Well, someone on a message board said something about my End Times franchise's popularity online that really awoke in me to the reality of End Time's online popularity. The person said something to the effect of "J.M. Matthews is such a slacker. He's so lazy and his entire career is made of hiatuses, but, we all know that if he ever tweets or updates his webcomic with new material, it will shoot to the top of the Webcomics List top 500-600, Twitter Top 5, and Comic Fury Number 5-1 on their Bestseller and Highest Ratings Lists and eventually the Amazon bestseller list. It wasn't in those exact words, but the implication was thick enough. That's fascinating to me. Whatever material of End Times I do finish will be a chart topper.
No matter how long I wait, and no matter how little talent or work ethic I might have, no matter how long m hiatus, it will still reach The #1 Sales Spot on Twitter, Webcomics List, Comic Fury, and Amazon. It just being there is guaranteed the Top Spot on the Charts. Yay! Yes! It's branded! That means End Times is now a Brand. People will seek it out as long as I'm doing new design and story material for the world.
I owe my readership an apology. I need to apologize for the bulk of my working career being made of hiatuses. While I meet my Journal deadline, I realize when it comes to the End Times universe and schedule, despite my comic being massively popular, I know some of you have really been burned by all my hiatuses and delays. I'm going to do my best to work really hard to fix this problem if I get settled into my new place. I'll finally have a quiet place to work and focus my efforts, and once I'm settled in, assuming nothing or no one ruins everything, production should pick back up. The in-laws and I were a bad living mix, but until now I haven't had any options to leave the house to work somewhere else more quiet and peaceful, but it looks like that might change. I don't want to jinx myself, but things are looking up. And a more intense work schedule is highly likely. But I underestimated the damaging power of laziness, exhaustion, and fatigue that goes with being burnt out by an intense work schedule. Despite your best intentions and best efforts, you still get held back by laziness fatigue or whatever, despite constantly having the top spot on the charts, something can always get in the way, because despite it's social influence and power, comics making and manga-cartooning is still a delicate process. Even the Japanese workaholic culture of Japanese manga can get caught up in some malaise when it's only one person responsible for the whole thing. Even the likes of such hardworking Japanese comic book superstars as Toshihiro Togashi and Kentaro Miura are famous for their malaise, delays, hiatuses, and getting overwhelmed by the intense schedule of keeping up with their own comics and manga work. I didn't realize that not all Japanese creators made their schedules and deadlines on time and had to take long periods of time off just like me until later in my career. It wasn't until I was 27 or so when I first learned who Kentaro Miura and Toshihiro Togashi were and that they'd almost become more famous for DELAYING Their work than the fame of their work itself (Berserk, Yu Yu Hakusho, Hunter X Hunter). I wasn't so much delaying work as it was waiting for an opportunity to focus and resume maintaining my efforts like I had been in my 20s. Still, even in my 20s, I still vividly remember being depressed as hell about not being able to do MORE, MORE WORK and ENERGY in my career. I remember being so intimidated by the intensity of the market colliding with my own draining energies, and how people just always relentlessly and tirelessly demanded more stories. But now I'm in my 30s, and I haven't drawn active story-based pages (and not just something unplanned and random) since at least 2012. That was 5 whole years ago when I was 29 years old. The last age I did active new work was the age of 29. I'm 34 now. Something needs to be fixed. I'm sick of disappointing people, but at the same time, people watch me with such intensity. I know a 5-year wait may not be 10 or 15 years like some creators, but it's been long enough! It's time. Time to get back into the swing of things, and resume work on my magnum opus. I ask for just a little bit more patience from my readership, then maybe things can return to "normal", or at least me working again.
