The Becoming

Welcome back! DK and I hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday as we entered into 2013!

First order of business I’d like to take care of is to express my gratitude for all the comments of support we’ve received. Each and every one is appreciated and serves to motivate us to not only continue doing our best; but to try even harder in the future.

You may have noticed that DK took it upon herself to dress the site up a little bit. It’s not much, but it’s been pointed out that our site was a bit generic so this is the first step in what will likely prove a long journey to remedy that. It’s our hope that by this time next year, we’ll see a much improved and more visually appealing site. While I can’t promise it’s the highest priority on our “to-do list” (it’s not – that would be getting the comic out on time every week), it IS on there and something that we ARE going to be giving more attention to this year.

DK also found time to start coloring the oft mentioned fabled 20 or so redrawn/rewritten pages from early in the comic. I’ll upload these as each sequence is finished instead of each page since they’ve been rewritten slightly and wouldn’t flow with earlier pages of the same sequence. And as stated before, no changes have been made to the ongoing narrative, just how certain items have been told/revealed. For instance, we now formally, albeit briefly, meet Gull and Shaw in Chapter 1 and William no longer meets Percy outside the Armory but instead their conversation now takes place in the Pardy’s home. Just little tweaks like that.

The first reworked sequence will likely go live next week. It’s just a redrawn version of the opening pages with no real substantial changes other than better art and camera angles. In my ever so humble, potentially biased opinion, it is absolutely beautiful. Even the violent bit at the end.

So, hopefully any questions as to DK’s continued involvement have been put to rest; she’ll still be here contributing where and when she can including the aforementioned 20 or so remastered pages that you can look forward to seeing soon.

Finally, it’s been asked why we don’t just recruit a new artist to keep up the high standard that DK has set for the look of the comic. It’s an easy question to field, with a very predictable answer: money.

Artists spend several hours drawing/coloring their pages and charge accordingly (and rightfully so) but we just don’t have the extra income to spend $400 or so a month (probably higher) for 4 pages of color art.

And, while we are aware that some comics have gone the donation goal route for new pages, that’s simply not an option for us. First off, comics 3x our size have attempted this and rarely meet their goals. Already not a great endorsement for this method. Secondly, even if this worked for a month or two, it’s not the most reliable way to fund an ongoing comic. You could potentially have 2-3 months with only 1-2 pages being produced in this scenario. Even when we lost power for a week from our house being hit by lighting and the time I was hospitalized with pneumonia, we’ve still always managed to do better than that. And those were extreme cases.

Look, I absolutely agree that this comic will not be the same without DK drawing every page and it kills us both that we had to make that decision. But I do think that I will continue to get better on the art side of things. If you look at how far I’ve come since “The Call”, you’ll see some pretty drastic improvement and that’s with, admittedly, little practice in between pages. Forcing myself to do a new page every week also forces me to get better so, improvement will hopefully come at a more brisk pace than before. And, keep in mind, DK will be watching over my shoulder to offer hints and advice along the way.

Seriously, the absolute last thing I want to do is let you guys down. It’ll be a rocky road to start, for sure, I’m not magically going to get 100% better over night, but with time, I truly believe I can get to a level we can all live with.

NEXT MONDAY: You can expect not only another update of things, but 2 remastered pages from Chapter 1 as drawn and colored by DK! See you next Monday!