I'm baaaaaaaack!

The last few years have been a crazy trip. When I first started this site back in March 1996, the Internet was only just starting to become mainstream. The term "dot com" hadn't yet been coined. There were no business plans, no Amazon, no eBay, and no damn sock puppets. There were just a bunch of geeks with crazy ideas about publishing in this new medium.

It was a really good time.

I remember going to the Alternative Press Expo back in 1998 and talking to Scott McCloud about how the Web would allow comic creators to bypass print publishers and reach their audiences directly. He spoke passionately about how comic sites could be supported through micropayment systems, and how micropayment technology might finally be realized because people would want to buy mp3 songs.

Hehehehehehehehehe.

So the dream of being able to do draw a comic for a living never materialized. Still, the effort that I put into this work led me to a lot of wonderful experiences: from Cyborganic, to Burning Man, to bianca, and to my family. And while those experiences have kept me from devoting time to this project, I wouldn't have traded them for anything.

But now the circle comes around again, and I return to work. This time it's without the dream. It's just because I have a story I want to tell.

In order to do this, I'll need to approach the project a bit differently. The original work I did was just too time-consuming. Working in my spare time, it took me at least a month to finish a page, and this was just too slow a pace to make the storytelling satisfying to myself or to the reader. So two things have changed. The first is that I am streamlining the art. It will be less detailed and I will be able to produce material at a quicker pace. However, I hope to keep the mood of the art intact.

The second change is that I'm leaving the initial story unfinished and starting fresh. Some people (including my fiancee) will be frustrated to hear that, but it makes sense for a couple of reasons. First, I've had a lot of time over the last few years to think about what I want to do with the characters, and I want to go in a different direction than where I had been headed. Second, it makes no sense to change the artistic style in the middle of the initial story. Perhaps someday I'll go back and finish it. But for now just think of it as simply a preview.

With all that being said, it's good to be back! New material is coming soon. I promise!

All words, pictures, characters, tiles and just about everything else was created by and is copyright Stephen Rice and Electric Comics, 1996

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