Piers Baker: Life in Syndication Year 3

Detail from Sunday's "Ollie and Quentin." Entire strip here.

My friend Piers Baker talks about year 3 of his syndicated comic strip "Ollie and Quentin." Aside from some fascinating shop talk (for instance, saving time by converting his pencils into linework using Adobe Illustrator), Piers writes about his own personal terrible event of 2010:

"Last summer my relationship of 27 years with the mother of my two children came to a very sudden end when she left the three of us. My world collapsed. Aside from the obvious emotional difficulties I was terrified that the career I had worked so hard for all my life was going to be pulled out from under me. Not because I was bad at it, not because it wasn't selling but because I couldn't see how I could be funny every day when my heart was broken. Of all the scenarios of failure I hadn't seen this one coming."

Piers specifically does not ask for sympathy, and goes on to write how he changed his process for producing "Ollie and Quentin" for the better during this very difficult, personal time. Go read.