I liked all your projects so far, especially your style of humor. I’m always sad once you leave, but I find myself coming back at least once a month or so to see if your have surfaced again.

Just make sure http://www.aikida.net redirects me to your next project and I shall be there.

I’ve been a fan of yours for a long, long time. A friend of mine turned me on to Aikida, at a guess, somewhere around ’03. So this has basically been a decade I’ve been following you.

You don’t know me from Adam, and you didn’t ask for an opinion, but I hope you won’t mind if I give it anyway since I always do my best (but admit I may fail!) to try and leave constructive criticism rather than typical online “o gawd u suck” bashing.

Plain and simply, in my mind, you’ve always been too hard on yourself, especially your artwork. *I* love your style, the way you have clean, neat lines, and have even liked how you’ve evolved over the years. And you also are VERY funny in the four-panel format. Being funny on a regular basis is something I think most people don’t have a CLUE of just how difficult it is. I, myself, would love to be able to produce a ‘comic strip’ (or variation name thereof) on a regular basis, but the jokes/punchlines just don’t come often enough.

On a random aside, that one strip with the giant whiskey bottle bursting through the glass windows will be an image I will NEVER forget and is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

In any case… there’s the fact that YOU need to be happy with what you’re doing. That’s something most of the people who wrote into your sites in the past couldn’t apparently ‘get’ in my mind. Would *I* like to see you go back to Aikida, even the original version about video games…? Hell yes. As I said, *I* thought you were funny. But YOU feel you’ve outgrown that. More power to you for that.

At the same time though… if I can offer anything to someone I barely know, but whose work I already admitted I enjoy… is don’t be that hard on yourself, when and if possible. You said it yourself, you think you evolved into something a ‘bit’ funny now.

You were funny back then. Just like you were a talented artist back then. : )

More power to you in continuing to find your way, however.

Oh, side note? Sometimes disjointed stories are more fun than continuity. Again, however, if that’s not what YOU wanted, I get why it bothers you.

Still a fan, Charles.

I held fast in the faith, however, that eventually, the bookmark I opened every single day would have something fresh there, that fit into an overarching plot with the interesting characters and genuinely funny dialogue I had grown to expect. The blind conviction that a long delay, or even website content disappearing, did not constitute an end to your stories paid off more than once.

I’m sure that the blog will be great, and I wish you the success with it, but without a narrative framework for your considerable talents, I don’t know. I guess it just doesn’t speak to me the same way the a story-based graphic format does. For my bookmarks: so ends an era.

Best of luck.