Q&A 23: short questions (Patreon)

Simon Thomas asks:

What happened to little Claire’s lisp in Wicked Things?

If memory serves, Claire worked on her lisp with speech therapy in her mid teens, but when she gets stressed or tired or distracted, she lisps more. You will see that the more time she spends around Lottie, the more she struggles with it. It's not an exact science. Sometimes readability is paramount. And as Wicked Things was a standalone, I dialled things back.

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Tim asks:

Will Solver only last as long as you don't run out of alterative 'G' names? Will Dean Thompson find redemption? Is he still seeing the bus lady? Is Susan still sawing things off? Is McGraw still making keys? What happened to Ed Gemmell and Neen? What about the Bad Machinery boys? Ryan & Amy? Tim Jones, now that the Reverend has moved in with Shelley? So many more questions!

Yes; I think he already has; they are "just friends"; I don't know; I doubt it; I don't know; all in time; I don't know; he's dead.

I did try to work out a Giant Days sequel, called variously Play House and Fixer Upper. It was profoundly depressing to contemplate and was filed in the bin. Some of the salvageable ideas made it into Solver. To me, if a character's existence continues, it continues on the page and up to that point, it doesn't.

There can only be one true sequel to Giant Days:

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Aaron Eppy asks:

Any chance of seeing the final batch of Steeple issues in a printed edition?

I asked for an up-to-date publisher's statement in order to answer this question. The third Steeple volume, with bookshop distribution through a great publisher, twice as long at the same price as the prior volume, containing some of the career work I am most proud of, including Author Unknown (which is as good as I can write or draw anything due to lockdown-era focus and may never be bettered) has sold fewer copies even than anything I ever self-published. Writing this gives me no pleasure! Given those hard facts, there is absolutely no chance that I will publish a fourth volume. Something about that series just did not stick despite my efforts.

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Paul Hostetler asks:

badmachinery.com and scarygoround.com are both amazing webcomics sites. They're built off of Comicpress, but that fellow looks like he hasn't done an update in over 4 years. Are you doing all your own maintenance and SEO?

He does maintain them if something breaks, but I do sometimes have to ask. It's a precarious situation. Comic Easel is the worst Wordpress comics solution, apart from all the other ones - believe me, I've tried them all. But it works for now and has lots of useful functionality. I've never done any SEO!

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Finally, from Ross Webster:

Do you have a technique for coming up with titles for your stories and storylines? I've always admired how simple yet how well crafted and fitting they all are.

Thank you very much! I've been making up fake titles for media since my mid-teens to amuse myself and others and consider myself an expert titler. To name something is to give it real power.