As someone who is working on his second online comic strip after a prior five year stint of cartooning and a two year hiatus, I would like to share with you some of the stages I've gone through (and sometimes seen in others) as I've journeyed down the web comic highway. I originally wrote this article for Rocketbox (a webcomic collective) back in 2003 and I've updated it slightly to reflect more current times and events such as defunct strips from other artists have been edited out and I've added "The Comeback" to the list of stages one might go though. I'll try to put them in order, but sometimes you might get to these stages in a different order or just skip over some altogether.

This article isn't a roadmap or a "how to" list of things to do and doesn't deal with much on the business side of cartooning, but it deals more with the emotions and phases most of us pass though while we all map out this fledgling land of webcomics. Hopefully this article can prove useful to comic creators in different stages, from beginner to seasoned pro in realizing that we all share some universal fears and foibles. And at some point, we've all "been there".