Belated, day-after news clarification: what Murdoch's talking about on the 'signing papers' is Julia's business liscense getting revoked. Here is Murdoch talking about fixing it with a trip to l'rue, and way the hell back here is Nash asking Harvey to put the fix in.

My comic is too long and too complicated and everything takes forever, including even me finding these references.

Thank you guys for the kind words. I'm not wedded to this new format yet... but I will say it makes exchanges like this, where I'm mostly having people move about a little and talk a lot, much more doable. We'll see!

Annnnd page!

So as mentioned, I'll be experimenting with a new hybrid format for this storyline. Illustrated... storycomic, I guess? The important part from my end is that it's getting more material per page and is taking considerably less effort for the art -- and I'm pretty sure most of y'all are not here for the art, anyhow.

Very much a work in progress though so if you have a question or a comment or complaint, feel free! I have a pretty iron ego, and I want to share this story in a way you guys enjoy as well as in a way that helps me finish. Comments that help me see how to do both will be gratefully taken on board, comments that don't help me will be just as gratefully but firmly jettisoned without prejudice, because even I can't tell the difference until I hear 'em.

I am hoping to get through this in my previous usual fashion of updating to a graceful break point and then taking a week or two pause while I catch up, but I was also hoping to hire at least one more person at the day job this year annnnnd that didn't happen. So I'll just say I'll do my best not to vanish for years again.

FIVE GODDAMN YEARS LATER

So... yeah. Hi?

I'm not going to cover at length why the comic vanished for so long. Call it a combination of health issues, mental health issues, burnout, the really... interesting way family and work troubles compound each other when you work for and with your family, and uh, you know. The fascism.

I also cannot promise it's fully back, and to the extent it is back, it's not going to be quite the same. The art is one of the biggest roadblocks, both because it takes the most time and because I'm not all that good at it; the last time I made a major try at restarting the comic, I decided (with the support and encouragement of my lovely Patreons) to test out something more like an illustrated story format. So for at least the length of this storyline, that's what you'll be getting, and after that -- well, we'll see.

I've had a lot of false starts and I'm hesitant to commit to much, lest the universe hear and start lining up the bowling ball, but I am hoping to have something more than this page by March. But at the very least, I've put up the page that's been half-finished since everything went to hell in 2021.

If you're reading this... thank you for not giving up. I haven't either, not quite yet.

JoAnne Bonner Wright, 1922 - 2013
Leonard Clinton Wright, 1924 - 2021

My grandfather, Leonard Wright, died on June 1st, 2021, at the age of ninety-six, after suffering a major stroke.

For those of you interested, I've written a bit more about his life and death on my Pillowfort; this didn't really seem the venue for it. Suffice to say, I've been living next door to my grandparents since my mid-teens; I've been taking care of him for the last seven years. I'm not distraught, because when someone's ninety-six there are things you're braced for, but I'm a bit off-kilter.

As far as the comic goes, there was supposed to be one final page in this sequence; I'll get that up, hopefully by next week. The comic is likely going on hiatus for the rest of the summer. I'm thinking, at the moment, I'll start posting pages again by the first of September, but even before my grandfather's death I was struggling a bit with some of my mental and physical health issues, so at this point I'm not sure how fast (or slow) my progress will be. My Patreon is the place to watch for comic progress news. I'll try to actually post some, and leave those open to the public for the duration. I do promise not to vanish for years this time; I'm still working on the comic, still feeling those creative urges. They're just a bit... dampened.

Thank you guys, as always, for your patience. I just cannot seem to catch a break from life lately.