Welcome back.
This is the beginning of book 2, and of chapter VI. We’ll get to book 2’s titles in a moment. (Incidentally, book 1 was called “An Exchange Of Secrets With Oblivious Transfer”.)
I actually have a buffer of a couple pages! We’ll see how long that lasts.
Two weeks prepping for and going to cons. One week recovering from those cons, in which I knocked out the very simple first two pages of this chapter. Then one week succumbing to concrud that may have been whooping cough. And another week putting off drawing this page because oh god exercise machine. This page took too damn long, and I really miss being in the groove of two pages a week with other stuff done around them!
I need to go back into the previous page and change the hint of the exercise machine to match what I ended up drawing here but right now I am just delighted to have another page up.
Also of course the Kickstarter is still going! It’s fully funded; now I’m looking into spot gloss on the Panopticon as a secondary goal.
Barrett knows what’s best. Barrett always knows what’s best.
I really wish I’d been able to show this through Rita’s eyes but letting you in on what the Sunrisers are trying to do was more important.
If you follow my twitter and/or LJ you’re probably tired of hearing about this, but the Kickstarter is still going. I’ve set a secondary goal of $20,000; this will get spot gloss on the Panopticon, which should be AWESOME. The book’s happening either way; now it’s just a matter of how sweet the printing is.
I’ve got my studio mostly cleaned up from the past month of craziness; I was able to sit at the coffee table to finish this page. Hopefully that means the return of a semi-regular schedule. I hope I’m not inviting disaster by changing the schedule from “updates whenever” to “updates twice a week”.
Finally, here is one of the heads of Image responding to people saying that the way Marvel and DC have treated creators over the years is okay. It’s really nice to see someone that high up in the industry saying that no, it’s not okay for this to be business as usual, even if the contracts were all legal and above-board.
Only two more weeks to get a copy of the book! You get shipping for free; if you get one afterwards, it’ll be $25 plus shipping. Or plus attending a con.
Man I’m gonna be glad when I finish this scene and can quit drawing all these friggin’ exercise machines.
Okay, we’re in the final week of the Rita Kickstarter. I’ve gotten some better quotes, that are letting me revise the threshold for spot gloss down by a LOT – I think I can make it happen at around $6400. If you haven’t ordered a copy, this is getting down to your last chance to get it for this price – it’ll be $25 plus shipping afterwards, or $25 plus all the expense of attending a convention.
I’m debating whether or not this is the end of chapter VI. It’d make for the shortest chapter so far at only six pages, but I feel like I might need the chapter break to actually shift the scene like a normal comic for once. The last time I used this particular panel layout was back at the end of chapter 1; it really feels like part of this particular leitmotif might be that it ends a chapter.
(Leitmotif? Yeah, seriously. I’ve been thinking about this comic in somewhat musical terms since I began, and this past weekend I started to realize that the deliberate repetition of panel arrangements was arguably creating an equivalent to the use of small phrases to represent characters, places, or emotion in huge works like operas. You can see some of my initial Twitter ponderings of the idea here, and ponder the definition of it on Wikipedia. Of course the real test will be if I pull up other panel arrangements to bring up certain moods.)
ALSO I am finally starting to rebuild my habits of productivity after the trough caused by three cons in two weekends, a week of recovery, and another week of being down with some vicious concrud. So hopefully things should be a little more regular around here soon.
Thanks to Gabe for his pimpage of Rita and the Kickstarter on Dumm Comics, and to E.K. Weaver for the link from her TJ And Amal!
If you're enjoying this comic, please consider buying the book or buying a PDF, supporting me on Patreon, or telling your friends and/or favorite tastemakers about it. Thanks!
This comic is finished; you may want to check out some of my other comics as well.
This comic is finished; you may want to check out some of my other comics as well.