I was torn between announcing it well in advance and keeping it hush-hush until it's apparent just from reading the comic, but I decided that doing the latter would make it way too sudden. So here it is: After nearly two great years, I will be stopping The Artiste Manquée within the next couple of months. I don't mean going on "indefinite hiatus", I mean decisively ending it. The story (as it were) will be concluded... and although I won't say how, I will hint that, for better or worse, the end may eerily resemble the beginning, in more ways than one...

Alright, enough formalities and cryptic foreshadowing. Yeah, it's kind of a shame, and I will miss drawing Janet, whom I've really grown to love as a character. But I think I've said all I need to say with this comic and need to move on. It might seem sudden, but given the episodic and largely improvised nature of the way I wrote this thing, I always knew it could end quickly at any time. Like, I was never building to a huge climax or anything like that. Hm, I hope I'm not forecasting my own ending as weak or predictable... I can't honestly say it'll be Earth-shattering, but I can promise you that there will still be at least a couple of unexpected surprises between now and the final strip, so don't leave before the house lights turn on!

...But there has to be a silver lining here somewhere, right? Well actually there is! Here's the good news: One of the major reasons why I decided to end this comic now is because I'm planning to start another one. The details of that project are strictly confidential at this point in time (so much so that I don't even know everything about it yet! ;) but if you stick around for a while after TAM ends, you will hear more when the time comes (and by stick around I mean don't delete your bookmarks, unsubscribe from the RSS feed or de-follow me on Twitter!)

So that's that. It's been a great experience doing this comic, and I hope someone out there was entertained by it, maybe even identified with it a little. Enjoy the remainder of the story, and we will undoubtedly meet again.

Cheers,
Simon