Dear Readers:
Well...that's it. That's the final
West of Bathurst
comic ever. I made it all the way through drawing and colouring
it without losing it, but that seems to have ended now. I am
very, very, very, very sad at the moment.
It's been great
drawing these comics for you guys since 2006. Back then, I really
was planning for the comic to last for about seven years, but seven
years seemed like a long time. It's a little less long from the
other end.
I didn't anticipate a lot of things about the comic.
I didn't know Rahim would be important; I didn't realise Evil
Marie would be a character at all. I did, however, always know
that the core of the strip would be Marie and her bizarre friendship
with Casey. I also knew the comic wouldn't be possible without
its setting. The characters have grown away from Davies College
in the last few years, but Davies has still always provided that tinge
of otherworldliness the fairy-tale elements of the Casey plot need...or
so I claim. The fact that Davies is based on the genuinely real
Massey College does not make it (or, in fact, Massey itself) any less
otherworldly.
It's going to be really hard to give this comic
up. I know I've got a new one in the works, but I haven't really
got to know its characters or situations yet, and I'm at the "But it
will never be the
same!" stage of mourning. I hope you'll give yourselves a chance to get accustomed to
It Never Rains. I'm going to have to do that too.
If you want to continue to receive news about
West of Bathurst and
It Never Rains, please subscribe to the
WoB Talk
blog (click on "Comments" above to get to it), send an e-mail to
westofbathurst(at)gmail(dot)com and ask to be added to the mailing list,
or "like" the comic's
Facebook page.
Once I have forced myself to figure out the whole print
collection / Kickstarter thing, there will be messages about that too.
(And yes, if the book does eventually spring to life, it will
include a segment on the folklore underlying
WoB. People have been asking about that.)
You
guys have all been great; I've enjoyed getting to know many of you over
the years. You've been very encouraging, even when you've wanted
pretty badly to kill me.
Thank you, and farewell for now. I too need to cross the long-standing metaphor.
Yours ridiculously tearfully,
Kari.