LimeTH

So, I probably should have done this back in September when the comic had its tenth anniversary, and I was going to, but didn’t. Hell, I probably should have done this when someone edited the TV Tropes page to say it’s “On hiatus”. There’s no real excuse for why it’s taken me four or five years, but let’s talk about Matchu. Why it stopped and why I won’t be bringing it back.

This is gonna be long, get comfy.

When I was working on “Cow Down”, which would ultimately end up being the last (and unfinished) Matchu story, the idea was that I thought it’d be funny to address the fact that the Space Cops, Lala and Wheezy, had abducted a cow for no reason in their previous appearance in a throwaway gag. Then from there I wrote it out as a sort of “character needs to learn to let go of an animal they want to keep as a pet but would be happier in an environment better suited to it” story.

Where it left off, the cow, named Bea Arthur, had rockets strapped to her and was blasting down the city with Lala, Wheezy and Doug in tow, with Rose (keep her in the back of your head for later) trying to tell Lala about a cow sanctuary. That was where it ended and where it’s sat since 2017.

What was going to happen was they would eventually run out of fuel and fall out of the sky. Matchu and Amber, who had been absent for the entire thing up until now, make a cameo sitting on a bench at a bus stop, where Amber tries to strike up a conversation with Matchu. Before Matchu can say anything, Bea Arthur lands on top of him, which launches the other side of the bench, sending Amber flying. Womp womp woooooomp. Lala, Wheezy and Doug dismount, and an argument breaks out between the two Space Cops. Rose catches up to them, and shows sympathy for how scared and upset the cow is after the experience it just went through. Lala and Wheezy stop arguing, Wheezy apologizes for trying to get rid of Bea Arthur without considering Lala’s feelings, but still thinks he needs to let go, for the cow’s sake rather than either of theirs. They go to the cow sanctuary at Rose’s suggestion, and Lala lets Bea Arthur go in a sweet little goodbye scene. Wheezy then takes Lala to the Potato Hut restaurant to cheer him up. Doug finds them there and they apologize for roping him into it, and say they’re impressed with how chill he was about meeting two aliens. Turns out Doug has seen others of their species working at the same building he does. The Space Cops’ investigation is back on.

There were a few problems with this story. It really did not perform well views or engagement-wise, and I haven’t had a single person in the past five years ask “so what happened with the cow?”

The first problem was that the two main characters of the comic at large, Matchu and Amber, were not present at all. I wanted to try and do a lower deck supporting characters story, since Doug, Famine, Ziff and Rose all played roles, and there were a few other assorted cameos. I had intended to make Space Cops stories happen every so often in a rotation with Matchu centric stories and Amber centric stories. These three plots would be separate, but intersect, while the main characters of each would be kept from actually meeting each other. I was heavily inspired by the storytelling structure of Phineas and Ferb in this regard, and I think the split between Matchu stories and Amber stories went well and kept things interesting. The issue is, at least from what I gathered, was that not many readers really cared about the Space Cops. Lala and Wheezy were entertaining characters in their own right, but they weren’t what people wanted to see, and if no one cared about the story I was telling, it became hard to care about making it. Which leads to the next problem.

The second problem isn’t actually the fault of the comic itself, but rather my life circumstances around it when I was making it back in 2016-17. Now remember how I said the plot was about letting go of a pet? Partway through producing the comics for this story, my cat, Sebastian, had a stroke in the middle of the night and passed away. He and I were very close, as close as I’ve ever been to any pet I’ve ever owned, and the incredibly unfortunate timing of the story’s subject matter and Sebastian’s death made it even harder to push through it. This not for lack of trying, as I attempted to get through it as a way to pay tribute to him, planning on dedicating it in his memory once it finished. I even started hiding cats in little sight gags throughout the story in tribute, which was probably the most fun I had soldiering through the thing. Eventually though, it became too much to bear and I had to step away from it for a while. To add insult to injury, the same day Sebastian died, my computer suddenly started having problems and was wiped, losing a ton of progress on the comic that I needed to completely start over, and losing the PNG files for the first couple comics of the story for good. It’s as if the universe itself was telling me it was time to stop working on “Cow Down”.

I tried to think of a couple ways to get over the hurdle. Just get over myself, and do it? Just stop and move on to another story? Do a jokey comic where Doug recaps the ending to Amber and makes fun of how long it took to end the story? I sort of ended up just not doing any of those and just leaving the whole thing behind, and there’s a reason for that too.

Two characters I introduced late into the comic’s life were Thorn and Rose (you may now bring her to the front of your mind). They were originally created to serve as nothing more than background extras meant to populate the world a little (yes, seriously), but I wound up taking a shine to them, got a couple of fun ideas for them and brought them up to minor character status. Then supporting characters when the ideas kept coming. Then main characters who were basically taking over the whole thing. I had so many ideas revolving around them that it got to the point where I thought “why don’t I just make a whole comic about them?” So, I decided that’s what I’d do. I’d make a spin-off starring Rose and Thorn.

The issue THERE is they had somehow became so engrained into the fabric of the comic’s apparent future in such a short time that once I excised them from it, the whole thing fell apart. Suddenly I couldn’t think of anything good for Matchu or Amber to do that wasn’t just the same ol’ shtick. And to be completely honest, that shtick has passed its expiration date. There are aspects of Matchu that have just not held up in my eyes. While I always sort of anticipated this and went out of my way to make Matchu a victim of circumstance (no matter where he goes, Amber is somewhere nearby by coincidence) in order to keep him from coming off as a creep, a stalker, or as if he’s entitled to Amber, the 100th comic detailing how he came to start admiring her sort of muddled that up. These were characters I had created in high school, and I was a different person then than I am now. The setup of an unlucky guy in love with a girl who doesn’t know him because his awful luck won’t allow him to talk to her doesn’t feel as cute anymore. There also jokes and plotlines that are just dated, and to pick the comic back up years after jokes about stuff like amiibo, the Disney Store, and cats looking like Prince Zuko have stopped feeling as fresh would honestly be kind of ridiculous. It’s a very 2010’s comic. I’m not saying it’s BAD, persay, there is plenty there in Matchu to love and look back fondly on. But if I were to bring it back, it wouldn’t be the same. I’d probably reboot it or do something else with the characters.

Which brings me back to Rose and Thorn, who have since evolved into my primary characters in the five years since Matchu stopped updating. Now I am not going to promise anything, life can always surprise you when you least need it to, but I’ve been working on something involving the two, along with several other characters, both brought over from Matchu and introduced after, and a few who were meant for other concepts before evolving and being repurposed for this one, like Sadie. I’m still in the pre-planning, early script writing, and thumbnail drafting process for it, and my hope is to potentially make something that can be printed as a book rather than constrain myself to the limitations of a weekly webcomic. It’s going to be a looooong time before I can actually come out and announce “Yes, this is something that is actually happening”, but if you’re wondering why my art output has been really slow lately, this is why. I’ve been trying to put as much of my focus into this as possible.

I don’t think Matchu, Amber or the Space Cops themselves would actually appear in this beyond potential cameos or easter eggs. They were made to be main characters, so I feel like making them supporting players in someone else’s story would both be a disservice to them and a distraction from the characters that are actually the focus for people who are coming in because they’re old fans. Adding to this, a lot of elements that would have made it into Matchu that would have been executed using these characters have now been transplanted into the new thing I’m doing to be done by those characters, which just ends up rendering the old crew redundant. Supporting characters from the strip will appear with new roles or expanded versions of their old ones. Consider this something of a continuity reboot. This does not mean I will stop using the characters altogether! I know how much they’re loved by many of you. Amber tied second in the Best Girls poll after all, and I plan to keep drawing her at the end of the year as I always have along with other assorted appearances. I will say do kinda like the idea of “Toy Raider”, the last full story, as a satisfying enough send off to Matchu himself as a character, where he ended off with a few moral victories to his name. He’ll still appear whenever I have an idea for him or want to do a piece with a lot of characters in it, but I do appreciate that in a way, he got a bit of closure that the other characters didn’t.

So basically, yes, Matchu as a comic is done and over, officially now. Too much time has passed and I’ve moved onto things I hope will be more fulfilling in the long run. I want to apologize to anyone who really enjoyed the comic for dropping it and taking this long to make a statement about it, I hope the art I’ve been putting out since has scratched any itches Matchu left behind. Ever since introducing Momoko there’s been a lot of goodwill left, and I appreciate that immensely. Thank you. Here's to the future.

“Meh, typical”.

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