I often do a roadmap post once or twice a year about where the comics are and my plans going forward. The past couple years have been particularly messy (thanks, covid) and I’m hardly the only one hanging on by the skin of my teeth right now. Like so many, I’ve been taking a step back, looking at where my life is, and feeling unsatisfied. Though we’re only two months into 2022, it’s already been a trying year.
A brief rundown: Part of my roof began collapsing from the weight of the ice and snow early this month, and a disaster relief team was coming by almost daily for about two weeks. They couldn’t build a new roof until the snow melted, so a good portion of the house was freezing cold for several weeks before there were enough warmish days for a new roof to be installed. There’s still a big hole in my dining room ceiling, but at least there isn’t a waterfall of freezing water streaming from it anymore.
I’m also going to be parting ways with the SpiderForest Collective after our upcoming anthology wraps up.
Okay, so what about the comics?
Well, like I said, I’ve been stepping back and reassessing where my life is and what I actually want to do with it. For many years, webcomics were my escape and a way to channel my energy into something productive. But the internet has changed a great deal since I began, and the webcomics scene is in a painful transition: for many years it was a purely indie space with a self-sustaining community, but with the rise of social media, websites like Webtoons and Tapas, and the fact that mainstream media is moving to the internet, webcomics are changing in ways I can’t keep up with. More and more and more work has to go into promotion to gain any visibility. It’s been especially difficult as the kinds of comics I make simply don’t do well anymore; webcomics are generally trending towards romance, relatable slice-of-life, lighthearted/cozy, and tend to favour cute or anime-style art. While those are all great genres and styles, they’re simply not the kinds of things I enjoy making. Also, all the large companies that indie artists rely on for monetising or promoting our work like Gumroad, Kickstarter, and Patreon have been making changes that harm their creators, forcing us to scramble to find viable alternatives. We end up needing to hop from platform to platform, losing stability and taking risks. In the past few years, I’ve left at least a dozen platforms and watched many of their alternatives fold under when they can’t gather the resources to keep going. In short, I’m burnt out, the landscape in incredibly unstable, and I can’t keep up.
So wait, this is the end?? No more Ashes or Eryl? The short answer: no! The long answer: they probably aren’t returning soon, and they may not return in their current medium, especially Eryl. Lately I’ve been pursuing traditional publishing and have been pitching both comics and prose shorts to anthologies. I was contacted by a publisher about making a one-shot comic issue, however it hasn’t gotten any farther yet than potential interest, so that’s completely up in the air at the moment. Working on prose has been a breath of fresh air, and it’s been surprising to find multiple people who have told me my prose is stronger than my comics. I still feel like a beginner when it comes to writing books, and I have many weak points, but I also think I’m headed in the right direction. One of my biggest strengths tends to be my world-building, and that’s usually the first thing that gets sacrificed when scripting comics. I love that with prose, I can dedicate more time to exploring the mechanics and cultures of the worlds I’ve created. It’s very possible that after I finish the redux of Book I of Eryl, I may continue the story as an online novel. I would love to keep making Ashes as a comic, but I don’t know at the moment if I can dedicate the time and energy towards it.
I’m in my mid-thirties now, and it’s time to reassess what I’m doing with my life and where I want to be. And truth be told, I want to be an author. I have since I was a child; the entire reason I started making webcomics as a teenager was because I could script and draw better than I could write, but that isn’t the case anymore. I’m currently outlining and drafting multiple writing projects, and I’ll see where I can go with them.
So the TL;DR is: life has been stressful, webcomics have become too stressful, and I’m currently pursuing traditional publishing instead. Will the comics return? Ashes: hopefully, but not anytime soon. Eryl: the rest of the redux, yes, but it will possibly continue as prose from Book II onwards.
