After a year of Spider Barks, I got a wild hair up my ass: I love making comics, so why not start a second webcomic?
What the fuck was I thinking?!
My four-panel gag strips were fun, but I had been itching to tell longer stories. I figured I could post more than once a week, with creativity itching to burst out, but I had no solid idea. So, I started a second four-panel strip.
Normal Not Found followed Ren, a slacker with bipolar disorder stuck in a dead-end retail job at Star-Mart. His moods manifested as imaginary personas, Max and Milo, with a cast of coworkers—including his mortal enemy Doug. I thought a simple black-and-white four-panel format would make it easy… what an idiot.
The comic ran for exactly one month, from March to April 2025. I tried to plan, create a buffer, and push through tricky spots—but making two webcomics while working full-time and having a life? Pfff.
Normal Not Found had potential, and I loved drawing it, but I didn’t want to sacrifice Spider Barks to keep it alive. Closing it was both a relief and a bummer, but the experiment was fruitful.
Instead of adding another comic to my workload, I upgraded Spider Barks. I transformed it from a four-panel gag strip into a full-page format, added new characters, and explored longer storylines. I even folded elements of Normal Not Found—like Star-Mart—into Spider Barks’ world.
Normal Not Found may be gone, but it helped Spider Barks evolve. Curious? You can still find Ren and the gang on my Instagram page… and yes, they’re still unemployed.