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I’m delighted to announce that I’ve received an offer from my publisher to draw two more Mal and Chad graphic novels! We’re hoping to develop Mal and Chad as a children’s comic book series. In light of this I’ve decided that the comic strip will come to an end in about a month.
Many of you have just discovered Mal and Chad—in fact I would say that most of you have just discovered Mal and Chad—so this news will probably feel abrupt.
In the last couple of weeks, Mal and Chad blew past their 200th strip. This website began only five months ago, and there are already over a thousand people who regularly stop by to read the comic. Especially recently, with the Neatorama partnership and the Max vs Max guest strip, traffic to this site has been trending upward, and I feel like the swell of people has just begun.
I’m proud of the Mal and Chad comic strip. It is my best published work to date, so it’s not lightly that I’ve decided to end it. If you’re saddened by this announcement, let me break down my reasoning to make things clearer and hopefully easier to handle. I believe that this will, in the end, be a happy, healthy shift in my career and focus.
I debated continuing to update the strip indefinitely on a once or twice a week schedule, but I decided I’d rather end strong with all engines roaring than try to dilute the reader experience and squeeze out more time on the clock. The consequences of ending sooner than later are that I’m giving up any new traffic to the site an updating feature would bring in. But that is the only advantage, and I’d rather my motivation for drawing the feature be more than site traffic.
From the beginning I’ve always drawn the Mal and Chad strip with a strict continuity and coherency. The fourth wall is never broken; if an acme anvil fell on Chad’s paw, he would not show up in the next strip without injury. These are real, living, breathing characters.
I’ve been so obsessive about continuity that all the Mal and Chad strips unfold in a real-time, chronological sequence. You might not notice it reading the strip from day to day, but if you read through the archives you’ll see that the strips go in cycles. Mal and Chad wake up. They eat breakfast. Mal goes to school and Chad stays home. Mal comes home and plays with Chad all afternoon. Then they eat dinner. Then they take a bath. Then they go to bed.
Then they wake up again.
Each cycle is one day of Mal and Chad time, and if you count up the all the cycles that have happened to date, you’ll find that about two weeks have elapsed in Mal and Chad’s world. And the current cycle is a Friday, the day of the fall play.
I don’t expect any of you to have studied the strip to the detail where you might notice this ridiculous continuity. All this is to say that the comic strip is not a random, open ended feature; it is my attempt to carefully document every major event that happened in just two weeks of Mal and Chad’s lives. Each strip can be read by itself, but I have always had an eye for the collection of strips as a whole. This aspect of the comic has been another factor in informing my decision to tie things up. Ending the strip on this cycle will have a nice symmetry, and since most of the strips have been leading up to the fall play, it will be a nice climax to conclude the story.
Well, overly complicated explanations aside, I just wanted to say that you’ve been a wonderful audience and I love you all. Thanks to those people who faithfully comment on nearly every strip I post. Thanks to that one person who sends me emails every time I spell something wrong. Thanks to all the people who are reading this right now on you RSS reader, or Ipad or smart phone. Thank you to the silent majority who flickers in and out of the site to read the strip, and yet always comes back for more.
If you’ve enjoyed the strip at all, there are a couple things you can do for me that will help out a lot, and they’re all located on the sidebar to your right.
First, you can get connected by following my twitter feed or liking the Mal and Chad facebook page. These will become really useful to get updates about what I’m up to with Mal and Chad, especially as the strip comes to an end and the website updates less frequently. If you’re already on the facebook page, please send out an invite to everyone you think will enjoy Mal and Chad. I haven’t spent a penny on advertising for this website yet. Hearsay is the only way people find out about the strip. So let’s makes some noise!
Secondly, preorder the first Mal and Chad graphic novel. Think of the 10 dollars the book costs as a donation for the work I’ve put in to update this strip these last five months… except with this donation comes 200 pages of never-before-seen Mal and Chad fun! How awesome is that?
I got to tell you guys, I am super excited to get started on the next Mal and Chad graphic novels. The real joy of this is that although the comic strip might be ending, Mal and Chad are going to go on to much bigger adventures than can be handled in four panels. Prepare to see Mal and Chad running over double page spreads and through panels of all shapes and sizes. I’m really excited to grow in my storytelling abilities, and these books will give me the perfect grounds to practice and hone my craft.
Here are some things to be looking forward to: We still have a month of Mal and Chad strips left. And they’re going to be awesome. Also, I’m currently setting up a Ustream account so that you can watch me draw Mal and Chad live. On top of that, I still plan to run the Mal and Chad caption contest for a while (there’s actually a new one up right now!), so there will be fresh Mal and Chad images online each week. And finally, I’m currently talking with my editor about maybe posting online a section of the Mal and Chad graphic novel in the future for you guys to read. How about that?!
Anyway.
Thanks for everything. Leave a comment and let me know what you’re thinking.
Oh boy! It’s here! You get to see the final Mal and Chad cover design.
It all started with these pencils.
Then I inked the pencils and that became this line work:
Then I colored the line work:
And then my fantastic layout guy placed the logo and the byline.
Tada!
And so, now the title of the book is officially out:
MAL AND CHAD: The Biggest, Bestest Time Ever!
What do you guys think?
We had another t-shirt contest over at Neatorama this last week. Here’s what I drew:
The winning caption was: “It’s just a note that says, ‘Duh nunt, duh nunt, du nunt, duh nunt.’” by user Schm3cky.
Can you think of a better caption? Submit to the next Mal and Chad fill in the Bubble Frenzy!
…is actually my bedroom. But I thought you guys might want to see where I work anyway.
Up in the left corner of this photo you’ll see the green sheets on my bunkbed. I sleep with my head next to a Ponyo poster.
Here’s my drafting table with my cintiq and computer. I actually use a PC to do all my art (please don’t hate me 
)
I use the timer in an attempt to induce myself to work using the pomodoro technique. The pieces of paper are where I doodle sketches to get ideas for strips down. I think in these particular sketches I was drawing expressions for the “idea face” strip.
Here’s my cork board covered in tests and sketches I’ve made for possible other graphic novels.
Here’s a Charlie Brown strip on my cork board that sums up a great deal of who I am.
Next to the cork board are my character turn arounds, which helped me keep things proportionate when I was working on the Mal and Chad graphic novel.
Next to my desk you’ll find a bunch of manga and old shonen jumps in my bookshelf. Oh yeah, there’s some Flight comics too.
Here’s a wall-e type robot I made out of clay in ceramics class in college.
Here’s a charcoal drawing I did. I like it because somehow it’s easy to stare at for a long time. Most of my work isn’t like that.
Well, thanks for checking out my room.
If you missed it, there’s another Mal and Chad Fill in the Bubble Frenzy! t-shirt contest over at neatorama.
Laters…
This is the week before cartoonist Wes Molebash gets married– so to give the guy a break as great and wonderful life changes rush upon him, cartoonists like myself have created guest strips to run this week on his webcomic site, Max vs Max.
My contribution appears today. Wes had some really kind things to say about my work and about Mal and Chad, which was really cool because I respect the guy quite a bit. What I’m really enjoying about his comic, Max vs Max, is just the genuine honesty about relationships with people and with God. Christianity is not very popular in today’s mainstream, and so cartoonists who want to express their Christian identity often err to the extremes. Because of the social pressure, Christian cartoonists sometimes come out insensitively and bluntly shouting their beliefs into the storm in hopes they might be heard amidst the mainstream clamor. Conversely, some Christian cartoonists find the social pressure too much to bare, and in hopes of avoiding criticism, they all but extinguish any sign of their heartfelt beliefs from their work. On the one extreme the message is blasted loudly at the expense of the enjoyability of the work, and on the other extreme the message is stifled at the expense of the integrity of the work. I feel like Wes has created a strip that contains both honesty about his Christian beliefs and humorous content that is worth reading, which is a rare thing. You should go check it out.
If you’re here from Max vs Max, I want to welcome you! I’m really excited to get to know you! Say hi in the comments, and be sure to read the archives, because there is a ton of strips…
