Why Finish It Now?

That’s a fair question.

Why return to a project after so many years?

Why dig through old artwork, revisit characters you created in another period of your life, prepare hundreds of pages for print and build an entire website around something that started so long ago?

The simplest answer is that I wanted to see it finished.

 

The Boxes Were Still There

The first Opposite Sex book already existed.

It had been printed. Copies were sitting in boxes. The sequel had been created as an online comic, and the larger story had essentially been told.

But “essentially finished” and finished aren’t the same thing.

I knew that.

The trilogy deserved a proper ending and, more importantly, a proper home.

 

Looking at the Work With Older Eyes

I’m not the same person who started this project.

That’s unavoidable.

I’ve spent years working as a designer, illustrator, educator and consultant. I’ve watched the technology around creative work change dramatically. I’ve learned things I wish I’d known when I started.

But I don’t want to erase the younger artist who made these pages.

I’d rather meet him halfway.

There are things I would draw differently now. Things I might write differently. Choices that belong very specifically to the period when they were created.

That’s okay.

The goal isn’t to make the trilogy look like it was created in 2026.

The goal is to present it as well as I can while preserving what made me want to create it in the first place.

 

One Last Renaissance

Retirement has a funny way of changing your relationship with unfinished ideas.

For years, creative projects had to compete with deadlines, jobs, meetings, classes, clients and everything else life managed to pile onto the calendar.

Now I find myself looking back at the things I still care about.

OS is one of them.

Maybe this is one last renaissance for the project. Maybe it finds an entirely new audience. Maybe some of the people who remember the original webcomic stumble across it again.

I’d be happy with any of those outcomes.

Mostly, I’m just glad the characters finally made it out of my hard drive.

They’ve been in there long enough.