You're very welcome!

I mentioned not getting a lot of feedback, but I didnt actually ask for any in this post. Regardless, there's not much I can do with feedback like this. "I like it better when you only do the thing I like and NOT the thing you wrote about how hard you are working on getting better at," isn't all that helpful. Im not asking if I should keep going in the direction that Im headed. Im just filling you guys in on how Im feeling about it after a year of working intently towards a goal. Abandoning that goal is not yet an option I am interested in.

"Drunk beardy guy, gay drunk beardy guy, and some-kind-of-Spanish drunk beardy guy"

Some kind of Spanish? Yikes. I've been working on differentiating the characters (Joel, Josh and Eli by your ordering above) by character and personality over the last year. Maybe I haven't succeeded as well as I'd hoped but your comments seem to indicate more your lack of paying attention than they do my lack of effort. I rarely use the characters' names in the comics because people just don't talk that way. To say the names are taking up space is silly since (see above) I rarely use them. I know this doesnt help you learn them, but I can't stand comics where every person walking into frame is greeted by name. It's a pet peeve of mine.

"I guess the constructive part is that I'm suggesting "

In the future, when you decide to offer feedback, I'd suggest starting with this part. The rest, regardless of your intention, just reads like insults. Yes, the main thing I have always had a problem with is schedule and consistency. I want to make the comics that make me proudest, but that isn't always possible every single day due to lack of inspiration/ideas/time/whatever. The choice that has always been before me is to post the comics when they're done, or post a comic every day, even if I'm not happy with it. Perhaps in choosing the former, I have always made the wrong choice. I know I would have a larger audience if I'd posted 4 or 5 comics a week for the last 5 years, but I dont know if Id be as proud of my work. And, at least for now, that seems like the measuring stick I should be using.

Since you did ask for feedback, I'll be direct and hopefully constructive about what stops me from doing more of the above.

First, HE isn't on my daily visit list simply because the updates are so irregular. Put baldly, I'm here for the comics, not the story of them. I do enjoy reading about your meatspace hijinks here and on Twitter, but that's not what keeps me returning.

And I actually prefer the one off strips because despite reading for years, I couldn't put names or stories to the characters, and nor do I care about them. Drunk beardy guy, gay drunk beardy guy, and some-kind-of-Spanish drunk beardy guy. It doesn't get in the way of the humour, but honestly, the names are just filling up the speech bubbles. You could switch to Larry, Moe and Curly and I doubt I'd notice.

I guess the constructive part is that I'm suggesting that I'd just love to just read more comics, even if they're not all cubicle wall keepers, or stretching your artistic boundaries. Never mind the depth, feel the breadth.

I'm now in some considerable danger of veering into "give me more free stuff or else!" ungrateful dick territory, so will close with some soft shoe, jazz hands and a rimshot.

Your feedback IS super helpful and extremely kind. Ive been trying over the last year to do basically what you described. If I know a topic is pretty specific to a certain show or thing that not everyone knows about, I try to offer enough context in the dialog to bring the uninitiated along, and enough funny dialog to make it entertaining regardless. I guess the idea is, "If you over heard people having this conversation, would you laugh even if you didnt know what they were talking about?" It's very reassuring to know that this concept is coming through in the comics. Thanks!

For me, the appeal of HE is the ridiculous wordiness and the outrageous reactions of the characters, whatever it is they may be talking about. And I have noticed the improvement in your art over the last while, and the increase in variety of perspective, and character poses, and more nuanced colouring, and really hilarious facial expressions. So it's not lost on the world entirely!

I appreciate that of the webcomics I read regularly, you keep trying to make your art more… professional, I guess I would say. And it keeps getting better, but you do it without being all "Hey guys look at my ARTZ" after every comic and I respect that.

For what it's worth, I come by the site every day happy to read either kind: pop-culturey or story-archified. 🙂 Even when I'm not in the loop on a specific topic (e.g. Walking Dead) you still find a way to make it a topic that engages and interests me.

That's super great to hear, Mike. PS the Chocolate mint vodka was the hit of the party. Everyone tried the Thai Curry vodka and marveled at it's complexity… then didn't try it again. Im thinking straight up wasnt the way to go with that one. Perhaps in a mixed drink. I'd love to get some more of that choco-mint if it's available in TX.

Because of you… I was able to help several small businesses start up lines of salsas, cookies, and even flavored vodkas. It's been worth it to me to start up a side job when I was too scared to even think of any other way of taking care of myself except through a corporate job.

Thank you, Joel, for showing that it can be done…

Hey, thinking about your traffic issue, where you're down from the peak you reached a few years back. Have you determined if this is an individual thing, or a more general trend? i.e. have other cartoonists you know experienced the same pattern? I've experienced a similar downward trend in one of my businesses, and after beating myself up for a while for failing, finally realized that it was a market-wide trend — that things had just changed significantly (more competition, customers using the internet in different ways).

Thanks for the kind words and support. I have a lot of theories about why the type of humor I do doesnt reach a wider audience. See my reply to @swingler above. The internet today is less about visiting websites that create content you like and more about reading aggregated content on a central source like Reddit. It's great for people that dont know where to look for things they might like and it's pretty detrimental to creators that are trying to cultivate a specific audience. It's GREAT for creators that produce content that is easily accepted by a majority of potential readers or even the majority of a particular sub-group.

If I made comics about coffee, and cats, and dating and problems with printers (stuff everyone can relate to) every single day I would have a much more popular strip. I dont have anything against those types of comics but HE has always been about specificity because it's always been about geeks that geek on VERY SPECIFIC things. I learned a while back that this doesnt leave a lot of room for the average semi-geek. The realistic answer that I will probably keep doing HE like I am for those that enjoy it and eventually start a second comic for the reddit/facebook/etc crowd that takes far less time and gets far more recognition. My heart wouldnt be in it as much, but it wouldnt effect HE so it wouldnt really matter. If it provided more financial support and allowed me to continue HE without being worried about reaching 100,000 readers then it would be a positive thing.

Good on you! Doing what you love for a living doesnt always mean "quit your job." When I used to manage graphic designers (my least favorite thing to do), I would always get lost in the projects that allowed me to do the design work myself. If you can find the bits and pieces of your job that make you the happiest and mold those into your full time gig, then you've achieved the same success that I am talking about.

It's a delicate balance to try and strike. I know the one-off's are more "shareable" but they aren't great for retaining readers. I've noticed over the years that after any significant traffic spike due to a popular Doctor Who strip being shared on Reddit or whatever, there is no noticeable increase in traffic in the days and weeks later. Reddit culture is based on wanting to see 1000 different things every day and not really caring what the source is. It's not for people seeking out long term "relationships" with websites. It's more about 30 second hook ups. The only real way to take advantage of that kind of traffic is to do something easily shareable every single day. It seems like my choices are all pop culture for the short term reader or all character driven stuff for the long term reader. My preference lies squarely in the middle, but so far the readership doesnt seem to share in that goal. Thanks for the feedback. I really do appreciate your perspective.

Matt, Im glad my experience could help you out a bit. I think you'd really get a lot out of watching this panel I led on JoCo Cruise Crazy 3 called "The Quitting Panel: Keep Calm And Quit Your Job" http://hijinksensue.tumblr.com/post/45744498530/u…

Lots of "quitters" from various industries give insight into their quitting process. It's good stuff.

Here's to five more awesome years of hijinks!

I also love that you regularly talk about the behind the scenes of self employment; I'm in an ENTIRELY different field but I also run a business/work for myself and there are not a lot of people who are willing to talk about the shitty side of things that comes along with the awesome side of things. I LOVE what I do and I wouldn't do anything else but it's definitely not all roses and butterflies all the time. There's a lot of "rah rah entrepreneurship, everything about it is wonderful" material out there IMO, and not a lot of "sometimes this actually sucks hairy donkey balls but I STILL wouldn't give it up".

Anyways, all around, thanks for being awesome!

I've started my own journey down that road of doing what you love, but both my own fear and the fear of those around me (worrying that I'll fail, darn them, I wish I knew more positive people, lol!) keeps making me second-guess if it's the right course of action. But I don't want that fear to hold me back and I'm sick of doing work that I'm simply no longer interested in.

So I know that the next few years are going to be hard, and a long road, but I'll be darned if I don't at least try. Thank you for sharing your story, you've given me something to aim for.