Newest Page: 531 - Useful Fiction

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2023-05-17

Page 531 + New Format

Page 531 is up!

This is the first page of the new comic/novel format that I mentioned last time. Let's pick up Jen's conversation from where it left off on Page 495!

Featured Friend:

Adhemlenei The blog and art gallery of one of True Magic's long-time readers, Zela (a.k.a. Illinia). There's a ton of art and writing to browse, as well as two ongoing fantasy webcomics. Go see!

2023-04-08

Page 530 + Upcoming Format Transition

Page 530 is up! Thank you again for your patience!

(Updates may continue to be unpredictable while I work to get back up to speed.)

This past year of organizing has turned out to be the best thing I could have done for the TM comic (among other things). I've improved the upcoming story in ways that were only possible with a LOT of uninterrupted writing time.

There's more work to do (with both comic development and Life Stuff™), but I'm very happy about the progress.

I've also gotten a clearer idea of how much story remains to be told, which brings me to a small announcement:

This September will mark the 20th(!) anniversary of True Magic.

And while I've gotten a fair bit better at writing and drawing in that time, I must admit that I haven't gotten the slightest bit faster.

We're now pretty far into the first of five planned story volumes. If we continued at the current rate, the comic would be finished sometime around the year 2100.

I think it would be nice to complete it sooner than that.

So I'm going to implement an idea that I've been considering since 2018: a sort of hybrid comic/novel format that lets me tell part of the story with prose, while drawing only the comic panels that contribute visually to the story.

(This could easily save several hours per page, just by trimming out the "talking heads" panels that aren't very interesting to look at anyway.)

Prose is also more concise, which means that each page can cover more ground in terms of story progress. Combined with the quicker page production, that should add up to significantly more TM content per century. ;)

You'll see the new format starting on the next page!

I'm a little nervous about making this change, and it may take some getting used to... but I hope you'll give it a chance! In addition to making comic production more sustainable, ideally it will let me share more of the adventure with you sooner.

Anyway, I hope you'll all continue to enjoy True Magic. I'll keep giving it my best! ♥