...having a folder full of comics pages you made from scratch.

I just realized tonight that I've broken the 100 strip mark on the latest season of the RAN ONLINE weekly newspaper strip I've been working on forever. This, combined with past seasons, means that I'm only a few months away from breaking 200 strips.

I know it's just numbers, but this represents years of hard labor, lessons learned, sweat and blood, close calls and fond memories for me. The weekly grind of making this strip, on top of other comics, writing and illustration projects, plus the rigors of daily life, have taught me so much about what it means to make comics for a living.

I started working on this project as a teenager--young and arrogant enough to think that I could just get by on talent. The job taught me otherwise. Talent counts for maybe 1% of it. The rest is hard work, discipline, dedication, sacrifice and a willingness to adapt to new situations. There's no way around it. I looks back at older strips and still cringe at little things that I could've done better if I'd had more time, but overall I'm really proud to have gotten this far.