Sleep Deprivation Theatre is my comic. It is, in fact, the only creative thing I’ve ever done with any degree of success. Therefore, I will defend it with my life, a two-liter bottle of soda, and some Mentos mints. I will defend it from myself. Specifically, I will never do any of the following, no matter how great the temptation.

• Time off. I draw these strips one year in advance. So, for all you know, I could be in the hospital and near death for nine months, and as long as nobody hacks my Dreamhost account, the comic will continue to update. When webcartoonists stick to a regular schedule at first, then stop, I get irritated and their reader base loses interest. When SDT finally stops, it’ll stop for good. Until then, there will be a new strip every Tuesday and Thursday, the very second Dreamhost’s clock hits midnight.
• Guest Weeks. Basically every comic I read does these, and they annoy me. I would actually prefer time off than a guest week. If your life is pathetic enough that you feel like submitting guest art to me, I’ll be extremely flattered, and create a separate section just for that. But I won’t interrupt the regularly scheduled comics.
• Cerebus Syndrome. If you’re too lazy to click the link, Cerebus Syndrome is when a cartoonist decides to make a funny cartoon into a serious cartoon. I won’t be doing this. I’ve lost too many fun comics this way, and there’s no chance I’d ever be able to pull it off well. This is supposed to be funny, not a soap opera. Adam and Mike will always be Adam and Mike. There will never be an Adam 2.0 or Mike 2.0. There will never be character development in any kind, because character development doesn’t happen in real life. There will never be a coherent, complex storylines, because those require effort.
• Advertisement. I may occasionally rant about how great some product I like is, but I will not, under any circumstances, post advertisements on my site. And I say this because I know I have very poor self control. It’d start with some simple, unobtrusive google text ads. Then, I might consider adding the Top Web Comics and Buzz Comics banners, then Project Wonderful… If these things resulted in money coming my way, eventually, you’d need special spyware protection just for my site. So, I’m not going to take the first step down that slippery slope. Of course, you’re welcome to buy SDT stuff or just outright give me money. I have no objection to either of those.
• Relevance. Part of my reason for doing the whole “one year queue” thing is that I don’t want my comic to ever resort to political commentary, as I’ve come to acknowledge that my political views are wildly unpopular. Besides, political commentary means you’d have to follow the news to get the joke, and following the news is the polar opposite of getting a laugh.

All that said, there may be the occasional filler page (which, at the very least, will include a single-frame joke), and I make absolutely no claims to the quality of the writing, drawing, blocking, pacing, or font choice.

After this entire page of stuff I won’t do, what will I do? Well, I’m not going to make any assertions, but I will state that my goal is to make you personally laugh once per month. In the typical month, there’ll be eight strips. Scott Adams has written he’s happy if he can get people to laugh at one fifth of his strips. I decided to aim a little lower. Big surprise there.