This post is a mirror from PC-Mania's page on Comic Fury (CF version here)

Io anxious at their desk while drawing with a looming dark cloud behind them. Jade and Iri are in the cloud wondering if they're ok.

This has been on my mind for a while, but I think with me being unable to rebuild a buffer or feel enthusiastic about this comic, I think this is a much needed change if I actually want to finish it and keep a love for making comics alive.

While I plan on keeping both the Comic Fury & Tapas mirrors up for archives, PC-mania is no longer going to be released as a webcomic. I’ll be finishing the pages and releasing the comic in full when it’s ready. There’s multiple factors to why I’m doing this and I’ll go over it below.

A TL:DR - This wasn’t made as a webcomic project but was made so per-suggestion. And due to being unable to keep up with the format alongside dealing with other mental health issues post-college, it became a sense of looming dread. Even if the feelings of failure linger, I feel returning this to a PDF-formatted comic so I can work on it at my own pace would be healthier and more sustainable in the long run.

For starters, PC-Mania was never intended to be a webcomic. When I came up with the original concept for it way back in 2021, it was supposed to be a PDF release given the comic isn’t supposed to exceed 40 pages and is a self-contained story. The main reason for the format shift was I felt pressured to do so. It was one of the bigger suggestions when I was getting progress critique during college since I knew I wasn’t going to finish it within the 2022-23 school year. I knew going into it it would cause a lot of problems, and while I tried to negate it in some ways, I feel like I ended up stumbling way more than expected.

The inability to re-build a buffer one part. I knew this was going to be a problem since I already struggled with keeping schedules & motivation outside of college (hell it’s why I originally planned to go for a PDF release to keep it accessible to me). And I think it hit worse with getting hit with a post-college crash. The crash is normal, there’s a lot of artists who go months or years without doing art post-graduation. But I feel it hit way harder than I even expected it to

This leads into what I feel ended up being the biggest problems: a rough post-college transition and my mental health

If I can be vulnerable for a moment, since graduation I’ve been finding it even harder than normal to stay motivated and get back on my feet. And I feel I’m in a constant state of anxiety and depression. And that has affected my ability to do just about anything art-related. Part of the reason is personal life stuff. I feel like my life in college was so different and positive compared to my life when I got back home. I went from being semi-independent, studio access / resources, and having some form of structure to returning to a home life that’s barely changed since high-school. I feel like I’ve stagnated or even gone back steps in my life. I feel my social anxiety rising again, feelings of being too scared to participate in some of my hobbies, family tensions (which are too personal to get into here), and struggle to even do basic things like get out of bed. Never mind bring myself to draw more.

I’m also more uncertain than ever about my future as an artist. Senior year of college was already made harder with me having to push through while watching the very industry I majored in go up in flames due to mass layoffs, AI generators, platforms going under, etc. I went to art school because I wanted to do art as a career after all, it was my dream. But watching it crumble during college and after graduation has left me more uncertain than ever that it could ever be sustainable, or that in a world that demands fast scheduled content that me, being slower and borderline unable to keep up with a schedule ever had a chance in the first place.

I’ve always tried to shove aside the urge to compare myself to others (to mixed success). It’s not healthy, but it’s gotten harder not to especially in the context of comics. Where I watch multiple peers and people I follow go on with their comic projects with full enthusiasm and speed and little to no issues (that i know of) with buffers, schedules, or just about anything. Meanwhile I’m lucky if I’m able to get a project past 12 pages before loosing steam, and my interest in my project stopped being love and started being a looming sense of dread.

And there’s the feeling of failure most of all. That due to not being up to par with peers or being able to keep up with the webcomic format I never had a chance in being a comic artist. That I can never make a long project work. That I am a joke for even wanting to take art into a career in the first place. And that PC-mania just ended up being another failed unfinished project and that no one would ever trust me to be capable of finishing anything.

What stings the most is this isn’t the first time I tried to do a web-series that ended up getting put on hiatus at the beginning. I made a webcomic when I was 14, that was overly ambitious for the time and fell through. I tried making a short comic when I was 19 for a college project that only made it halfway before it made me too depressed to work on it and it got scrapped. And I made PC-mania. While I do have plans on salvaging it, I’m terrified of what it means if this project fails. I made promises of scheduled updates I failed to upkeep, and my interest is fading. And I fear if I can’t even finish a short project that I spent time trying to optimize to be finished in a year’s time that I’m not worthy of even calling myself a comic artist, or even an illustrator for that matter. If I can’t even trust myself to see things to completion, how can anyone else?

I think returning it to being a PDF release will at least partially alleviate that feeling. As of now, it’s another failed project and a source of dread, and I don’t know if I can change that. But I don’t want it to be that way forever. I don’t want to keep looking at my projects and seeing it as a backlog of failure and unfinished promises to myself and others, and I want to actually finish it in whatever state I can bring it to. Having it as something dropped “when it’s ready” will remove the dread of being unable to maintain a schedule for the time being and let me work on it at my own pace. I also hope it’ll stop the loop of comparing myself to others since it’ll be a different format & thus can’t compare my progress to a webcomic. Like I said in the beginning, I’ll keep the pages I did post online as a preview & archive thing. I’m not sure yet if I want to do anything beyond that.

After this I don’t think i’ll go back to the webcomic format (unless I’m either working on a team project or a miracle happens that lets me keep up with it comfortably). For my current state I think it’s only been destructive to how I feel about myself and my art. And I don’t want making comics to be a source of that anymore. I want to love comics and making comics again, and I want to love working on PC-mania. I hope people will understand.