diananock:I posted the first Girlbot online when I was 25,...

diananock:

I posted the first Girlbot online when I was 25, almost five years ago, a few days after my own birthday. Now I’m turning 30, and Girlbot would be old enough to attend kindergarten this year. This comic has come a long way since I first conceived of it, from a kinda crudely drawn gag comic to a laborious, complicated story. It was planned as a simple comic I could crank out weird little gags to, but it started gathering together a plot pretty much immediately. I don’t think I have it in me to do a pure gag comic, honestly.

I’m extremely proud of my work on this comic but also frustrated. I mean, it’s been FIVE YEARS, and the story is maybe half told at this point. I’d like to finish it before I’m actually middle-aged. And of course, I’m extremely thankful for every reader who has found this odd little project along the way and stuck with me. I promise I’m going some interesting places. Later this year, I’ll up my update schedule once again and do more to engage my readers.

I’ve also come a long way personally in the five years since I posted the first comic. At 25, I was living in a big house with a bunch of terrible roommates because I literally couldn’t afford anything better. I was on food stamps and scrabbling for any little freelance opportunity that might float my way. (This is the main part of being a freelancer, which is why I’m a terrible freelancer.) I hungered for an audience of my own, and so I took a throwaway character I’d made up for an assignment in a college class and breathed life into her.

Girlbot was meant to be an easy way to get some eyeballs on my work while I made plans for my Real Masterpiece Graphic Novel, but the silliness of that attitude has become obvious to me in the last five years. I can’t put this much thought and care and hope into a story and a set of characters without it becoming a precious baby. Anything I put my heart into is going to be meaningful and important. There is no throwaway story. Girlbot has been essential to my growth these past five years.

She’s the only daughter I will ever have.

drawing a comic just for fun…

someday we’ll prove it’s possible!