Yeah, people shouldn’t be expecting her to be working x hours each week (even though she is doing what is considered to be half a normal work week). Again she can fix it by not promising 3 comics a week while the kids are out of school. Just curious how many kids do you have?

And on a different note, I’m confused about Lena’s last line. Is she saying ‘we’ll let you know if he did it out of love’ or just ‘we’ll let you know if we accept you’? Or will you let us know next comic? :V

I think that statement is a little misleading and unfair. Yes, there was a comic last Friday and a comic on Monday, but there were only two comics last week, so Monday’s comic was technically a make-up from last week.

I don’t expect my “sniping” to make any difference, nor do I expect it to be appreciated. I’m certainly not trying to be rude, so I hope it doesn’t go over that way. I understand the challenges of being a single mother, and I would never expect anyone to be the single mother who is working full time, going to law school, and raising her kids while attempting a paddle ball world record in one hand.

Perhaps while your kids are out of school change your update schedule to twice a week? You’ve said it takes 8-10 hours to make one page. I don’t think a work schedule of 16-20 hours is unreasonable or unmanageable as a single mother (though at times I think it is certainly difficult – sometimes 20 hours a week is hard when you’re dedicated to anything, such as full time school).

Nobody reasonable would be upset by this – many comics that have artwork as beautiful as yours only update twice a week. This comic is so special, I think you could set your update schedule to be whatever you wanted as long as you were consistent. At this point, to be true with the “three times a week” statement above, you would need to post three comics by Sunday, which obviously is a very unreasonable constraint on your time. This way, if you have the time to do an extra comic (perhaps the kids go on a play date), you can post it and everyone will cheer and drown you in the praise that you deserve rather than grumbling.

I apologize for butting in like everyone else does. Best of luck, Rene. You are a wonderful artist, a wonderful storyteller, and you appear (from this end) to be a wonderful mother.

As an aside, I love your diary comics about your family life. Us ‘adults’ like webcomics we can relate to.

Can anyone say “11-12 comics a year”?

I love ALM, and I really couldn’t care less that the update schedule is sometimes irregular. As long as I get to find out what happens to them someday, I’ll stick with it until the end.