How to Recognize a Vicious Circle (rerun)

I have an important announcement:

As of the end of July I will stop producing new Basic Instructions comics. This may seem sudden, but it’s been several months in coming. A while ago I worked all day slowly wringing a comic out of my brain (some days are harder than others). When I was almost done I realized that I had rewritten, almost word for word, three whole panels of a comic I’d made years before. That, my friends, is not a good sign.

I always said that if I got to a point where I was repeating myself I would stop. I’m sorry, but I’m convinced that we’ve reached that point.

After I’ve run my last new comic I plan to start rerunning every Basic Instructions, in the order they were created, at a rate of three a week. At that pace, it will take over six years to reach the end. If you read the comic on GoComics you’ll get the reruns, but here at basicinstructions.net I will also be commenting on the reruns as I post them. Some of the comments will be like a full blog post. Others may be a single sentence, but there will be something. That’s also where I will tell you about what’s going on with my fiction writing career, which is going to become my primary focus.

I’ll say this again closer to the actual end, but I am deeply grateful to everyone who reads Basic Instructions. This comic has kept me sane through more than one job I didn’t enjoy, and gave me the extra income and promotional platform I needed to transition into a career that I love. I just don’t want to waste your time, and I certainly don’t want you to waste your money supporting me while I waste your time.