The Little Chibi That Could:
The Making of Noses Off!

Once upon a time in the Spring of 2006, a bright-eyed high school senior called Johnny walked up to his childhood friend Rihga and said, “Let's make a web comic!” Rihga began to work on sketches that summer. Johnny began to write scripts that fall. And then, slowly, they both began to realize something: making a web comic was fucking impossible.

“It took me over 24 hours to do the first one!” Rihga moaned over the phone. “And a gorilla with a shit pencil could draw better than this!”

So the two put the idea in Backburner Land, where ideas go to slowly wither and die. Except that for some reason this one didn't. About once a year one of them would mention the web comic (then called “No Commas”) to the other, and comics would get drawn. Like, two of them. And then Rihga would get frustrated and wander off to writeFushigi Yuugi fanfiction and Johnny would get bored and wander off to see if he could play “Heart and Soul” on the piano with his wang. This process repeated itself for two years, which would explain why some of the comics (like The Pilot) have such ancient copyright dates on them. Also why the quality is such crap. Johnny blames Rihga. Rihga blames her lack of a tablet.

But then something magical happened: Johnny fired Rihga. On Christmas. To which Rihga responded like any respectable woman: she decided to draw her own comic and become much more successful than Johnny, and then wouldn't he be sorry? Thus began the Regular Updates, which began in January of 2009 as Facebook Messages to Rihga's friends. (This, for the curious, explains the outdated Obama and Whedon comics in the archive.) Rihga's rage-driven creativity probably wouldn't have lasted long, but Johnny came back with an olive branch and an idea: “Let's make a web site with loads of other silly content, and then no one will mind that you only update the comic once a week!”

The site would be called “No Commas.” The web comic would change its name to “Noses Off!” a reference to both Rihga's refusal to draw noses and to the hilarious farce Noises Off!, which both creators loved. It all seemed so perfect. But there was one thing neither of them had bargained for.

This time, they actually went through with it.

Which brings us to today. They may have a site now, but really not much as changed. Rihga still doesn't have a tablet, and Johnny still can't play “Heart and Soul” on the piano with his wang. But hey, some progress is better than no progress.


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Acknowledgments

We're convinced that for every hilarious web comic there is a long line of people standing in the background going, “You son of a bitch, I gave you that idea years ago!” As it turns out, this rule also applies to shitty web comics. So here's a list of first names who helped us push Noses Off! out of the nest and then clustered on the tree branch, waiting to see if it would fly or snap its neck.

First and foremost, thanks to Mike, Daren, Kitty, Kim, Eric and Alec, whose quirks merged in one way or another to form the characters of Canis, Kettle, and Azzy. Thanks also to Zach, Joe, Skippy, Robert, and Jericho, who (along with the group mentioned above) helped bounce around jokes long before we had a URL for this thing. There are loads of other people – Kat, Alicia, James, Clinton, Rihga's LJ Gang & Anime Club, and Barack Obama, just to name a few – who Rihga sucked humor from like a comedic leech, and who supported and commented on this thing back when it was just a weekly message on a couple of random blogs.

We're sure we missed someone, and we apologize to you if we did. Noses Off! could never have happened without you guys, who were all kind enough to tell us you thought it was funny even on the days when we knew you didn't really mean it. So thanks, and we hope not to embarrass you with our ill-timed penis jokes and our poorly-sketched mitten hands.