What publishing a comic strip online for a year feels like

It’s now been a year since I started publishing Space Deer. I’m gonna assume you already know what the strip is about, otherwise head over here to check it out.

I’m writing this blog post to talk about why I started this series in the first place and everything that happened this first year, as well as my thoughts and feelings about it.

Why I started Space Deer

When I was a kid I read a lot of comics. Mostly Dragon Ball, One Piece and Calvin & Hobbes. Those are the big three for me. They’re sort of etched into my creative DNA at this point. It feels like there is some aspect of at least one of those three in anything I make.

Since childhood I wanted to one day do a long running series about something. I tried several times since then, one of them being Plantland. A green, post-apocalyptic detective story with romantic elements.

One of the first pages from Plantland (2018).

I drew about 70 pages of that, I was publishing it online with the intention of one day printing it as a graphic novel. The reception of it was initially good, but reader interest quickly petered out so I just dropped it. Looking back it’s quite obvious why, the writing just wasn’t up to standard.

If the interest had dropped like that for Space Deer I probably wouldn’t have made it through this year.

During the end of the pandemic I had moved to France and was looking for easy to read comics to practice my french. I picked up a collection of Peanuts strips and fell in love with it. As a kid I found the Peanuts comics quite boring, I think because they were so slow and contemplative compared to Calvin & Hobbes. But as an adult I really appreciate that about them. It took me a few years to work my way through the collection I picked up. Not for a lack of interest but because my French was quite basic when I started reading it.

Then I discovered Blind Alley. An incredible mix of Peanuts, Earthbound and early 2000’s childhood. This definitely rekindled the urge to make a comic strip of my own. I tried to make several comic strip series during my teens. But my popcorn brain never let me stick to anything.

An old Space Deer comic from 2014.

None of those comics I came up with in my teens stuck with me like Space Deer did.

With the inspiration rekindled by Peanuts and Blind Alley I started to type out a love story between Space Deer and a robot, picturing it as a graphic novel. It was very much based on my current relationship and x/best friend.

I didn’t feel like making it a comic strip. Because by design a strip is supposed to go on for a long time. At the time I didn’t like the idea of that. That’s why I meant to make a graphic novel. I wanted to have a definite goal in mind, package it up and call it done.

A rough sketch of a page from the graphic novel (2023).

If I remember correctly, I had the story fully written and I even sketched 10 pages or so of it. But for some reason it didn’t feel right. The story seemed fine. But it felt limiting. I wanted to be able to put Space Deer in way more scenarios and talk about any mundane or silly little thing that crossed my mind. There’s no space for that in a graphic novel. It’s supposed to be tight and focused.

I tried drawing a couple of strips to see how it would feel. If I could do it. I made about 10 or so on train rides and during evenings to relax. And I loved it.

One of the earliest strips I drew during that time. Later published as No. 10.

Even writing them was fun. Spending 3 years running Indie Notebook and learning about story telling with my partner helped a lot in this regard. In my teens I wrote strips panel by panel, with no point in mind. Now my writing is super methodical (with plenty of room for playfulness).

The idea of building up a buffer of strips and to publish them regularly over a certain amount of time took shape. I kept drawing leisurely, seeing the buffer grow and developing the characters and the world peacefully was super satisfying.

During this time I picked up the book What Cartooning Really Is, it’s a collection of interviews with Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts. He became very real and relatable to me through these interviews. How he lived through the war (I never did, but the current pressure from Russia made that feel intense) and how he struggled to find his footing in comics. I felt like I would have lived a life similar to his if I had been born around that time. If game development wasn’t as accessible as it is now, I’m sure I would be way more of a cartoonist than I am today.

One little tidbit in the interviews turned out to give me the last push I needed to launch Space Deer into orbit.

I learnt that he started publishing Peanuts when he was 27 years old. And I was 27 years old at the time of reading this. It made me feel like I couldn’t wait any longer. My 28th birthday was around the corner. So I decided to start publishing a week before my birthday on the 16th of April. I set up a website, made a logo, figured out which strips to publish in which order from my buffer. And that’s what led me to start publishing Space Deer on April 16 2024.

My plan was to keep it up for a year, no matter what, with two strips per week to see if it was something I would want to keep up.

The events of the year

The very first Space Deer comic, from 2014.

From my initial buffer there were only black and white four panel strips. I initially planned to start the series in just the same way as I did with the first comic from 2014. With Space Deer leaping off the planet with a little jump.

Space Deer No. 3 - What was meant to be the introduction.

But I wanted to establish more of Space Deer’s personality and motivation from the get-go. And show people what the comic could look like at its peak. So I decided to do a longer, fully colored Sunday-style strip. It turned out this was a great call because when I published it on social media people were quite into it.

Space Deer No. 1 - What I came up with as a more bombastic introduction.

People were quite ecstatic! Turns out there are a lot of deer fans out there. That took me a bit by surprise.

I really didn’t expect to ever get that sort of buzz on any of my comics. Especially not on the very first one of this series. It caught me completely off guard. This was a huge moment of relief for me.

I didn’t have a newsletter set up for the comic yet, so I think I missed out on a lot of potential subscribers. But my following grew from like 3000 to 6000 followers over a few days.

Among other places I published it on Webtoons as well and reached 1000 readers there very quickly. That community has been very invested in the characters and leave comments on almost every single strip.

None of the comics ever reached the level of hype that first one got. But it was read regularly by quite a lot of people. There isn’t really too much to say in terms of events here. I did publish a bit on instagram too, but it was just too much effort and little payoff so I dropped it.

I did a few special installments where I answered reader questions. Mostly because I love reading that kinda thing myself. I got a lot of questions sent in and it was a lot of fun to answer them. I like the variety they bring to the comic archive.

Oh and I shouldn’t forget! Mike Grover reached out to me because he liked the comic. He offered to make a Space Deer guest comic. Which was super cool, ofc I said yes.

An animated poster made by Grovertoons/Mike

We ended up doing more of an art trade instead because it was easier. I made a poster for his comic Jake Spooky as well.

My poster for Mike’s comic.

I’d love to do more art trades like this with more artists I admire (and I’m definitely still open to the idea of Space Deer guest comics *wink*).

I think those are all the noteworthy events!

Was it worth it on a personal level?

I had a lot of self-doubt about my abilities as a writer. I thought I was just too flimsy and head in the clouds to ever be able to stick to something and write something that makes sense. For the longest time I was afraid I wasn’t funny. But in the end it’s not about being laughing-out-loud funny. It’s great to make someone chuckle every now and then. What I really care about is comfort, joy, making people think about stuff differently and reminding people how tiny we all are and that we’re in this shit together.

I think I managed to do all of that to different degrees of success. I surprised myself with what Space Deer ran into a few times. Like the bubble gum story or that one throw-away strip my girlfriend made me extend into a storyline.

I didn’t build a huge dedicated readership this first year. But more importantly it seems like it resonated quite well with some people. A few have re-read the strip several times. Two people asked if they could use a panel as a tattoo (I don’t know if they actually followed through with this though). And lots of people told me it makes them smile.

That’s extrinsic motivation/validation. But that does make it feel more worthwhile on a personal level too. I’m not gonna pretend like I’m completely immune to vanity.

Space Deer was always one of those projects I felt I had to do before I die. I feel more at peace in regards to that now. But there is still more I want to explore with this.

So yes. It was definitely worth it on a personal level.

Some practical results and how it went

Reading The Webomics Handbook and listening to the Comic Lab podcast were great companions throughout this, especially in the beginning months.

It gave me realistic expectations. For instance I was right to assume that the first strip wouldn’t take off. I’m just incredibly lucky that it did.

The common thing for a web comic is for the audience to build up very slowly over time. I kept that in mind as the comic went on and I saw engagement decrease. Without the inner motivation and realistic expectations I would have taken that much harder.

I was conflicted early on about making a Patreon. I even set it up completely, I was so close to just launching it. But they talked about this a lot on Comic Lab. And their recurring advice about Patreon is to wait until people are asking for it, unprompted. This never happened. The recurring requests were about buying the comics in print and about a Space Deer plushie. Both of which feel way too soon. (But I am very glad people are asking for those things!)

Maybe I could have had some success with the Patreon anyway. But even then, the workload would have been overwhelming. My buffer of strips started dwindling about halfway through the year because I took on too many other projects. Multiple freelance gigs at a time, a serious solo game project and Indie Notebook.

Despite the lack of Patreon, I did manage to make a tiny bit of money from this.

• Circa 80 euro from sales of PDF’s on itch.

• I sold a license for 85 euro to someone so they could print a strip in a furry zine.

That’s a grand total of 165 euro! Not enormous by any means, but it does cover the cost of the website domain and hosting. That’s a great start.

I could probably have made more money from this if I had gone ALL IN on it. Some opportunities I missed out on…

• The Patreon as I talked about already.

• According to stats the website drew a lot of traffic. A bunch of strips have as much as 30k views (I don’t know how that is possible or if something is wrong with my analytics, maybe it’s just bots). If it’s true I’m sure that would have generated some ad money, but the idea of seeing ads for “hot singles in your area” next to Space Deer just hurts too much. lol

• Making a Space Deer game. This is something friends tried to nudge me into and I did start a bit. But I didn’t finish anything. Making games is hard and takes time. That’s mostly why it didn’t happen. I had to prioritize the comic this year. One day I will do it though!

A Space Deer 3D model in Unity, patiently waiting for code to bring it to life.

I setup a Substack newsletter and tried to direct people there occasionally on social media. The idea is for that to be the most dependable source for anything new about the series. If you’re a super fan you gotta sign up. It’s currently at 145 subscribers. That’s not too bad for a newsletter, especially considering most subscribers end up reading most updates and see any other news I share about the strip.

Most of all I’m doing that newsletter because it’s dangerous to build your castle on somebody else’s sand (feels like X/Twitter is gonna crumble any time).

I guess one final number I could share is how much time I actually spent working on Space Deer as a whole. I run a timer almost any time I work on this. So I have a very accurate estimate.

255 hours.

That’s it.

In 255 hours I’ve made 104 comic strips.

That also includes formating and uploading them to every platform (Twitter, Substack, Website, Webtoons, Tapas, Tumblr) and also some preparation like character design, etc. Make what you will about that fact. But really, in the bigger picture 255 hours doesn’t feel like that much, not considering how much personal satisfaction I got out of it and how little it is compared to some of my other projects.

I’m a bit of a sucker for numbers, I would love to know what they look like for other people. That’s why I like sharing them.

What did I learn?

I’m just gonna make this part a bullet list because it’s easier. Some of these might seem obvious but they’re still worth mentioning.

• I’ve done both colored and uncolored, long and short strips. Coloring a strip or making it longer is no guarantee for making people like it more. It seems to be way more about the subject matter and the quality of the writing and how well it communicates.

• My oddball ideas for planets and world building stuff isn’t as interesting to people as the strips about feelings and relatable stuff.

• Sequences of strips following a mini-storyline works great on Webtoon but not as well on social media. They’re just harder to follow there.

• Another point about sequenced strips: they work much better on social media if each individual strip can stand on its own, without the context of the previous one. Easier said than done.

• It’s fun to play with different sizes for panels. But it’s a real headache to reformat those strips for vertical and social media friendly layouts. It’s much better to just stick to four equally sized panels. It’s the most versatile template.

• It was too much for me to do two strips per week when I have other obligations that actually pay. I’m glad I went all in. But I’d like to feel less pressured to crank out strips when I pick this back up.

Maybe I learnt more than this. But I’ll call it here.

I hope you found this entertaining or interesting in some way! Thank you for reading! And do consider picking up the PDF version Space Deer: Suit Up, or Space Deer: Then & Now! Especially that second one if you enjoy this sort of behind-the-scenes stuff, I wrote a lot about my preparations for this in there.

Oh, and there’s currently a bundle to get them cheaper along with Empty Planet, the spiritual predecessor!

Thanks for reading! Stay tender!

Cheers!

/Jonas