Hey, everyone! I’ve been mulling over some thoughts about the progress of WARBAND and considering a hiatus. Yeah, I know… I did the same thing during chapter 1, I put out about ten pages and then quit for a year. xD Hopefully this time around it won’t be so long. 

The $10 tier Patrons will still see posts from me, I’ve got them queued up all the way through August but I’ll be holding off on posting comics till I get my act together with the writing. 

I recently hired a content editor at Mythcreants and had a conversation with Oren Ashkenazi, who looked at chapter 1 of Warband and had some nice feedback for me, as well as some hard truths…  His first bit of advice was to not lead into the story with worldbuilding exposition. I’d had a handful of friends tell me the same exact thing, but I disregarded the advice thinking that the humor of Gwilyon being slightly drunk and belligerent would keep it entertaining while he rambled about the world setting. Oren pointed out that the opening was weak because it didn’t have a conflict or a reason for a reader to get invested, so that could be causing folks to put Warband down before really giving it a chance. 

In the interest of starting the story with a conflict and getting readers hooked, Oren advised that I start the story in the first dungeon they run– which would be… chapter 2, Warlock.  This means that I’ll be basically scrapping the first chapter and starting the series with Warlock. >_< But I’m really serious about crafting a solid story that I’d be proud to put into print and flog at my local comic-con. I need to be 100% confident about my story before it goes into print. I probably jumped the gun by starting the drawings for chapter 1 before I really had the story solid, I can’t make that mistake once I’ve put down a bunch of money to create physical comics. 

With Warlock becoming the new chapter 1, you might see scenes appear twice if you’ve been following the comic so far– namely, the scene with Micah and the red spirit on page 19. It’s central to the plot and will have to be worked back into the story, same thing’s gonna happen but just under different circumstances.  My next steps will probably be to add a page or two to the beginning, something to buff up the opening of Warlock and really make it feel like an interesting beginning. And then… basically take Warcry offline, because it’s technically no longer canon. I might keep page 20 onward around, as sort of a silly chapter 0 prologue, but scrap everything before page 20. The bits where Gwilyon is chasing Micah around and trying to electrocute him counts as a conflict, right? XD After that… I’ll be working on my writing.

My aim is to get the writing for Warband completely airtight before I even start drawing again, so there’s no more shenanigans with scrapping drawings. From the beginning I’ve been saying that I need to have solid writing before the art starts, but apparently it wasn’t solid enough… I need an adult to read my stuff first before I go hog-wild with art. xD Because in the end, even though I’m writing this “for my own entertainment” it still needs to make sense to others if I’m gonna flog copies of the comic to an audience.  

With that in mind, I’ve decided to join a writing circle! It’s called SNOUP, and their focus is on high fantasy comics and novels. Taralen is an old buddy of mine, and when she heard I was having trouble with my writing kindly invited me into the writing circle. SNOUP will be helping me out with beta reading and writing critiques. 

In the meantime, as always, you can still currently read the old pages at Warbandcomic.com, and my Patreon will still be around even though it might be a little while before I start posting up new pages. It can be found at https://www.patreon.com/magusferox and it means a lot to me when I see people who dig Warband enough to support it, it’s a real thrill to know that it’s a worthwhile thing. Also a big reason why I want to get it right, for the folks who have put their faith in me from the beginning. You know who you are, you mean a lot to me!