So. It has come to this.

We have one hundred and twenty comics under our belt. That's more than a year of publishing comics twice a week, without fail. They weren't always the comic we wanted to publish, but since about September of last year our readers could come to this site every Tuesday and Friday and expect to see something. As corny as it's going to sound, I'm immensely proud of what we've accomplished. We're starting to get some true fans, and some genuine notoriety, and that's amazing to watch. 

But we've come to the point where we need to take a break. We had two conferences scheduled for September/October, and we realized that we were just too stressed to attend. We saw that we wouldn't have the energy that the cons deserved. This led us to realize that the combination of working full-time plus publishing the comic twice a week was a bit much for us to handle at the moment.

So we're taking some time off. I very much hope we'll be back, and you can be rest assured we'll make a splash when we do, but we need some time to work on other projects, recharge the batteries, and refill the tanks of inspiration that keep us going at this. 

Producing content on the internet is rough. The choices seem to be languishing in obscurity or drowning in criticism, or, if you're very, very lucky, having a large base of dedicated fans who can drown out the noise of the nay-sayers.

Today's comic marks the end of Episode 4. I don't think The Adventures of Captain Quail as a whole is ending, but the format is probably going to change. I think it's interesting that Nimona, a truly excellent work with hundreds (if not thousands) of fans is ending at the same time as we're hitting the pause button. I don't suggest these two things are related, just that it's an interesting coincidence. Nimona was one of the first comics we reviewed in our Webcomic O' the Week, and even though she didn't need our press, I'm still very happy we featured her. 

To our readers and fans, I'll say this: We're going to be making some decisions over the next week(s) about what we do with this comic next. This is the first time we've done any of this, so we'll happily take suggestions. I'd love for a discussion to happen in the comments, and it would be great to hear from some of our readers who have been lurkers up until now. What do you like about Captain Quail? How did you discover it? What could we be doing better? What should we do more of? 

Thank you for sticking with us thus far, and we hope to see you in the next round.

Philip

P.S. If you don't feel comfortable commenting, you could always reach out on twitter. Or heck, email me ([email protected]).