New year, new QA

Since you’ve been sober (congrats!), are your characters are drunk less often? Do they follow you in not self-medication using alcohol?

Nah, they’re still pretty much drinking like they used to. Faye seems to be getting hammered less often.

What is your personal opinion of drum circles and/or hippies?

they’re all right

Are you going to stay with the new comic formatting? I don’t think I like it as much, but maybe that’s just because I don’t like change.

Yes, I think it is way better and makes drawing comics more fun.

Since time in the comic progresses so slowly relative to the real world, it sounds like your life has moved quite a bit further along than the characters’ lives have over the last few years—marriage, house, yadda yadda. Has it gotten more difficult to write for them as your own experience has diverged farther away from theirs?

My perspective has certainly changed- a lot of the problems they deal with seem a little silly to a guy in his early 30s. But that makes it easier to write, if anything- I can see past things they can’t.

Jeph- I have depression as well, and though I see a therapist, take medication, and am doing quite well, I still have days that I feel depressed for no reason (I call them “sad days.”) Do you ever have days like these? And if so, how do you work through them?

Yup, I think that’s pretty normal. You just gotta power through and do your best, and sometimes you just have a crappy day and have to take a mulligan.

Is Hannelore asexual?

Not to the best of my knowledge.

Back in the early days of QC was there anything special you did in the way of promotion to bring readers in? Or was it just a word of mouth thing? I know my main priority should be producing quality content, which it is, but do you have any general advice on how to get your name out there?

Most of it was just doing quality work, but I also posted on message boards for other comics I liked, just to get involved in the community. I think a lot of folks first found my comic that way. I never spammed links to it or anything, just had it in my signature. It seemed to work well.