the curve.

Evil Inc will continue. But it may be a rebooted Evil Inc. And it may become less of a strip and more of a graphic novel. Hell, if Patreon proves sustainable, I have to honestly consider putting the majority of my time behind EiAD and let the webcomic take a secondary role. I honestly don't know yet. And that not-knowing is probably one of the most exciting prospects I've had in the last five years.

I've rambled enough. What are your thoughts?