I actually started NLPCo as a kind of throwaway sort of thing to tell jokes about work. I really do work in a pizzeria in a college town and there are a lot of situations that end up being pretty funny in an exasperating kind of way. After a couple years of dealing with customers who refuse to read anything or pay attention to their surroundings I just couldn't handle it anymore so I came up with my therapy: Neon Lightning Pizza Co, a place where the employees could say all the things I wanted to say without getting fired for it. It's honestly been a big help. And now that I've managed to get most of the more obvious jokes out of the way I'm exploring who these characters are and seeing if I can work some sort of actual narrative into it and make it more than just a way to tell inside jokes that only my coworkers would get. Hell, the characters in NLPCo didn't even have names when I first started, so it's been an interesting challenge to gradually flesh them out into more than blank faces I used to heap abuse on imaginary people.
Honestly I've always wanted to make my own webcomic. I've been reading them for almost 20 years and wanted to finally make one of my own, but here's the twist: NLPCo was not the comic I wanted to do. For almost ten years I wanted to do a steampunk comic that I've been slowly designing and building in doodles and the far recesses of my brain, but never had the confidence in my abilities to try to make a reality. I took an informal Facebook poll asking my friends what they wanted me to finally do since I figured it was time to put up or shut up, and more people wanted to see the silly one about pizza makers. So I figured hey, why not just do this one as a warm-up? Once I get comfortable with the software and maybe prove to myself that I can, in fact, stick to a regular schedule I'll bail on it and start the one I've always wanted to do! Sounds like a plan, right? But now I've been doing it for almost half a year and it's kinda taken on a life of its own so I think I'll stick with it for the time being, see where it goes.
Aaaand wow, that's a lot of rambling. Sorry!
TL;DR - I MAKE THIS COMIC BECAUSE I HATE MY JOB