We had a power outage at work yesterday and I couldn’t work so I went through the script for the chapter 1 reboot and did a real high level outline of the whole thing and I think I like this a bit more. I think I’m actually going to keep the opening like the original. The way I was going to rewrite it, there was less focus on Miriam, but its important that their sibling rivalry gets introduced, that Brad is Miriam’s boyfriend, that Ivanhoe wants to go to India, and that Marina doesn’t want to talk to him.

I know some people don’t love a flashback, but I don’t give a shit any more lol The only exposition-y bit is going to be the “Ivanhoe Scott had a dream…” line. It’s also important that Miriam reads Ivanhoe’s journals and learns about a certain character for a future story.

It’s going to be less “the pirates went to northern Ontario, then Nova Scotia, then get lost at sea, then dick around in the Caribbean.” The two pages showing them selling scrap metal, going to ancient ruins, and getting mugged? That’s getting expanded.

I’ve got a list of like 10 things that need to be set up in chapter 1. There are a couple scenes I think are funny but I might just draw them as sketchy comic extras. This is the only chapter that will get this treatment. I haven’t been satisfied with it for a while, and a bad review kind of had me like “I should fix it up before I ever think of doing a print edition.”

Gonna try and be really strict with my page count. It’ll still be like 100 pages, but where I go Quentin Tarantino on dialogue, I’m going to be a little more picky. I finally feel really good about the direction of this.

Idk if I should call it a reboot. Its more “here’s the same chapter with some extra details I either failed to communicate or didnt think of til later bc I wrote the first chapter 10+ years before the rest.” Chapter 1 is still canon as-is MINUS one detail: Sulphur Tongue doesn’t call himself that.

This is also the perfect time to get the colouring in line with all the other chapters. I was starting to do that but stopped when I got this idea.

I’m still not sure what the release of this is going to look like. I’m definitely going to be posting it as I do it (which will suck for new readers). I typically have two comics on the go at all times, so this will be done concurrently to chapter 4. Webtoon will be the most difficult to update… Luckily the sequence of events is very similar so I’ll be able to drop like 20 pages at once

I’m actually getting excited about this now! I kind of just want to work on thumbnails lol

Chapter 3 update: I’ve started rendering pages and this is what I’ll be doing for the next few weeks. 3.5 weeks til new pages start dropping! First update will be two pages and I anticipate the chapter to be done on December 23rd. You’ll have Christmas and New Years off before this nonsense resumes.

CH3 Epilogue update: I need a title for this. Drawing is ongoing. I’m inking as I go, so this is moving fast. I need to have everything drawn by November so I can jump into…

CHAPTER 4! Coming Summer 2027 if all things go according to plan. Thinking too far into the future makes me depressed so this is as far as I’m taking this discussion.

Also, I’m going to try and utilize the blog function on here more instead of dumping my stream of consciousness into my bluesky feed.