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Hi anyone listening.

I have not updated fade since about March. I really feel bad about that. Here are my excuses. A) I was focusing on looking for work for the summer and for the future--more on that later. B) After April, I've been concentrating on the Gulf Oil Spill. C) I wrote myself into a corner.

On the last point, the main issue is that I had a next page planned out. I wrote it, I thumbed it out, and it was ready to go. Frankly, it sucked. Enough that I thought it brought the book down . In retrospect, I probably should have just forced it out and moved on, because perfectionism is the enemy of production. But I didn't. Shame on me.

Anyway, I finally wrote something satisfactory, and I'm producing the page now. Will be up ASAP. Thank you for your patience and your readership.

--Jack

You should post thumbs and stuff, it's always cool to see what WIP's look like...

May I add that I find your comic to be AWESOME whenever you actually update?

Because I do.

That actually means more than you probably think it does. Critique is welcome always, but positive feedback makes me want to do better and get to work right away.

Okay. Another (minor) sidetrack, dammit. Here's the page I just finished penciling. Coloring now. (whitespace will be black behind panels, too)

Thanks for the critique. I actually agree on the color...maybe not so much on the ink. I've been toying with a more simplistic coloring style actually. More old bookplate style, with minimalist highlights and a little added shading. Maybe I'll do that on this page. I don't want to go too wild. I think I'll end this issue here, mostly just to break the thread in my own mind from before the long hiatus. In the new issue I can do that. Another thing is that I don't want to get too whiny or anti-hero. I do wish the pencil tone values would come through the colors better, though. They seem to get washed out. I don't mind the saturation. I like the levity it brings. But I don't like how it loses the detail I worked so hard to bring in.

Sorry for the ramble, but that was a lot of disconnected thought.

Also, thanks, but I don't think I'm being too hard on myself. I see enough comic art to know mine is better than some, but a far sight worse than a lot of others.

Forgot to put it here, but I did update the comic finally. Not only that, I've actually written the next issue. I don't mean my usual "vague idea" followed by page-to-page planning. I actually wrote it. Anyway, here's the page.



I'm pretty happy with the dialogue pacing. It works. Fairly proud of the phrase "Nachtmann's terrific death" too.

Very good page, with very good pacing.

Alright. I have NOT been idle. I did something new. Usually, I just have a rough idea of the issue, and I pencil it as I see fit. This time, I actually wrote out a script! I'd scan it, but it's on paper, and barely legible with all the scratchouts and erasures. If I do say so, this is a decent one. With the script, I should be able to pump it out, too. Actually, I'm a bit worried this may be a 30-40 page issue.

"SPOILERS" ahead. Actually if you can read hasty, scratchy script. I write this way when I'm scribbling down thoughts really quickly lest I lose them.

Geez, I really friggin wrote that script 2 years ago?? It's been crazy. I have an editor now, and she has promised to beat me into a schedule. I had totally lost interest in this story for a while, but now I'm getting the interest back. Expect a semi-reboot, I think. I will use the same art, but I I think I will delete issue 1, which I never cared for. It was a good way in, and I'll keep the hard copies, but it's going to go away. I think I'm going to redo the site. The current one is written by hand in hand coded html, css, php, SQL, and JS, but I just don't have time for that anymore. It was fun, but tools like Joomla are well up to the task now. They weren't what I wanted in 2005, but times have changed.