Greeting supplicants.

I wanted to make a post here that the next proper story update will be next Wednesday, the 29th of April (however, it’s a two page spread so expect the quality to be a little higher). However, there will be an update to KSBD this Wednesday. Unlike other updates, however, it’s going to be a retroactive update to the comic already on the site.

Let me start by saying my goal with this comic has always been to get it published in some fashion, and my aim is get a finished book available for you at the end of this year (think like October-November-ish). The material in the book will be everything from the beginning of the comic to the update next week, and possibly some text content. I hope I will be able to get a book out every year and a half or so in this fashion but I have no definite promises for you other than to say I’ve been talking to a publishing company about it.

However there are two things I’ll need to do first.

The first thing is to update the art on the earlier pages (which should go slowly), and I imagine this might not make it to the site for a while.

The second thing, and what I’ll deal with this week, is to clean up the writing of the comic. I agree with a lot of criticisms of my comic that the main character Allison feels very passive and the fine points of the plot are a little obtuse. Allison may remain kind of a weeny, at least for this book (though as you can see, this is changing a little in the next one!). I’m sorry guys, you’re going to have to stick with her. She hasn’t had any character development or agency in the story because the story proper hasn’t really started yet. I’m sorry for such a long prologue full of weird exposition, but I hope it was at least weird enough to satisfy your interest.

However, I am going to re-work (in some cases heavily) the dialogue on a lot of the pages so it’s a lot more clear just what the hell is actually going on, because letting people infer when there isn’t a lot to infer by yet is a little terrible given the update schedule of the comic. So, on Wednesday you should see the first dialogue pass. It’ll probably make things a lot clearer for you guys and clear up a lot of obtuseness for its own sake.

Until I’ve got a physical bound copy of this thing for you guys, I would consider it a rough draft at best, so thanks for reading so far and sticking with me. As you can tell through my writing, I think one of my core beliefs is against accepting complacency and stagnation. I’m constantly trying to refine my craft and I’m not always 100% satisfied with the work I do, but it’s work that needs to get done anyway, so I do it. It takes me anywhere from around seven to forty hours to do one of these pages (especially the spreads) but I’ve cut that time down a ton through just practicing every week. Though I’ve made comics for almost ten years now I think, KSBD is the first major comic project I’ve taken on (and my brain is constantly cooking up more now that I’m working on a regular project, believe me).

I want to give a huge thanks to Tobin (aka Vylus) who has been instrumental in getting the fantastic looking wiki into shape and who has also helped me with a dialogue pass in the comic.

See you on Wednesday, and next week we’ll definitively be wrapping up the first story arc of this comic, and on to the next, which involves

– unbound devils

– 82 drinking fire

– an angel that rides a motorcycle made of skeletons

– preteen Allison

– Maya’s first story

and most importantly, a Terrible Tree.

 

-Abbadon