As you may have noticed, Lead Paint has not updated in a while. (Looking at our archive, it’s actually been since February. Yeesh!) Most of you have probably figured this out already, but just for the sake of total clarity, we wanted to let everyone know that Lead Paint is on indefinite hiatus.

We’re not sure how long the hiatus will last, but if I had to guess, it would be, “Somewhere between a couple years and forever.” It’s bittersweet to say for sure, but both Dana’s life and my own have advanced into places where it’s prohibitively time-consuming to make a free comic about talking penises and dogs obsessed with butts. We love Lead Paint dearly and would continue making it forever if we could, but our lives have grown in ways where we just no longer have the time.

Dana’s illustration career has taken off like we all knew it eventually would. She’s doing paid work for the AV Club, Buzzfeed and a bunch of other great places. She’s also sold two(!) children’s books and has to devote a lot of her time to working on those. She’s supporting herself fully through freelance art, so spending a ton of hours illustrating comics for free is pretty much impossible for her right now.

As for me, in the last year I’ve gotten married, bought a house and gotten a new job. These are all very happy and wonderful things for me, but they’re also things have changed my life in ways that affect how and when I can spend time on fun, for-free creative pursuits. I have a lot of happy things that I’m spending time on. My wife, my new home, my new dog, my niece, there’s so much going on in my life now that I want to enjoy as much as possible, the balance of my creative and personal life have shifted in ways that keeping up with LP just isn’t possible anymore.

Also, creatively, I’ve been wanting to change what I’ve been writing for for a little while now, moving away from comics and into “standard” fiction. (Maybe there’s something about writing boner jokes for 7 years that makes someone want to try something more serious, I don’t know.) Publishing a book is something I’ve always wanted to do, and writing that is going to take up the large majority of my creative time. If/when my book is published, I’ll publish a note here for sure.

All this said, it doesn’t mean that we’re done with Lead Paint forever. Dana and I both enjoy making these comics, and who can say what our schedules will be like in the future? Maybe in a year or three things will be different, and we’ll be able to pick things up again. But for now, Lead Paint is on indefinite hold.

Dana and I will post relevant news about what we’re working on here once and while, so definitely feel free to check back now and again. The site will also be staying up indefinitely, so you’ll still be able to read all of Lead Paint Comics as much as you want.

I don’t want to write a long sappy goodbye, because now isn’t the time for that. I’ll be honest though, a big reason as to why this hiatus notice is so late in coming is because this was a big, emotional decision for Dana and me. It was a hard thing to face, a hard thing to admit, and a hard thing to write about, but in the end, it was a decision that we both agreed was the right one. And even though this isn’t goodbye, we both wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who read, commented and shared our comics. It was so special to share this with you all, and I’ll never be able to put into words how much it meant.

Hopefully we’ll be able to continue our journey together in new ways in the future.

<3 <3 <3,

Mike and Dana

“I’m Dying Tomorrow” – Alkaline Trio