The following is excerpted from a mass email I sent out recently to a bunch of my fellow cartoonists (mostly the ones who do or have done newspaper strips), some writer/artist friends, and loved ones:

Hi guys (read in Ted Baxter voice),

Just thought I’d “share” a kinda big event for me with a few of my peers in the “biz” and other important folk - the very last episode of “Curbside” (attached) – (unfortunately not attached to this blog post as this damn site just won’t cooperate on the attaching visuals front). It was 17 years ago this month that I drew the first installment and it feels right to end the series on the exact anniversary like this. I’m a little sad but also so very extremely excited at the prospect of the time this will free up and the new creative schemes I will have time to concoct. I never thought I’d do the damn strip for as long as I did! Anyway, hope you all are doing swell, and I’ll be seeing you!

(Me in the present again) Yup, it’s true, I’m finished! The last episode will be up online at Lavender Magazine with their September 12, 2008 issue (go to the “Back Talk” section). I’m already past feeling at all mournful about the transition, not only because I was getting really burned out and couldn’t bear the deadlines anymore, but also there was the fact that my newspaper subscriber list had seriously eroded over the past few years, making all the work involved ever more financially unrewarding. Most importantly now is the fact that I already have a few fresh new ideas coursing through my brain and in fact got them a’coursin’ mere days after I wrapped up the last episode and sent it out. I had to quit cartooning to really get into cartooning again, apparently.

Some of the people I sent my message to were super supportive and really understood the seesaw of my emotions at such a time; the cartoonists naturally really identified and in some cases sent some of the sweetest compliments I’d gotten in a long time (bless you in particular, Eric Orner). My BF was fabulous as usual and took me out to dinner – he takes me out to dinner at times like these and there’s nothing I love more than free dinner. Well, few things.

One other thing that made the transition easier was the long weekend visit by my ol’ UK pal, Sina Shamsavari, a long-time Boy Trouble coconspirator who was visiting the USA to interview a bunch of cartoonists for his dissertation on alternative queer comics. Not only was it great to finally meet the charming and handsome Sina, it was also, as my BF pointed out, great timing for me to have a chance to reflect upon my comics over these past 18 years, exhaustingly assessing them and analyzing their form and content to the best of my ability. All for posterity. I will be eager to read the book when it’s done. I know Sina will do a wonderful job with it - it’s an exciting, undervalued and thus far under-analyzed field.

But that’s not it for this site, not at all, FYI. Just means I’ll be focusing more on the upcoming Book of Boy Trouble Volume 2 (Read in hypnotist’s voice: buy this book, buy this book…) and taking a fresh look at my so-far unpublished third Curbside collection (the one about Cal and Nathan and the boy gang) – I want to polish it up for submitting to publishers as I’m not quite satisfied with it as is and think it needs some fresh material here and there to flesh a few things out. There’s always something to do and this cartooning thing is in my blood permanently, it would seem.

I’ll also be at the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, MD this October hawking the new book – come see me if you’re planning on being there! And then I will be doing the exact same thing in San Francisco at APE, which is held on November 1 and 2. See me there too. And buy the book……..buy the book…………………