The Artist is Dead! final page.
This is the end of the comic. Click here to read it from the start!
Original prose epilogue from the old website:
The End.
Or Is It???
No, it isn’t. It’s too late for that now. You’ve read up to this point. You’ve seen where this goes. This won’t ever end.
I mean, yes – this is the last page of this story. The door is shut; you are now leaving the Twilight Zone. But the door might open again. And they’re still out there.
I expect you will want to know how everyone is doing.
Where is the Woman? Wandering in an endless dreamland, hunting through infinity. Maybe she’ll find what she’s looking for. Maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll forget everything again, or maybe it will all find her. There are a lot of possibilities in a creative space.
Where is the Figure? Coasting on the winds of the universe. Once you’ve tried out being something, it’s very hard to stop, what with all the everything out there. Maybe the Figure will be everything. Maybe the Figure will settle into being someone even an old friend wouldn’t recognize. Maybe the Figure will be nobody at all.
The world is full of things to think about.
Where are the Child and the Elderly Man? Thinking whatever they please, arguing and playing chess forever in a rolling green field with a perfect view of everywhere.
Where is the Witch? Wherever she wants to be.
…And where is the Exquisite Corpse? Split into a billion pieces and scattered far and wide. He is only a storm of bad thoughts, come all at once – he has no power, unless he grows. The scattered pieces must not be allowed to grow.
That’s it. I could tell you all about this story and what it means to me, but I am afraid that too much talk from me will ruin it. So, to wit:
My name is Noah. Three years ago I started drawing this comic to see if I could finish it. I could, and I did, and so here it is. If you were a stranger who found it and wrote to me, thank you, because your unbelievably kind words let me know that I was making a something that somebody loved. If you were a quiet reader who never said anything, thank you, because you still read it.
If you are one of my friends and family who read this story over my shoulder while I made it, thank you, because I couldn’t have done it without you.
Now I’m finished. Tomorrow I will have another adventure.
Au revoir.
New prose afterword for now:
Thank you for reading, old friends and new. Really. I know this isn’t the most ideal format to read a 242-page comic in (and that my promise these photos would be nice is...arguable at best) but it makes me feel happy and grateful that anybody likes it at all, and I wanted it to exist somewhere in some form, and so here it is.
I also recently discovered that some, though not all, of the old website is preserved at the Internet Archive, so head there if you want a blast from the past.
Know that the original pages (all of them drawn, inked, painted, cut, glued, torn, and crumpled up for real) are safe with me, and that some day (not soon, but some day) it will exist as a book you can hold in your hands. Currently three print copies exist; one is in my possession, one’s fate is uncertain, and one is with a friend.
There will be more of them. Until then, read these pages, share these pages if you want, and use them for good if you do. I welcome questions but I can’t promise answers.
Thank you. I’ll be drawing more soon.
tl;dr:
I made this. Thanks for looking at it. 🙂
