Well Boom is sick. He can’t draw right now. Let’s all wish him a speedy recovery.
To put the illness in a more global context, you all might have noticed we have been having a hard time keeping up with the updates. I wanted to speak for a moment about what is being done about that.
As I have said in the past at this point Boom is Exiern. He really is a wonderful artist to work with and despite the interruptions we are experience right now quite reliable. So for right now on that front the updates on Exiern are going to be erratic until Boom’s life gets less toxic.
However I have to take responsibility for the effect this has the readership. Now there are Exiern has two type of readers the readers who read the free comic and the one s who pay for the exclusive content.
For the free content readers it would easy enough to say “well it’s a free comic you get what you pay for”. However I believe that this statement is fundamentally wrong. Readers invest their time in comic when they read it. They contributing material to the comic by talking about it one the web and generally integral to the success of a comic. Even if an online reader is not giving you money they are “paying” for the comic and deserve to be treated with the respect you give any other customer.
That being said there is not much good news for the public reader. I have been scrambling around to get extra material and everything gone south. There seems to be a global curse of illness chaos and death that is plaguing the artist community. I thought I would personally pay for a few more pages of Dark Reflection but Kraken has been bogged down as well so no luck there. My normal filler artist pool is completely backed up. And I have burned through all my back up art. For this month we’re screwed unless an artist suddenly appears who can crank out pages overnight.
Long term I have been working on getting a sister comic to up and running. Not Dark Reflections, because of the some nebulousness in the ownership of that property it’s never going to be more than an online comic. The new comic, like Exiern, would have a transformation theme but the setting would be different. This comic would update once a week like Exiern as well and share a member’s area Exiern. The problem is I can’t find a bloody artist for it. I have had 3 artists agree to it and then just disappear. And it’s not like I am asking them to do it for free. I am offering a competitive commission rate for the comic and every artist I find for the project seems to disintegrate into the ether the moment I send the contract. So the upshot is that is going to take some time to get online you probably won’t see it till August.
For the paying members the situation similarly bleak for this month, but it gets better faster. I’ve commissioned 5 new donation comics to be placed in the members area. Unfortunately remember the global artist plague/curse. It seems to be troubling the donation comic artists as well. I have been having the darnest time getting people to do any commission work for me at all.
Basically what I am saying is that I know there is a problem and I am trying to fix it. But with out an artist willing to take Government back legal tender in exchange for goods and services (which honestly is the problem I am running into here) the solution is going to be delayed.
- Boom is going to try and get the remaining comics in for this month.
- In April I have a filler artist coming in (I hope).
- By May we should have built up a little buffer to carry us through to July.
- Also in May a new donation comic should be posted and a new one every month after.
- In July-August a new Exiern style comic should be launching.
- In October Jessica Alba will beg me to take her as my devoted love-slave because frankly just because I plan for something to happen doesn’t mean it will happen. I just personally feel that you the readers should know what I am trying to do to fix this problem.
Hey just wanted to give a heads up that there is a new donation comic in the members area. Mind Games talks about Tiffnays thought after Denver left her along in the woods. The classic angel and demon show up on her shoulder but thing don’t go normally from that point on.
Well for the last couple of months I have been offering the tiffany figurine (pictured to the right at a discounted price of $35 to raise money for the production and judge interest. I wanted to get 60 preorders so I could order 200 to get a price break on the total order. Well I have only gotten 15 orders at this point which is falling far short of making a profit on the thing. Still that’s 15 people who want it and I would feel bad about letting them down.
