So yesterday I ended Talked Heads for good. That wasn’t really the easiest choice I’ve made, but it had to be done. Let me tell you some true things about doing Talking Heads.

For as long as I’ve been doing it I have felt slightly annoyed by the whole affair. I was using other people’s characters in ways that I wanted to do things for myself. But using those characters meant I couldn’t do too much of it, or too loudly or even easily make a big deal out of it. Even with it falling under satire the fact is that the pictures themselves weren’t mine to use, not really, and damn it they weren’t my characters.

And yet I did things to them, gave them certain voices and made them mine. But never in a way I could benefit from or use or really feel ownership about. And that was always frustrating, and just grew more so over the long, long, time I did the thing.

Now when I first started Talking Heads it was just Shatner and Feldman and wasn’t supposed to happen more than once or twice. But it grew a cast and a voice and people liked it and it was fun, mostly, for me to do and … yeah you see what happened. I generally had as much fun writing them as you did reading them (unless you hated the thing in which case I had more fun) except for that nagging feeling that it was never really mine at all. And I know this sounds like a downer of a post but keep going, it has a big payoff in a while.

But yes, add to that problem the fact that, well, I’ve been telling you lies. See the voices of Shatner and Feldman and a lot of the other characters were modified (slightly) voices for something else that has been in the back of my head for years. A whole novel. A series of three novels in fact. There were these characters and they had distinct voices for me and I loved them. But I couldn’t make the novel work right, and didn’t have time and things happened, and then it crept into Talking Heads. So I might have been writing “Shatner” or “Feldman” but really I wasn’t writing them at all. I was writing those other characters.

These days I’m … I’m what, launching a webcomic next week. It’ll run Monday, Wednesday and Friday, week in and week out. I’m working on a novella that should see print in March, another book in March some comic stuff in March and (I think) October, a full novel in August … every single other thing is all my own creations and I own or co-own them all.

Now will that always be the case? Nope. I will do work for hire. But that’s the difference. That “for hire” part. I’ll write someone else’s characters, but not for free. I have to drawn that line in the sand, sorry. I just have to, for my own peace of mind.

But I got to thinking a few weeks back. And I thought I have Burrito Blade every M/W/F, right? So that left Tuesdays and Thursdays where I wasn’t doing anything, really. I was just blogging and writing like normal. How dull can you get.

So I saw my chance. I saw it and I took it and I don’t know if you’ll like it or follow me over to it or what, but I can’t worry too much about that. I need to do this. Which is why I decided to launch a second webcomic that will run every Tues and Thurs starting in early Feb (the 10th to be exact).

THINGS WRONG WITH ME will be “a webcomic with minimal art.” Which means, for you people who already know where this is going – a talking heads style webcomic, twice a week. Six people, in their 30s, in NY. Talking. Living their lives. Having conversations, and if you know me, then you know that conversations go strange. As a special treat – each person has multiple expressions. Oh yes, quite fancy! And for the record those other characters that were in my head behind every Talking Heads? These are them. Yup.

And this is the rest of why: The fiction I write is often already sold to people. Or at least is aimed at someone. So whenever I work on it I tend to feel that there is someone counting on it. Something I promised I would do with it that needs to be carried out. Burrito Blade, damn, every time I sit down to write I want to live up to all the work that Lauren and Renato do for it. I just write the thing. They shape it and bring it to life. A lot of my other comic stuff is co-written with Kirkbride and I fear letting him down ever.

Things Wrong With Me is just me. I got Matteo Scalera (if you looked at that comic page preview I put up the other day – that guy) to draw the heads but that was it. It’s just me. No safety net, no editor, no influence – just me doing whatever I want.

And that’s scary. I’m working in advance so I don’t fuck up and miss an update, but outside of that I do them for whatever I feel, whatever makes me smile that day. And I don’t know, as I said, if any of you will read it, love it, hate it, or give half a shit … but this one is for me. If I get millions of readers I would be thrilled. If I only have myself, I’ll be fine with that.

Uhm, help me get millions, though, ok? Thanks.

So yeah this is a bit scary, look, I loved the Talking Heads cast, too. They were easy and fun and made me laugh. But I honestly think this is better. It might take a while to warm up to the new faces, the lack of easy shorthand and all but I think it is worth it. Lord that easy shorthand though, that made it easy to get a laugh, didn’t it?

I mean it though, if you ever want a good and reliable way to work a crowd use something with built-in shorthand. You know, if you know what H.A.L. is then me having H.A.L. say something like “I like booty” is twice as funny as someone randomly saying that.

Shorthand is such a help. And a crutch. I admit to that. Nothing wrong with a good crutch to lean on sometimes. But moving away from Talking Heads and into Things Wrong With Me means I lose all those shorthands.

Now I have to make you give a damn with the actual content. I have to make you care about these new people. Find ways to build up new shorthand by letting you learn their ways and then playing with them. It’s work. It’s a ton of work, frankly, but it is the work I adore doing.

I can’t wait.

I hope you can’t wait either. I really do.

The site is, of course, already up and has things like Character Bios and … uhm … no that’s pretty much it for the next month. But then we hit the ground running and never, ever, stop.