The first book went on sale earlier this month, and more are scheduled to roll out.
Hussie describesHomestuck, simply, as Kids play a game, and things go wrong.
And it first launched nearly a decade ago, in April of 2009.
Credit: Andrew Hussie/VIZ Media
The comics popularity has endured, leading to this special new edition.
Read on below, and buy the first bookhere.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What made you decide to makeHomestuckinto a hardcover?
Andrew Hussie/VIZ Media
We had a lot of cool ideas.
Well, I had a lot of cool ideas.
And since theyre like, professionals, they had to say, You know what Andrew?
Andrew Hussie/VIZ Media
AHomestucktheme park sounds great.
Well get right on that, designing roller coasters and stuff.
Well put our top guys on it.
Andrew Hussie/VIZ Media
But you know, that could take a long time, since building roller coasters is expensive and complicated.
I start nodding sagely, like, yeah, of course thats gonna take some time.
So they say, How about some books?
Lets just have a go at hit a few singles first here.
We can just print it out, and sell tangible copies to the fans.
People like books, Andrew.
Its a business model you may have noticed we have some experience with.
Oh, yeah, I totally get that, I said.
Its a good idea.
We can put a pin in the theme park for now.
I mean, Im paraphrasing.
There was a lot more to this conversation.
Besides, thered be no reason to hesitate anyway, because books are great.
The internet is what sucks.
In fact, why dont we say what Im doing here is leading by example.
I showed everybody what you could do with the internet to tell stories.
Ive described this to others as a value-add, as if it has some economically-grounded principle behind it.
But really, it just feels like the polite thing to do.
In this reformatting, what were some of your greatest challenges?
But I wasnt the one who did the reformatting.
Which is good, because it sounds really hard.
If I were the one who had to do it, it probably just wouldnt have gotten done.
Its good for fans to have an excuse to do that, because the whole thing is very good.
Its densely packed with funny jokes, cool ideas, and good characters.
Its drawn pretty badly.
Pretty smart, huh?
But sometimes the art is good, when I felt like making it good.
Also, theres author commentary you dont get on the site, containing even more jokes.
I also explain everything?
Beyond that, its all pretty straightforward.
Its been around a decade sinceHomestuckfirst captured internet readers.
I think there are short-term legacies, which tend to be simple.
Maybe it meant something to them, shaped their lives in some way.
Maybe they see some books coming out, and decide to read it again.
Or make a run at get some other people to read it.
The word legacy seems a bit grandiose to use in reference to the situation Im describing.
The situation being: people liked a thing, and they keep liking it, as time goes on.
This is the kind of legacy thats more valuable to me.
A long-term legacy is different.
Im not sure what to think about that subject.
That starts getting at the issue of whether something was important.
Or pushed boundaries, or shook things up, whatever it is that defines importance in a creative sense.
Sometimes people send interviews to me and ask about the comparison betweenHomestuckandUlysses.
And they understandably think, oh man, this is dynamite.
GOTTA ask about this.
But Im more inclined to think, sounds about right.
The further back you go, the slimmer the pickins get.
A hundred years ago, there were artists and authors, as opposed to content creators.
What would we think if the creative world a century ago was comprised of millions of content creators?
Would even trying to sift through it to make judgments on relevance cause us to despair?
Would the literati be saying things like, Dont even get me started on Joyces Instagram account.
Whats it going to be like a hundred years from now?
Will they say, Yes, there were several hundred million people with YouTube accounts.
But there was this one guy named Pewdie Pie who was absolutely crushing it out there.
He was CRUSHING IT!
History may, in fact, be laughing at us.
