One more strip in this arc and then we'll start another-- one that has way, way more legacy characters returning.

This one was close to being on the cutting room floor. It just doesn't fit the other strips as it's not the same as neither John or George are in it. There was a possibility of it being a "credits scene" style strip, but since the next strips take place after this, I was hesitant to do that.

There's an uncensored version on the Patreon at the NSFW tier.

So a bit more explanation on where ZR has been. I began dreading working on it. I started 'Dam It!' to try to find joy in creating a comic strip again... which didn't really work.

Some of the issues with ZR were the current designs of the characters as I was hating working on strips with them. I tried fixing some of the issues with George getting a new haircut, but it didn't really help.

After this Family Matters arc ends, I'm changing up the main cast's looks. I've got a wholly new design for John that looks different, but still feels like him. George has more of a mullet, Zoey is still being worked out. John ended up needing the most change as his current look is basically just what he was at the end of the legacy timeline and so he feels older than he should at this point in the reboot. Lyn is probably the most similar going forward to her current look.

Some of the extended cast will also get changed, others might just keep their look until I have an idea for their update.

I'm not saying we're back full-time, but we're semi back.

I want to focus on Maho Noir for the time being, as that's where my creative drive is at the moment, but I want to dip into ZR when I'm feeling like it. To that end, I want to finish this storyline, which has a couple week's of strips left. I'll see how I'm feeling about ZR after those go up, but I'm not committing to an update schedule of ZR at the moment.

I did change the template for the strip here. I'm trying to do everything in a more organized fashion-- after doing so for Maho Noir. So I spent a day creating a new template file for ZR that will eventually let me do PDFs of storylines/etc. like I'm doing for Maho Noir.

When I initially wrote this arc, the werewolves were just casually coming into the farmhouse at various points to rehydrate/etc.. This was written during that time and she was going through the snacks with him... but as I kept making John more freaked out having the werewolves randomly show up inside made little sense.

So I retooled this moment to have her stay outside... it also let me imply a fully shifted version of her in panel one that wouldn't have appeared in the previous treatment.

Here's another example of past me thinking I could get far too many sentences of dialogue into a three panel comic strip...

I don't know what past me was planning during the script writing stage. I wrote this in December so it's been too long for present me to remember the writing session for the first or later drafts of this.

I'm getting more and more interested in doing chapter two for Maho Noir. I get limited time out of the week to work on it as I'm doing strips for ZR and DI!. Most of the time I've been able to devote to it lately was fixing up the website so I don't have to worry about new readers or readers catching up seeing a massive spoiler on the frontpage... but now that's all squared away with the new layout. So, I've done the chapter two cover and started work on the first page.

In the scripts I wrote for this arc a few months ago, there were a few more of John freaking out due to the noises outside... Apparently past me thought it was funnier than current me does. So, we're going to skip them and work towards the end of John's side. I'm not sure if that's going to make George's side lopsided or if it'll still end about half and half-- I figure telling the story with strips that aren't just beating a dead horse is better than trying to force a convention of bouncing back and forth if the material isn't there.

I'm not sure I'd consider writing new strips for John and Lyn's story or not. There's two beats with them that need to be told which is about the same for George and Zoey's story... so I might see which strips work the best and have the beats that are needing to be done for the stories to finish.

The next arc has several legacy characters returning. A handful of them have new designs to fit the new world and some copyright issues that I was made aware of-- since the world is new, I'm fixing things I stepped on with some characters' looks.

We finally get to a reveal I've been wanting to have happen since George has become a zombie-- in this timeline.

He can't bring himself to eat human remains while they're identifiable, if at all.

There'll be far more about this, but I tried to figure out the best way to show it and the first idea I had was this since they know zombies and would think they're doing the right thing.

With the bouncing back and forth between the two male leads, I like to see how each of them has their SO's family messing with them-- I know I'm biased since I wrote this whole thing...

But the way it's "rhyming" feels like I did a decent job with this wacky way of telling the story.