It all began 10 years ago today. Sitting in front of me were the pencils of a poorly written and even poorly-er drawn comic, but I knew it was the funniest thing put to paper in years! With the same scanner I have today, my pencils became a .jpg. What font would I use for lettering? Well there was only one that had "Comic" in the name, so "Comic Sans" was surely the best bet. But the pencils just didn't look right, I'd better do some digital inks! I was so ahead of my time. So I took my mouse, yes, that's right, and traced my comic in photoshop with a fixed width brush. What a masterpiece! It was that day, when I finally uploaded it to the free web storage that came with being a student at University of Delaware, that I became a comic artist. Here is that first comic, for your perusal and awe:

Then, a few weeks later, I did another. And for some reason, I kept coming back to these characters, each time wanting to write more. It wasn't until the launch of the The Cat Who Always Dies in 2011 that I felt 30 Extra Lives found its footing. I had a separate outlet in CWAD for non-sequiters and I could focus on my character based story in 30EL. But then came the burnouts. I would start to build momentum with regular updates on both sites, plus working on a game, plus a new video series. Within a few months, I would get tired of everything and drop it all. Nothing frustrates me more than looking back on that archive and seeing all those gaps.

Every gap I had lead to another rebuilding period where I promised to get comics out on time, and then I would stop again. I partially had yet to find my voice, and partially gave up on myself. So this past March, I made a quiet promise to myself to keep my workload simple and hit every update for a year. I'm really close to that goal as I haven't missed a date since March 9, 2015. Every Monday and Friday, another 30 Extra Lives went up. And in the middle there, every Wednesday a new Cat Who Always Dies went up. And peppered in some Tuesdays and Thursdays along the way saw random columns (like 30 Extra Leg Drops), reviews (like Paper Grils #1), and videos (like 30 Extra Looks and a TMNT Trailer analysis) on my YouTube channel. This past year has been my most rewarding year creatively since conceiving of Mark and Henry all those years ago.

The current storyline, "Cleo's Last Stop" is kind of the culmination of the kind of comic I've wanted to write. And today's comic is the beginning of the climax. I'm really proud of what I've been able to accomplish and encourage you to jump back to April to read the story from the beginning. I've been working hard to make every entry new reader friendly so it's not necessary, but this has been building for a while.

I want to thank everyone that's stopped in along the way to buy a book, like, share, retweet, subscribe, point, laugh, and even shake your head at me. I really do this comic for me, but having other people enjoy it means the world to me. I plan on keeping my end of the bargain to continue to bring you the adventures of Mark, Henry, Sammi, Holly, Frank, Cleo, Wolfy, and Dracs for years to come. I hope you enjoy the ending of this almost year long story and will stay aboard to see what's next for this crazy crew. I'm excited to find out as well, because as cliche as it is, they're the ones writing the story, I'm just drawing it.