I’m just grateful I’ve never gotten a rejection letter this disheartening.

I’m really torn about this, but I’ve decided to end Hex Libris here. At least for a while. Though I’ve gotten lots of great response, the audience for this thing is not bigger now than when I started at the beginning of 1998. And though I’ve done it for the learning experience as much as anything, I did some disheartening math the other day: the time it takes me to create one of these is longer than the combined audience time spent reading each strip. By a fair amount. I’ve neglected work on portfolio pieces, and will be focussing on doing some of those now (just finished one I’m very proud of, but will wait until I’ve reviewed it one more time before unveiling it. Also, I’ve had some talks with different people about graphic novel work, so I’m working on presentations for that, as well.

It’s not definitely over forever. I love these characters. I honestly am heartbroken about stopping, but I think this format may just not be right for Hex Libris. Webcomics have a harder time gathering an audience for a story format. If I start a new Webcomic, it will be in the short-form newspaper style, where they may be short storylines but not some overarching and complicated backstory.

If you want to know if and when things start up again, please use the Get Hex Libris by Email function under the strip. You’ll receive any new work I post here in your email. And nothing else, I promise.

For some reason, I feel like I’m letting people down. But after some real agonizing and discussions with Maggie, this seems like the right time to do this. Thanks to all of you who have been so supportive.

I’m guessing it’s too late to jump on the current mash-up trend. And I looked, but I’m not convinced that at least one of my ideas here isn’t in the works. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, The Adventures of of Huck Finn and Zombie Jim, and Mr. D’Arcy, Vampyre are just some of the options out there right now. Zombies predominate, but anything in the public domain seems to be fair game. Maybe I should write one of these. My ideas! Mine!

Ah, Kirby shows some backbone. And we’re back at the Library, our little prison sojourn at an end. As a reward for finishing this one up, I’m off to play some video games too.

I think that’s enough Seussian rhyming for now. I was going to write this piece in that rhyme scheme, but I’ll spare you.

Next time, it’s back to the Library for the ultimate showdown.