Well, it’s over. After 504 pages of Chuck’s Devils and its Mini-Devils spin-off, there will be no more. Including prep time, I dedicated the past seven years to the comic. That’s about 15% of my life spent creating characters, writing dialogue, and devising storylines.

And I have nothing to show for it. No job, no money, no discernible fan base. I can’t say I’m surprised. There have been several other endeavors that I’ve spent years working toward only to have them completely fall apart.

Graphic Design

I graduated with only an associate's degree from a community college in 1999, yet I managed to get a job building websites from a local Internet service company. They went bankrupt two years later, but I got lucky when Bravenet Web Services found my online portfolio. They hired me to make art for their web tools, a position that lasted five and a half years.

I thought I would find another job in the graphic design field, but I went without full-time employment for over four years. Had I known the drought would last that long, I might have gone back to college. Instead, I swallowed my pride and went to work stocking groceries for Walmart. Today, tuition is way more expensive, and it’s much easier for people to create websites or AI-generated images. I’ve come to terms with the fact that a career in graphic design is no longer possible for me.

Smilies

In 2001, tiny emoticons called smilies were popular on forums. I decided to try making a few of my own, and they ended up becoming pretty popular. I was receiving requests from fans, so I kept making more. I signed a few licensing agreements and received some donations, but nothing substantial.

Over time, I had amassed over two thousand smilies. After twenty years, I ran out of ideas for new icons. At the same time, emoji emerged as a more popular, easier to use version of emoticons. I haven’t made any new smilies since 2021, and rarely dabble in pixel art anymore.

Domino Toppling

My brother and I used to set up domino courses with various stunts in the 90s. I put some of our old VHS videos on my website which were discovered by the producers of Penn & Teller: BS. They flew us to Las Vegas to spell out the name of their show in dominoes. When we got back, we decided to make our own dominoes in case we got any more paid gigs. They came in handy when the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont invited us to put on exhibitions for five years.

Eventually, my brother had obligations that prevented him from taking time away from work, and I took the aforementioned Walmart job. Despite one of our YouTube videos somehow getting over 28 million views, traffic died off quickly and monetization was disabled. I tried to revitalize the channel by making smaller domino courses, but viewership was minimal. Besides, my knees, back, and butt are too broken down to set them up nowadays.

And the Rest

There are even more activities I’ve attempted and abandoned. I took piano lessons for two years until I got bored and stopped practicing. I played three games of Little League before I accepted the fact that I don’t have an athletic bone in my body. And I quit on my quest to score half a million points on NES Tetris.

I turned 47 not too long ago. As I approach half a century in this world, I realize I’ve spent most of it making things intended to entertain others. My website has many more examples of hats I’ve worn that have earned me zilch: Artist, illustrator, animator, game maker, writer, and now comic creator. It’s like a big monument to futility.

I have no one to blame but myself. If I had focused on getting really good at one discipline instead of being mediocre at a bunch of different stuff, my life would be much more bearable today. I suspect I’ve got some kind of disorder that explains my inability to focus, but I can’t afford to get tested, much less treatment. So I just do the best I can; unfortunately, “my best” totally sucks.

Trying to Stay Positive

So, is there anything I can be happy about? I suppose the fact that I actually finished Chuck’s Devils is something to be proud of. As you’ve seen, I’ve given up on many endeavors for many reasons. There were a couple of times when I went months without touching the comic, but I eventually returned and completed the story. The Mini-Devils reuniting with their taller twins confirms that everyone is living happily ever after and wraps everything up in a nice little bow.

Also, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank anyone who has ever read the comic. I’m not sure how you found it, since I’ve done such a horrible job promoting it. If you’re one of the handful of people who knows Chuck’s Devils even exists, I hope you got some kind of enjoyment out of it.

What’s Next?

I’ve always liked playing room escape games, and would like to design my own. I pretty much already have for Episode 40 of Chuck’s Devils, and I even escaped from a real one for my 40th birthday. Solving puzzles gives me a sense of accomplishment I don’t get in my day job. I don’t work at Walmart anymore, although I still stock groceries, and have been for the past thirteen years.

Of course, the popularity of the room escape genre seems to have vanished at the same time Flash did, so who knows what I’ll do. Now that the comic no longer takes up any of my time, I’ll be working more hours at the store, so whatever my next project is will take a while. There’s only one thing I know for sure: No matter what I try, it will end in failure.

Goodbye, Candace, Yu-Ri, and Lily. For the past seven years, you were the closest I’ve come to having friends. Helping you resolve your troubles and reach a brighter future was my sole mission in life. If only I could do the same for me.