A little while ago, I wrote about how I started using AI to draw Monkeys Like Us.
Short version: my drawing was awful, the hand-drawn reboot went down like a lead balloon, and AI finally let me make the strip look the way I wanted it – without making people’s eyes water.
If you missed that thrilling artistic arc, feel free to relive my trauma.

Anyway, these days my audience is small enough to fit in a phone booth. Comfortably.

The upside is, I’m free to experiment without fear of a fan revolt.

I’ve been quietly enjoying my AI-enhanced comics. The jokes are still mine, the characters are still mine, and the overall tone is very much me – they just look significantly less like they were drawn by a toddler during an earthquake.

Enjoying my own stuff, but craving a bit of validation, I posted The Anaesthetist on Reddit.

It did not go well.
The internet did what it does best – burned it to the ground.

Not a single positive comment.
Not even a meh.

The angriest responses weren’t about the content, or the joke, or even the pacing (well… okay, some hated the pacing).
The fury was mostly aimed at the fact it used AI art.

Turns out, just mentioning those two letters is a great way to turn “meh” into “get this off my screen” – which… fair enough.

I get it. The ethics of AI art are complex, and people are passionate.
There are worries about job losses, stolen styles, the future of human creativity. These are real concerns, and I’m not dismissing them.

But:

I didn’t fire a team of illustrators to make room for the robots.
I couldn’t afford to hire an artist even if I wanted to.
This was never an either/or situation – it was AI or back to my own deeply distressing drawings.
Nobody needs to see that again.

I’m not pretending it’s anything it’s not. I openly use Midjourney.
I haven’t suddenly developed the ability to draw hands. Or feet. Or anything, really.

I’m not copying a specific artist either – the new Monkeys are seeded from my original strip. I’ve just made them less… traumatic to look at.

I’m not making money from this, either. No prints. No NFTs. No merchandising empire. This comic is still something that, statistically speaking, no one reads – except me, and occasionally mcpheeJnr, who doesn’t think they’re funny and is confident he could do better.

Could AI be misused? Definitely.
Is it being misused by me, an occasional comic-maker with no audience and even less influence? Probably not.

AI has let me bring new life to something I’ve been making for years.

Is it “art”? Is it “ethical”? I don’t know.
It’s fun. It’s energising.
And honestly, it makes the whole thing feel worth doing again.

And it hasn’t hurt anyone – unless you count a few Redditors’ blood pressure.

So yes, AI helps me draw the strip.
But it’s for me. And I like it.

In conclusion:
More Monkeys soon, probably.
Still can’t draw.