#159: What Kind of Person Reads Soapy the Chicken?


Hello, dear reader. Thanks! Really, thanks! Your checking my comics out is much appreciated… I hope you are enjoying them, and that you’ll come back for more.

However, I will no longer be posting Soapy the Chicken every Monday.

It’s hard to believe I’ve been posting Soapy the Chicken comics since 2005… this is strip #159. It sure seems like there should be more! For the last half year (since June 20th), I’ve managed to post a strip every Monday, which has been a lot of fun… and a lot of work.

I’ve read it recommended a number of places that if you want to build an audience for a comic strip, post it on a regular schedule. Thus, I decided to post every Monday.

I really shouldn’t look at site statistics.

I guess it works for some strips, but it sure doesn’t seem to be working for this strip. This, I’m sure, is all my fault… I haven’t spent enough time promoting the thing (I don’t have a lot of spare time), and it is not really easy to find an audience for a comic strip about a frequently-dead, mentally-challenged chicken, anyhow. I probably should have chosen something more “high-concept” for a comic strip, like, maybe a zombie chicken with an attitude on a mission or something.

Fortunately, I’m really making this comic strip for my own pleasure (sorry to be selfish about it). There’s no money in it, few discernible rewards to doing it beyond my own satisfaction, and I receive almost no feedback.

If no one cares that I update every Monday except me… what is the point of posting every Monday?

The point was to keep doing it on a regular basis, I guess. If I had not been producing these on a schedule for the last half year, there is no way I would have made as many of them. So, I’m glad I did it. But if the schedule is not paying off in building readers, I’m going to take more time with it, and focus on some other projects as well (which, of course, will take away time I could be working on this strip).

The strip will continue… but at whatever pace suits my fancy, which may be unbearably slow (or it may be tomorrow). I hope you’ll stick with me. Many of you probably won’t, and to you I say thanks for reading while you did!

In the coming years while you are eagerly waiting and checking this website every hour for updates, you can keep up with whatever I’m up to online on my main website at stwallskull.com, if you’re inclined. Additionally, my webcomic collaboration with Ben Zmith, Monkey’s Paw, will continue to post every Friday for the foreseeable future. I should probably remind you that you can subscribe to this comic strip via newsreader or email, so the Soapy strips will come and attempt to demand your attention whenever they get posted.

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Click the above image to see it bigger.

If you like this stuff and want to read the previous strips without going back post by post through the blog, they are easily browsed in THE ARCHIVE here.

You can buy the Soapy the Chicken book here.

You may also want to check out the latest strip from my weekly (updated every Friday) collaboration with Ben Zmith, Monkey’s Paw.

8 thoughts on “#159: What Kind of Person Reads Soapy the Chicken?

  1. A noble effort, Steven! I subscribed at the start of this latest push, and have certainly enjoyed getting to know Soapy a little bit better. Perhaps after this you can still keep up with my own blistering update schedule of one to five pages per annum.

    Until I learn how to delete RSS feeds, I will look forward to your next installment!

  2. Steve, Thanks for this latest run of Soapy the Chicken. You brought her back from the dead and gave us a bunch of new adventures. Anything you do in the future will be appreciated by your many (site statistics be darned) devoted fans. Keep up the good work . . . on your own schedule. –David

  3. The huge gap between now and killing Soapy can’t have helped much, but I hope things turn around.

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