Five years and 100 episodes later marks the end of FRIK, and today is the last episode. It’s hard to believe I’ve been working on this for five years. It feels like yesterday when the idea solidified in my noggin and just a few months later it was online. I can’t say it was a whirlwind, but more like a steady race to the finish line throughout its run.
I am proud of this comic for multiple reasons. For one, FRIK is the first comic I created since I was a teenager. It’s also something that I could truly call my own. Anything I made as a teen was a crappy knockoff of some 1980s cartoon. FRIK is also better than anything I could come up with artistically back then.
Secondly, throughout these five years I never once missed a self imposed deadline nor did any episode skip a week when it was suppose to go live. To me, that is a giant accomplishment given everything else going on in my life at the time of creating it.
Third, I was able to stretch myself as a writer and pull things off that most people would never even notice. In one episode I managed to pay homage to the Wizard Of Oz, another recreated Abbott and Costello’s famous “Whose on first?” sketch, and lastly, I managed to end the comic’s run by paying homage to the last episode of the 1980s Bob Newhart show where he’s an innkeeper and gets knocked out by a stray golfball, waking up to find that his life as an innkeeper was all a dream and he was still the psychologist from his previous TV show years earlier. (Best show ending EVER in my opinion.)
So, why am I stopping now? Well frankly, the comic has run its course. I actually was ready to end it after Volume 3 and wrote the ending so it could be continued or left alone for good. After FRIK Volume 3, I switched gears and started working on my other comic, HOLES IN IT. I needed this shift because I was burnt out on FRIK.
Why did I come back to FRIK if I was burnt out? Well, without getting too preachy; God. At the end of 2009 I was not thinking about comics at all. Remember, the last comic I made was when I was a teenager, so comic creation was the FURTHEST thing from my mind. WHAM! The entire premise of FRIK formed in my head at once. Plot, characters, setting, humor, all of it. POOF, it was there. That may freak some of you out, but that’s how it happened, and I’m thankful for it because it helped me become a better artist.
Fast forward to after HOLES IN IT was completed in June 2014. Once again I was at a crossroads and not sure what I was suppose to do next. I often have a problem knowing where God is leading me, and I need a metaphorical sledge hammer to hit me over the head to get my attention. I prayed late at night and asked specifically what my next move was suppose to be.
Was it another HOLES IN IT volume or was it volume four of FRIK or was it something else entirely? The next morning my son sat at the table waiting for his breakfast. The first thing out of his mouth was, and I am not exaggerating, “Dad, now that Holes In It is over, how about you create volume four of Frik next?” We hadn’t talked about FRIK for a long time because I was working on HOLES, so this was very much coming out of left field from him.
I paused pouring his cereal for one second. I wasn’t expecting to hear an answer that soon, and through my son no less! My son had no idea what I had prayed the night before as he was asleep. You can’t get any more of a direct answer than that. Soon after I was creating volume four, but I fully admit I was reluctant in doing so. I really was ready to move on and was discouraged that I couldn’t get more people to read it. (By the way, to the 15-20 people who read this comic consistently for the past 5 years and all those who bought it at comic cons, THANK YOU!)
So here we are at my next crossroads. What am I going to do now? I have no freaking clue. I have a couple of comic ideas floating around in my head, but they aren’t baked yet, at least not to the level of how FRIK was handed to me back in 2009.
Please join my newsletter because when I announce my “next big thing”, it will be in there as well as this website. I will also be working on a four volume anthology of FRIK as well as ebook versions. Thanks for reading all of this! While you’re at it, support an indie artist and buy some of my artwork, please? Doing so tells me that I’m not making this stuff for a void and people actually do like it. Thanks!