#it takes us a year to make two pages of webcomic

[homestuckreplay]

Webcomics at Day 100 #8: El Goonish Shive

Pages read: 1/21/2002 – 12/27/2002 & 4/14/2009 – 12/29/2009; about 300 pages (including author’s commentary)

Reason for selection: To be honest I just wanted to read it. It’s best known for its real-time exploration of transgender themes via science fiction technology as author Dan Shive (along with many others on the internet) explores his personal experience with gender.

Current status: Ongoing since 2002 with no major hiatuses; update schedule has varied but is currently three times a week for the main comic.

Content warnings: nonconsensual gender transformations, non-explicit sexual themes with 16-17 year old characters, cultural appropriation (Japanese language; dreamcatchers), period typical sexism and homophobia (early strips only)

Note: To the best of my understanding, Dan Shive uses he/him pronouns, but if anyone has a recent source stating otherwise please let me know and I’ll revise this post.

Overall thoughts:

‘And then Susan was all like "I am NOT your strawman", hit me with a hammer, and developed into one of my most favoritist characters ever in anything.’ (Commentary for 5/29/2002)

On August 1, 2014, as part of a Patreon goal, Dan Shive began going through the archives of his already long running webcomic, adding author’s commentary to early strips. In the twelve years between making and commenting on his 2002 comics, Shive has gone from being a teenager with no formal artistic experience who’s absorbed the sexist attitudes of his culture, to an experienced artist and writer with a vision for his project and an honesty about his process who’s ready to be both excited and critical about his early work.

Shive states several times that his commentary isn’t designed to be read on a first read of EGS, but I personally disagree. Around May 2002 in the archives, I realized I was reading for the extremely compelling commentary and not the then-fairly mediocre comic. Shive’s clear excitement for future storylines and regular references to his improvement as an artist and person gave me the drive to keep reading, knowing the upward journey ahead of me. The commentary also provides an alternate, twisting path through the narrative, frequently linking back to previous comics when they’re relevant to help the reader notice foreshadowing and continuity, which is really helpful for a new reader taking in lots of information at once – and I like seeing an author clearly proud of himself for his hard work foreshadowing, where some creators might be dismissive of the feat or ignore it altogether.

EGS – named for the ‘goons’ hired by supervillains - begins by focusing on regular(ish) high schoolers Tedd, Elliot and Sarah, and top-secret lab experiment squirrelgirl Grace. Tedd has a mad science laboratory in his home where he creates questionable technology, including a laser gun that can change the target’s species and biological sex. The characters form relationships and experiment with this technology. When Elliot gets ‘stuck’ in a female form, an adventure to restore his original form ends in his male and female forms becoming two separate entities, after which point Ellen, the female version, explores her existence as essentially the human form of Elliot’s removed curse, and achieves self-actualization while fighting a giant pile of goo.

Ellen’s identity exploration in October 2002 was when I began to connect emotionally with the comic itself, and I started noticing improvement in the art in November. Shive improves massively in the first year, and even he’s surprised by it – a character casually mentions that he’s gay in June 2002, and Shive’s commentary says that he doesn’t remember this happening so early. 2002’s ‘Sister’ arc, which runs for around nine months, uses a board game metaphor to describe the story beats – it’s a little clunky in places, but I like what it’s going for. By 2009, Shive is far more confident with complex emotional arcs, and with balancing serious/comedic and magic/realist elements in his story, which can only come from those first efforts to improve.

‘You look in the mirror, but someone else looks back. You remember a life you never had, one that cannot be yours. You are the piece that does not fit, you don’t belong in this game. The board has been knocked over, you shall be swept away…’ (Strip title (!!) for 10/02/2002)

Shive is an anime fan and former martial artist, and the comic assumes a knowledge of anime – especially anime fight scenes – that I just don’t have. However, Shive is good at citing his influences, mentioning Ranma ½, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon and The X-Files as inspiring specific choices, among others. With the exception of an excruciating ‘how dare you not get that reference’ in-comic moment in June 2009, knowledge of Shive’s influences isn’t necessary to enjoy EGS; he’s just giving credit where it’s due.

EGS begins with a typical newspaper format – a horizontal black and white four-panel strip, with a full color A4 strip on Sundays. Although Shive never experiments with animated or interactive elements, he plays around with the strip format and panel size in the early years. In July 2002, Shive uses three-panel strips describing the actual continuity, with a fourth horizontal panel below containing events that ‘don’t actually happen’. Shive also tries out using the comic’s title for extra information, as in May 2002’s ‘Jeremy is Juggling Dinner Plates Off-Screen in the Last Three Panels’. By 2009, the majority of comics fill an A4 page in shaded grayscale, a format that carries through to this day. In an August 2009 author’s commentary, Shive considers how a scene would look if animated, but doesn’t express any desire to actualize on this.

My favorite thing about EGS is how Shive discusses his characters. In his commentary, he addresses ‘past me’ with criticism like ‘you should at least have a decent reason if you're going to make Grace upset like that’, or says he ‘honestly didn't want to write commentary’ for a strip where Ellen was upset, showing a really strong emotional connection to the leads. He also addresses the characters directly in commentary, and discusses them as though they have agency beyond his own, for example, ‘I gave Tedd access to something he could totally abuse without anyone knowing, and he didn't’. He’s very interested in alternate universes of his own story, claiming to be an Elliot/Tedd shipper since 2002 despite their not being canon in the main comic, and creates the EGS: NewsPaper subcomic for non-canon storylines.

Among literary writers and critics, it’s very unfashionable to discuss characters this way, but a lot of mainstream and hobbyist writers (including me!) have had these experiences. I think it’s human instinct to connect with other people, and it’s a strength that we’re able to create the idea of a guy and see them as real, like when we see a face in the clouds or in raindrops running down a windscreen. It helps with having compassion for real people we’ve never met. And while it’s definitely not the only way to look at characters, an author being so excited and invested about their own OCs definitely helps me get excited about them too.

The first villain introduced in the comic is a sentient pile of goo, accidentally made by Tedd in science class. The goo, which can mold and change shape, becomes a recurring enemy – an ultimate shapechanger for a story that’s so deeply focused on transformations. It’s a story about malleability and getting the chance to physically shape yourself into the person you want to be, and at its start, it’s definitely a wish fulfilment comic. That applies to lots of things that a young person might think is cool – the existence of an ‘anime martial arts’ class, getting a squirrelgirl gf who walks around your house naked, breaking in to government facilities to steal jewels – but applies especially to the transformations.

Actually, no, the title of this comic [‘The Real Reason for the Male/Female Options on the TF Gun’] is such a liar. It is lying super hard. I don't care if that's a spoiler. I'm just gonna say it. Liar liar, metaphorical pants on all SORTS of fire. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this is yet another example of me basically saying "not that that sort of thing interests me and has been on my mind for nearly literally as long as I can remember" (and only "nearly" because I think my earliest memory involves looking out at a porch or something and I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking about being stuck as one sex at the time and how that was not a preferred state of being). (Commentary for 5/28/2002)

Relevance to Homestuck: [spoilers for Act 6]

‘Alright, someone send a message to past me to send a message to his past me telling past-past me to get back to me in regard to…’ (Commentary for 8/28/2002)

Both Homestuck and EGS are known for causing fans’ queer and transgender awakenings, which leads to a particularly powerful personal connection between the fans and the comic. Both feature characters with uncommon experiences of gender and sexuality, and characters who begin life as regular humans but develop animal traits. Both also feature multiple versions of the same character spread across different timelines and universes, and both even use the terms ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ to distinguish between these versions. They explore identity in similar ways, including a focus on whether one version of a character can ever be the ‘true’ version, and the different potential versions of ourselves we all have the power to become depending on what choices we make, thereby exploring free will as it relates to identity formation. In both cases, this broader theme is explicitly connected to how characters choose to express their genders.

Also in both, the theme of gender is obvious from early on – before the authors themselves were fully aware of it. The exploration of this theme does date both comics, as understandings of gender among online queer communities have radically progressed in the past decade, but both are attempting to reflect changing understandings – Shive uses sex and gender interchangeably in early EGS strips, but becomes attuned to the distinction as time passes – and both are radically ahead of the mainstream media of their time. I’d also argue they better represent trans peoples’ real experiences of gender, instead of the ways we might describe our genders to cis people – but others might disagree.

Both comics start off with a very fast update schedule, which rapidly slows down over the course of the story in response to the author’s changing schedule – in both cases this dramatically affects the pace of the story, and storylines which would finish in months instead take years. EGS’ ‘Sister’ arc includes 158 comics released over 9 months in 2002-2003, while ‘Sister II’ includes 133 pages over 21 months in 2008-2010. This means that in-universe time passes far slower than real time, Homestuck famously taking two and a half years to cover a single in-universe day, and EGS taking nine years to cover eleven in-universe weeks. In Homestuck, Hussie is already much older than the characters at the story’s start, but in EGS this has major implications for an author who began as a peer of the characters aging much faster than they do – this has been softened by an in-universe timeskip.

Both comics contain occasional author-driven retcons; while Homestuck’s famous examples concern the characters’ race, EGS’ concern better characterization, and Shive is more open about them. A June 2002 comic contains an altered line of dialog from Susan, as well as a link to the original version, and the explanation ‘If I had to somehow explain how both the new and original version could be canon, my explanation would be this: The original was what Tedd imagined Susan was saying!’ (commentary for 6/27/2002).

There’s also some clear differences. While Homestuck becomes a collaborative project over time with Hussie moving into more of a director role, EGS continues to be one person’s very weird, unedited vision, with little outside input. It also primarily contains actual foreshadowing, instead of the ‘retroactive foreshadowing’ described by Hussie in their end of Act 2 Q&A.

Q: Is Tedd REALLY a guy? A: Yes! Well 99-- um, make that 95% certain. 90%. Yup. 80% certain he's a guy. Totally. ...65% certain. (EGS FAQ, archived on 2/13/2002)

Continue reading? Definitely. It’s not without problems, but I think EGS is important to the trans community, and I think Shive is an attentive, dedicated and gifted storyteller with a deep love for his own work, which is rare to find in something so long-running.

[caer-gai]

Angsty Arthurian AU Idea number ???

Reincarnation AU! Ector is raising a not-yet-remembering Arthur on his own in some off the grid small town. All alone. No Kay. Arthur had this feeling of 'something missing' his entire childhood, Ector knows who it is and has just enough of an idea what's become of Kay that it hurts a lot to think about.

They gather a bunch of local reincarnations Bedivere for sure, maybe Dinadan, Morgan, Guinevere, as Arthur is remembering and coming into his destiny. They're a small, tight knit found family scrappy low resources rebellion sort of vibe. Very fun very cool.

Now, Uther is still alive and well and running his own court/cult of personality/militant group. They and Arthur's group will come into conflict but he's also got his own agenda. Anyways one of his strongest lieutenants is Lot, who runs a powerful secret base for Uther's group, where he's "training" his sons to be Uther's perfect soldiers.

He also has Kay.

Between Lot and Uther they've made Kay into the perfect weapon against Arthur: trained since he was a baby, magic forced to it's max making him really powerful (a way to describe it i came up with comes from bedivere "The magic around him was screaming") he's supposed to be unshakably loyal. Excpt the only ones he's really loyal to are Lot's kids, to which he's become a weird sort of surrogate big brother (as much as he can). They're the only one's who treat him like a human.

Gareth absolutely hero warships Kay (though in a naive 'you're such a great knight i can't wait to serve Uther too!' kind of way that hurts Kay's soul). Anyways Kay is absolutely terrifying on the battlefield, and for a long time no one and nothing can stand in his way. Until he fights Bedivere (neither know each other's identity)

Bedivere is a solid challenge on his own, but when Kay blasts him with fire it doesn't burn Bedivere. Instead it activates some sort of magic signal bound to their souls, which protects Bedivere. Now that they know both are horror struck (for different reasons) and freeze. One of Kay's "teammates" takes a cheap shot at Bedivere, but he's warned by his team and dodges away. Making him the first to ever escape Kay.

Bedivere tells his peeps about this, which sends Ector into a dark spiral and leads Arthur to ask a lot of questions. Meanwhile, Kay is back at base and not in his armour for the first time. And he's in a cell. Gawain comes to visit, angry at Kay for freezing up, mostly because it made Lot mad. he goes on at Kay for a while before Kay finally snaps and tells him that it was Bedivere he was fighting, and on top of it the signal that save Bedi's life was one he a Kay crafted together to ensure that they couldn't hurt each other.

Which ouch. Gawain tried to apologize, but Kay's too tired for this rn and goes to sleep.

That's about as far as I've gotten linearly. Two other scenes I have in mind with Kay and Gareth-

Gareth is following Kay around while he's getting ready for a mission, mentions how he wants to be just like Kay when he grows up and Kay stops what he's doing gets down on Gareth's level and looks him in the eyes and says "Beaumains, You are going to be so much better than I ever was." (One day, in a happier world and place, where Gareth doesn't have to be anyone's soldier he remembers the first life, and he remembers this and he goes to Kay and hugs him and tells him he's still his hero)

Gareth wants very badly to go with Kay on one of his missions. So badly he teaches himself to replicate Kay's fire magic, and shows it to Kay hoping to impress him. Instead Kay freaks the fuck out and yells at him and makes him promise to never show or tell anyone about this ever again. it's the first time gareth is genuinely scared of kay. Kay hates himself for it but he can't let Lot and Uther put Gareth through the same hell that has been Kay's entire life.

idk if im feeling silly enough i might do some art for this, bc the visual of badass armoured up Kay reassuring little baby Gareth is living in my brain now

[ot3]

Hey! The link to your FAQ wasn't working for me so I don't know if this question has been asked before. I really appreciate your perspectives on AI art. Do you happen to have any resources that you read/listened to on intellectual property rights and the issues with it? I just don't really know where to start with it.

[heres where i cut out a big paragraph of me, once again, bitching about how blog pages don't work on the tumblr app and i think that's fucking stupid]

anyway i dont have any generalized sources on the subject but the tl;dr of it is: intellectual property rights exclusively benefit people who have the resources to pursue sustained litigation. 99% of the time, what IP law is being used for is to reinforce corporate ownership of work that was done by their employees.

the whole disco elysium debacle is a great case study.

The shareholders of ZA/UM accused the trio of, among other things, intending to steal intellectual property (IP) from the company — a curious accusation, considering that the world of the game is based off of a novel written by Kurvitz himself. The case of Disco Elysium illustrates the shortcomings of IP rights as protection for artists. Consequently, it contains a lot of lessons for the labor movement when it comes to the arts, and serves as a reminder that creative workers are, at the end of the day, workers. But this is not just an academic exercise. It’s a human story about the intimate consequences of capitalist exploitation. “I got my soul ripped out of me,” Kurvitz told me over Zoom in April of 2023. “I got my skull cracked open and my brain lifted out of it by a fifty-five-year-old financial criminal.”

another example: alex norris of webcomic name, which you will probably recognize when you see it, has been raising hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past several years to try and keep up with the protracted legal battle over maintaining ownership of his own work.

I have been fighting this case since 2019. It arose out of an agreement to make a boardgame based on my webcomic in 2017 but the publishing company has used this as an opportunity to take all of my intellectual property, and has even claimed ownership of Webcomic Name as a whole. I can't go into more detail here, but the details of the case are publicly available to read online.

Then, in a 2024 update:

I have essentially won the main case based on the decisions made last summer. The Judge has clearly stated that I own my comics, and that the other party has infringed on my copyright. It is not over yet, as there are still a few things that need to happen. Hopefully things will all be wrapped up this year. After 6 years of legal battling, I can’t wait to be free of all of this. Hopefully, this second case will backfire, and they will be sanctioned for filing it. But to get to that point requires a frustratingly large amount of work, time and money.

An interesting thing about both of these two specific instances is that they involve creators who had entire bodies of work produced around the specific IPs that were stolen from them before they even began partnering with corporate entities to produce works. which is insane! you can spend years writing novels, drawing comics, and if a company comes in with enough lawyers they can own those ideas.

this is pretty distinctly different to me than instances of work you do while being employed by a corporate entity being owned by that corporate entity, because at least you know what you're getting into there to some degree, but i still think that's bad too. consider stuff like the owl house and gravity falls, two disney shows made by people who very very clearly did not like working for disney. disney owns their ideas, their characters, their worlds, because that's the price you pay for having an animated show produced.

essentially it's very very clear upon even the slightest examination that intellectual property in no way exists to codify who the creator responsible for specific creative concepts or works is. it exists to turn nebulous things like 'ideas' into market commodities, and to funnel the profits made by the labor of individual artists and writers into corporate bank accounts.

the only person who has ever really benefited from IP law as an individual trying to lay claim to their own work is ken penders, who notoriously won his suit to have ownership of characters and storylines he created. heartbreaking: Worst Person You Know Gets An Unequivocally Deserved Legal W.

The comics continued under Flynn’s direction as if nothing happened, but things started looking grim in late 2012, when Archie suddenly fired its entire legal team. The company had been unable to produce Penders’ work-for-hire contract, which would have given control of his creations to Sega. Penders claimed the contract had never existed. A heavily circulated Tumblr post outlining the case (which has been corroborated as a reliable source by Penders) explains that while Archie did provide a photocopy of a contract allegedly signed by Penders in 1996, Penders claimed that the document was a forgery. That it was neither an original copy nor a contract from the beginning of the writer’s tenure at Archie meant that its validity was questionable. Making things worse, Archie couldn’t produce an original copy of any previous contributor’s contract, meaning that any writer or artist who had worked on the Archie Sonic line could potentially follow in Penders’s footsteps and reclaim their work. “So are you saying prior counsel blew it?” the presiding judge asked Archie counsel Joshua Paul in a May 2013 court session. His reply was unequivocal: “Absolutely, your Honor.”

So yeah. Owning the work you do as an artist is only something that happens when the people trying to profit off of it show unprecedented and staggering level of incompetence in their legal teams.

Then, alongside not owning the concepts and ideas you produce while working with corporate entities, there's the issue of NDA regarding specific pieces you've produced. This causes a LOT of trouble for freelance illustrators/character designers/concept artists, etc. Looking for work is very hard when the past three years of pieces you've drawn can't be added to your portfolio. Some people have password protected pages on their portfolios that they use for NDA work, but I believe the right to do this varies depending on your contract. I'm not 100% sure. In cases where the project you worked on eventually comes out, that's one thing, but there will be instances where the entire project gets canned after all the work is done, but is still under NDA so essentially all of your work has been taken from you, crumpled up into a ball by a studio executive, thrown in the trash can, and legally you are not allowed to go pick it out of the bin and try and flatten it out again.

This has all been pretty art-focused because that's the kind of circles I run in and where a lot of my interests lie but the truth is none of this is even remotely close to as evil IP law gets. I've saved the most egregious for last: The Lakota Language Consortium

The Lakota Language Consortium had promised to preserve the tribe’s native language and had spent years gathering recordings of elders, including Taken Alive’s grandmother, to create a new, standardized Lakota dictionary and textbooks.  But when Taken Alive, 35, asked for copies, he was shocked to learn that the consortium, run by a white man, had copyrighted the language materials, which were based on generations of Lakota tradition. The traditional knowledge gathered from the tribe was now being sold back to it in the form of textbooks.

When you're in defense of IP law, this is what you're siding with. This is the rational endpoint of IP and it is neither a fluke nor an example of the concept being twisted against its original design. Art, culture, language, it belongs to whoever is most capable of turning it into a product. The economic incentives of producing and distributing arts and culture demand this is how things be.

Meya says his work is a vital tool in preserving the Lakota language, which did not previously have a standardized written form. He estimated that there are fewer than 1,500 fluent Lakota speakers left and that over the last decade and a half, the organization has helped add 50 to 100 more. “Just because money is involved in it does not inherently make it an evil thing,” Meya said in a recent interview with NBC News. Most of the products his organizations make are free, he said, but the cost of printing textbooks has to come from somewhere. “That tends to be sometimes part of the rhetoric, ‘Oh, there’s money involved. It must be, you know, part of the overall colonization effort.’ Well, you know, that’s just not realistic.”

Artists looking to force their way into the class of people who gets protected by these laws are not looking out for their community. They are not protecting anything but their own perceived financial interests. Intellectual property will never, ever benefit the most marginalized members of creative communities and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is huffing some serious copium.

Frankly, I don't believe anyone can or should 'own' things like Ideas or Specific Aesthetic Flairs. But even if you do believe in that, IP law isn't the framework for handling it.

[comicaurora]

Hi! I'm a big fan of your work. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

 I'm an artist who's been working on a story with a close writer friend of mine since the pandemic. Together we've outlined a webcomic that we're both very excited and passionate about, and it's been a great experience. Late last year we started actually making the comic itself, and a little less than a year later we're 37 pages in. 

I wanted to ask you how you're able to somehow push out three high-quality pages every week? I work full time, and most days I'm too drained when I get home to immediately start working on the comic. Plus all the other stuff I have to take care of to be a functional adult. I'm not even that slow of an artist, but it just doesn't feel like there's enough hours in the day. At my current rate, I get about one page done per week. I'm 24 now, I don't want to be in my 50s still working on this story. Do you have any advice for increasing your output as an artist without completely overwhelming yourself?

Sorry for the wordy question. There's a reason I'm the artist and not the writer.

Oof, that's a tough one!

I mean, to start with, a fundamental difference in our schedules is I don't work full time. Everything I do for a living is very self-scheduled, and I can work far in advance to meet the deadlines I set and take entire days or even weeks off when I need them. Back when I was in college, dealing with outside schedule requirements, I definitely wouldn't have been able to keep up everything I do now.

That said, there are still methods to streamline and speed up the artistic process. I don't know the details of your methods, but I'd recommend sketching and storyboarding larger numbers of pages at a time and finalizing them at a more leisurely pace, rather than taking one page of comic at a time from a total blank to a finalized, polished version. The storyboard can be very basic; many of mine are little more than color-coded scribbles showing the characters and text boxes showing their dialogue. It's just enough to be readable to me so I can go in and edit it for pacing and timing, but it looks like absolute chickenscratch to anyone else. On the production side, that makes it much more feasible for me to work on multiple pages at a time, since I don't need to finish polishing one page before I can start boarding another.

This method can be expanded into a bit of a factory production line, allowing for a two-pronged approach of progress - one for finalizing older pages, the other farther along for storyboarding new ones. And once you have multiple pages done at a time, you can schedule them well in advance, which takes a lot of deadline pressure off and can make it less mentally daunting to work on. This also diversifies the space of things you can work on, depending on your headspace and energy levels - which is a useful option to have when you're wiped from outside responsibilities.

[feathernotes]

Hello! My name is Krispy, and I’m the co-creator of the webcomic Ghost Junk Sickness (along with @spacerocketbunny​) It's story time!

GJS is a webcomic published by Hiveworks and features two bounty hunters with an unstable dynamic who are pushed to pursue the deadly bounty dubbed the Ghost The current iteration of GJS is about 9 years old (and wrapping up next year!) It’s been an incredible journey full of ups and downs. We’ve learned SO MUCH creating this comic, and I wanted to share some of it’s origins with you all in hopes of inspiring more folks to take chances, make mistakes, and get messy- and make that comic!

The origin of Ghost Junk Sickness came from our love for Magic Knight Rayearth and Final Fantasy 7. Vahn, the protagonist of GJS, was basically a mash up of Hikaru and Cloud from those two series. The very first version of this story has unfortunately been destroyed, and this map is the only piece I have left of that world. Character art still exists though, and it was pretty funny to see how obvious we were with our inspirations at the time.

The original attempt at the story was called Crew, and my sister Space and I worked on it in 2002-2004. We sort of got lost in our own ideas after that, and weren’t as focus on making the comic (now lost). A few years later, I decided to try my hand at it and it looked like this:

This was all done on low quality paper, whichever I could find at the time and some pencil crayons. This attempt was over 600 pages long and had a pretty random story plot, much like the first version. I could not tell you what it was about haha 😅

My second attempt (then called Divine Ace) I wanted to look more 'traditional manga' and kept with just inks and tried my darndest to tone on the computer (it never worked out). This one lasted over 400 pages, and was more allinged with my liking to edgy action anime and games at the time. It was also Trigger's first appearance!

After experimenting and eventually wanting to change- I started to work with Space again, and we collaborated in full on our first fancomic for TF2 called "Be Efficient, Be Polite." It was a good lesson on how we could coordinate our shared skill sets and plan out who did what as far as the whole process of comics go.

All of these comics (save for the very first lost version) were hosted on DA the day we got our hands on a scanner. It was our first taste on being 'webcomic creators' back in the day, and it was very fun! We didn't much care for readers, only the process of completion at the time, so a page done was always a victory worthy to be celebrated (and back then, we had more time to make pages!)

And so, as the years went by and we decided to move on from our fandom roots, Space and I went back to the Crew/Divine Ace project and redesigned and overhauled the entirety of it. (You can see the full evolution here) We wanted to re-asses what the story, comic, and characters meant to us, and how we could convey some pretty important ideas and concepts to our potential readers. From that, Ghost Junk Sickness was born, and began pre-production in 2013.

Years after, we find ourselves reflecting on how much we've learned from the process of going ahead and diving in head first. There were certainly many iterations and years it took to get where we are today, but realising that it all began that day Space and I decided to scribble some pretty mediocire comics in our homework books and papers. Because that is the beauty of comics- The many skill sets, the hats, and challenges that come along with creating them. And how much we've become better at so many things along the way. So if you read this and feel nervous about diving head first into your first comic, I'm here to re-assure you that things will feel tough, but exciting. Things will feel really hard but amazing when you're getting your story out in front of you with such an incredible medium. Webcomics will always be my favourite because of how accessible it is to any skill set. And know in your heart of hearts that there ARE people out that that LOVE to see growth, they love to see the progression of your journey. So get out there and start creating that comic that's occupied your brain for so long, and start breathing that life into your OCs and your world. The only way is up with webcomics, and the only way to start is just by creating now.

[gofancyninjaworld]

The OPM Manga in 2023

By the numbers:

23 updates (most 14 days apart, shortest interval: 9 days, longest: 33 days).

662 pages (range 12 - 41 pages, mean page count: 29 pages).

Volumes published: 2 (Volumes 28 and 29). 1 bonus chapter included in Volume 28 -- Olfaction.

By the story:

Psychics and Temper Tantrums (chapters 176 - 184)

Well, the Monster Association is behind us but the fallout from it is slowly beginning to settle. Most of the heroes are now back at work and some of the consequences of a world that's increasingly scared of monster attacks are beginning to show up. The first quarter of the year was taken up with Tatsumaki's temper tantrum -- and Saitama once again daring a strong person to do their worst -- it's like he didn't learn his lesson with Garou, which disappoints me. [I love Saitama, but when brains were being handed out, he was not at the front of the queue.]

That said, even though I did not care one whit for Tatsumaki throwing Saitama around (it wasn't terrible, but really it could have been condensed into 1-2 chapters), the start of the Psychic Sisters arc was fantastic, and its ending was very interesting. I made a nuisance of myself at the start of it, pestering everyone in earshot with my excitement that Tatsumaki was taking Fubuki into her confidence to try getting Psykos out rather than trying to do everything herself.

Her complex feelings of disappointment, betrayal, and the sense that she'd made a mistake were some of the most complex and nuanced we'd seen in the story. She may be paranoid and misanthropic, but she's not crazy: there's a basis for her actions, and being knocked back just when she'd taken the risk of opening up was harsh. Unfortunately, Tatsumaki's default response is rage.. and I'm not going to waste time on recounting what happened then.

I felt pain for her here.

The end as well, expanding as it did on Tatsumaki's thoughts about how she'd accidentally woken Fubuki's psychic powers by scaring her so badly and the guilt she felt at having made her sister a target, was great. Her feelings about Blast are great, as this is the first time we get what she actually thinks of him. I still want her to learn that Blast doesn't work alone -- it'll blow her mind. The session ending with her giving the Fubuki group a chance to grow stronger and prove themselves is a fantastic development.

Even when she's giving someone a chance she still has to be scary.

Schemes (chapters 184, 187 - 191)

I really love how seamlessly the Psychic Sister arc flows into the next big theme: that of schemes and threats to the Hero Association's future. ONE has done a lot of work reworking the webcomic story so that the storyline is a coherent whole rather than two-three apparently unrelated storylines. Fubuki taking advantage of the chaotic aftermath to extract Psykos while securing immunity for her sister, and Tatsumaki brazenly using the HA's need to keep the rich clients sweet to scupper an investigation into Psykos's whereabouts was all clever. However, they're just amateurs and their antics played beautifully into McCoy's hands, who leveraged the crisis to make himself appear indispensible to the HA, thus making it very hard for him to be removed, even as he works to implicate the Hero Association in scandals (many of which he's running).

You can't call McCoy hasty: this guy has played a good long game.

The Hero Association is already having issues recruiting new heroes as they're going to Neo Heroes, which is also pinching existing heroes. However, it's not 100% going McCoy's way. Something I started praising in my review of chapter 173 is the greater self-efficacy of the characters in the manga. Sekingar and Sicchi haven't just been sitting on their hands watching McCoy sell the HA down the river. They've teamed up with Child Emperor to find out what he's really up to.

I think that this is the best cover of 2023: a collection of individuals who embody heroism, whether or not they're recognised as such or work in 'regular' ways. Well, there's one impostor…

Critically, they're not assuming that the Neo Heroes are necessarily evil: they want to understand what this outfit is actually doing. After all, heroism is heroism, no matter what guise it takes. To see that Sekingar has so earned Metal Bat's respect that the latter follows him into the heart of danger did my heart good [1].

Please, my poor heart, it'll burst if things get much more awesome.

Ninjas, Ninnies, Nintendos (193 - 199, ongoing)

That Blast has some connection to the ninjas from Sonic's Ninja Village has been clear for a long time in the webcomic. [2] However, it is only here in the manga that we're getting a full explanation of what that connection is.

Yes, yes, my partner may be a monster but he's a useful monster.

The intertwined story of Blast and his attempts to reach his former partner, Empty Void, who was also running a horrifying 'school' for grooming boys into assassins, and that of Flashy Flash and Speed o' Sound Sonic isn't done yet, but it looks to be reaching at least one turning point. It's a pity that the fan translators stopped translating the cover text because that for chapter 199 was incredibly pertinent: 'Staring at the back of a friend you used to stand shoulder to shoulder with.' Sonic has so much to process.

And like that, Sonic's world has been turned upside down.

Since Blast has an ongoing relationship with Empty Void, we get troubling questions as to how long Blast had known about the Village and whether he disapproved, or had been content to ignore it as long as he had his partner by his side and found his talents indispensible. It's going to be interesting when those two meet! Also, if Blast is hoping to reverse Empty Void's monsterization, he'd better hope that the guy isn't like most people who became monsters. Most ex-human monsters *want* to be that way and there doesn't seem to be a good way to undo it. Well, maybe if you chop them up, have Phoenixman (oops, he seems to have lost his powers) resurrect them, then shock them incredibly hard, that might work. It's unlikely that anyone present can deduce what happened to Gale Wind and Hellfire Flame, much less put all the working parts of that together.

Still, they're going to try. This *is* going to be interesting. Also, potentially heartbreaking.

Reappearances

Genos: the disciple returns to his duty

Unlike the webcomic, Genos has not been completely absent. He's been quite busy: helping Saitama recover their apartment, meeting the Hero Association to discuss important matters, and also, hanging out with Saitama as a friend rather than as a disciple. It's been fun to see that he's finally ditched his flip phone for a smart one, heheh.

Nevertheless, it's not until Dr Kuseno finishes his new upgrade that Genos sets foot in Saitama's house, formally reporting for duty, so to speak. I praise Saitama's self-discipline and good sense in not breaking eye contact and in politely ignoring his disciple's new-found exhibitionism until he had the sense to put a shirt on [3].

Less positive, it's been painful to see that Genos is frustrated at how he doesn't seem to have grasped the kind of growth he's looking for and is unsure whether Saitama truly sees him. It's not been helped by Saitama trying to reassure him, pulling his best 'Reigen' face and instead made everything worse. There are two interesting shames, which will surely be built on at some point. 1: We see Saitama seeing Genos's strength but he doesn't say anything. 2: Genos is right that the strength that comes from within is different from that granted to one by upgrades. We see in another chapter from Nichirin, that having artificial parts is no hindrance to pulling out that great inner strength. The funny thing is that Genos has shown that kind of strength before, when he was fighting Elder Centipede, but he doesn't know it.

Ah, despite everything, those fools are no better at speaking to each other than they were before! It'd be hilarious if it weren't so tragic.

Rarely have the words 'open your mouth and solve your problems' been more apposite. Sadly, that's exactly what they don't do.

Garou: the other disciple tries to learn duty

Now this really threw a lot of fans for a loop -- ONE making clear that he's aware of how young Garou actually is. It was very easy to read Garou as a guy in his early twenties, but strip away the pretensions and he's really young. His over-simple understanding of what was wrong with the world and his over-large sense of responsibility to fix it are thoughts of a teen. It's just a good thing that teenagers don't have world-shattering power, and so can be extreme and wrong without hurting anyone. But it has really jarred with a lot of fans.

I may be giving Bang the side eye as he implements his idea of reformation (apparently, it involves hitting Garou over the head often), but the sense of lightness Garou feels at having a reliable mentor, the relief he undoubtedly feels at having a way to work his crimes off -- being a social outcast may seem cool in a 'reject-the-corrupt-world' way but it gets old fast -- and being able to contribute meaningfully to the dojo's re-establishment is palpable.

His life is sure to start sucking again soon, but for now, it's a joy to see him.

Let him gambol for now. Go Garou!

King: ugh

Sorry, King just irritates me some days and this was one of them. Not because he was running around trying to find someone who could help him: that was fine. But because, unlike the webcomic, once Saitama told him to work out, he's continuing to stick around and play videogames. In a world where everyone is trying their best to make sense of their world and help themselves in some way, however imperfect, the sight of this poster child for mediocre white men overpromoted for looking the part continuing to laze about just pisses me off.

Let him start helping himself and I will praise him.

He's been told what to do but he's not doing it.

GAY!

This year, ONE said: here, my children, I have brought you a pint of homo milk. Drink. What else are we to make of Fubuki triumphantly cradling Psykos as she makes a clean getaway?

This has to be the smuggest 'got the girl' face I've ever seen.

Or Blast continuing to call Empty Void his partner, despite everything that the guy has done, including turning into a monster? He wants him back so badly, and though he says it's strictly professional interest, we think the man doth protest too much.

And then whatever's going on with these two:

Flashy Flash, you ain't got no business calling Blast soft when you're handing Sonic tissues and smiling at him.

Fandom Follies

Do we need to do this? Yup! This year, we discovered that a lot of dudebros who have been against the idea of romance in OPM have just been shippers afraid to come out and own it. The sheer number of Saitama x Tatsumaki fans has been incredible. Nothing wrong with SaiTatsu but the obnoxiousness of fans new to shipping has been hard to tolerate. Learn some manners, folks!

Asides

[1] I think this is great foreshadowing of something Forte says later in the webcomic to paraphrase, risking your life for another hero is something you do as a favour for a friend, not because someone's declared themselves the boss of you and ordered it. It's nice to see Sekingar embodying that ideal.

[2] It's hard to believe it, but to this day (chapter 149), Blast is not yet seen in the webcomic. At this rate, he'll show up at the very end to get jobbed by God (no ID), but not before giving an over-long exposition about what he's been up to. That is, if he's not already dead, only nobody knows yet.

[3] I can see SaiGenos shippers worried that my saying that it's good that Saitama isn't taking Genos up on his obvious attraction means that I might be disapproving of the ship. That is not the case. I'm going to assume that most of us here are old enough to vote, enter into contracts, and pay taxes and so can think of things with nuance and context. A fandom that needs the reassurance of canon to decide what's permissible is a weak, timid, and pallid imitation of one, and one I want no part of. For certain, we're here to discuss the story as it exists, but please, we're also here to consider and explore scenarios and make works that cannot and often should not exist in the canon because they are FUN. Even more pertinent, ONE is on record as LOVING that fans spend their time and creativity doing things with his stories. So please, don't allow any in-universe discussions on what is helpful or unhelpful in the story affect what you draw and write! PLEASE SHIP! Gimme!

[wishjacked]

Happy #WebcomicDay!! :D

This year we're celebrating the process of making pages... so below the cut I've got a bunch of pictures sharing how I go about making pages of my evil post-apocalyptic workplace sitcom, Cargo!! :D

So! My process!!

Writing-> I think sometimes there's pressure to "write" your comic a certain way, I see people talking about script format and stuff a lot. That really doesn't work for me, though! I write my "first draft" script in short scenes on scrap paper, in whatever order they come to me. Sometimes a scene will just be one or two lines, and then a little description of what I want to happen in the rest of the scene.

Later I type the scene up, and write the "connective tissue" that fits between the disjointed scenes so they all flow together like they ought. I don't do page breaks or even character tag or action notes hahahaha I like it to be as BASIC as POSSIBLE so it's easy to edit. And since I'm the person drawing it I can almost always remember who's supposed to be saying what lmao

I edit a lot, but the most major editing is also probably the last bit... when I letter my pages usually I realize "they would never say that" and so I end up rephrasing everything. My art brain is sometimes waaaaay better at phrasing hahaha. Like you can see in the finished page for this script I rewrote like basically all of it, and actually went back to the original "sketch" script in a lot of places.

Thumbnailing-> my thumbs are really big, I draw them with markers on printer paper and keep them in a binder!! I like to thumb scenes in batches and I also usually write my dialogue on them, just so I can read through them before (and while) I draw to get a feel for how the pacing works. :)

Sketching-> OH sketching is also really hard for me! I don't have a good visual imagination so it's really important for me to make sure I have good references. Last year I was especially focusing on setting.

My comic is set in Florida. I'm lucky in that I used to live there and still go back to visit sometimes, so sometimes I can gather my own reference images! But more often I start on Google Maps or Zillow, trying to find buildings that have interesting features or the right kind of "look" for what I want. I'll also look up other interesting elements, my comic is set in a post-apocalypse and I'll research home gardening and things like that which people would probably have.

For example, in this set in chapter 7, I used Google Maps images, photo references of indoor hydroponic gardening, and like, 90's-00's hacker computer setups haha. Also my BFF Roomstyler.com, where you can make 3d house interiors haha!!

Lineart-> I LOVE lineart it is my favorite!!!! I sketch and ink two pages at a time, and it usually takes somewhere between 10-12 hours to do both steps.

I actually think my art looks best when it's just lineart... but I think my STORY is better with color, like it makes it clearer and easier to read and it has a better atmosphere HAHA.

Colors-> I think it usually takes me 4-6 hours to do 2 pages (I haven't timed myself as consistently as I time my lineart and sketching). I have a big file with small copies of my previous pages that I color drop from, and my characters are all flats only. The limited palette that I use is also really handy, it streamlines coloring a LOT.

Finishing Touches-> aka I steal mercilessly from my one true love, my internet home, the beautiful and blessed Wikimedia Commons

I put lots of overlay layers on my art! I like textures so having some strange little textures or pictures on things makes my art feel a lot more finished to me.

And finally my very most favorite ✨finishing touch✨ is the bright colored/patterned gutters that I use. Here are some of my favorites that I've made and used in the past!

And that's all!! I hope you guys have a very happy Webcomics Day and find lots and lots of wonderful new things to read!!!

[depleti]

It's #WebcomicDay! The day you read webcomics and share the ones you love so other people can read them!

My webcomic is Thistil Mistil Kistil and it's about a deceased Viking trying to get into Valhalla, only to realize that may not be what he really wants.

It's been updating for fifteen years (yep) and there are over 500 pages available free to read!

Give it a go if you like Vikings, Norse mythology, history, fantasy, and the struggle against fate. And tell your friends!

In addition, I saw this template going around and thought it'd be fun to do it too! The basic steps involved in making a TMK page.

First step is the thumbnails! I thumbnail the whole chapter at once and these things can be quite rough. Sometimes when I go to resketch the page (Step 2) I change the layout from what was in the thumbnail depending on how I feel or if there's a more impactful way to show a moment.

Third step is inking, and fourth step is color/effects/word balloons! There can be quite a jump between these steps depending on the content and coloring almost always takes the longest out of any of these steps. I used to have this step split in two, between laying flat colors and then coloring the lines/adding effects, but now I try to do them in one go to save time. This does mean some simplifying, like I don't color the lines of smaller drawings anymore.

Because it's fun, here's each step on its own so you can see my awful Jormungandr thumbnail doodles. Thumbnails are usually after a hiatus of not drawing anything so they can be very rough.

I hope you enjoyed this little peak behind the curtain, and I hope you'll give Thistil Mistil Kistil a read if you're interested!

[einsatzzz]

KHRe Projects Updates #2

Making another update post because OCtober is over, yippeee!! I'm very proud of the art I've done this month and I think it's also the most I've drawn for an OCtober event. I hope next year I'll be able to draw even more and maybe even complete all 30 days.

And with that out of the way, I'll be jumping back into working 100% on my projects. I'll post less art this month (save for asks if inspo strikes) because I'll be working on them behind the scenes, so I'll mostly be an OC supporter this month and just catch up on everyone's OC stuff that I missed whenever I have a chill time hehehe

Anyway, here's my progress on them so far!

Wiki: I plan on doing a lot of major edits on the wiki this time. I have a few that's already just sitting by on the sandbox pages already. I'll do them topic by topic/page by page, so whenever I make a major update, I'll do a post about it here (or maybe a summary of wiki updates if it's way scattered).

Planned updates this month include adding pages for Yui and then Tsuna (if possible Reborn too! I know they're a package, I'll do my best lmao please don't shoot me, Reborn!). I also plan to add another section under Relationships > Appellations for KHRe-Occurence interactions!

Webcomic: We are so back on this one! For now my initial draft of the chapter order in terms of character debut is more or less finalized. For this first part, I decided to just cover character introductions/focus chapters for now, which I estimate to last for about 12-13 chapters (covering for 15 characters, mix of canon and OC).

I should be able to figure out where to go from that point while drawing chapters 1-13! Daily Life Arc is so important to me, I'm not skipping the good shit 😆💖✨ But I already do have a few more Daily Life Arcs in mind after that and a few mini-arcs.

In terms of assets, I'm just thankful I even managed to put together some 3d assets/references I can use for Namichuu. I also more or less have the whole school mapped. I'll be putting this information in the wiki as well, in case anyone wants to make use of it too. Now I kind of want to make a rough draft of a Namimori map hahaha

Because of this, that scene with Ryohei convincing Hibari to do the trial in the Arco Trials Arc became even more funnier to me lmao 🤣🤣

For target release, if we're just talking about Chapter 1 then definitely this November is doable. But then I lowkey want to get ahead till to around Chapter 3-5 too! I'll think about it more!

My even bigger stupidass problem is I also want to draw a webcomic that's Oniyanagi 1st Gen-centric, but I only have two hands so sjhfshvfgs Making comics is so fun ok??!! I just don't have enough time lmao

For the artstyle, I decided to just use the same brush for the comic I did with Kana and Myell's Entity. The edges for that are smooth enough while still having a pencil-like feel to it, so coloring with the paint bucket tool would be easier. I considered using the pencil brush I'm using for rough sketches right now because I'm faster with those, but yeah, the coloring. I'll also be doing a mostly "Don't look back, just keep drawing" approach, so I don't take 100 years for chapter 1. It won't be 100% clean, but maybe just decently not messy enough? Anyway, I'm still thinking of other ways to be faster at drawing, aside from just increasing my overall stamina 😭😭😭 (I get tired so easily). Time to start lifting Ein! 💪✨

In addition to the main story, watch out for any new KHRe-OCcurrence chapters that I might drop in between 🥰🥰🥰

MV: I'm working on 📺MV and should also finish it within 2-3 months while working on my other stuff (2 weeks if I mentally zoom in & obsess over it somehow). I have the vivid storyboard for the entire thing laid out in my brain now. I think finishing this will hype me up more to draw more webcomic stuff hahahaha You'll know when you see it.

✦•····································•✦•····································•✦

Projects aside, I'll be resuming posting my other commissioned art here again yippeee!! I'm just really super thankful there are people who like my original stuff and interact with me here sfhdvhfvsvf and on the flipside, I'm also super thankful that people share their original stuff with me as well (or at least where I can see!). It takes a lot of courage to share your original works out in public, so it's practically SSR-rank content for me.

I have a few oc-related project/posts (even if it's not khr-related) that I have bookmarked as well, I'll do my best to check them out this month as well! Seeing other people with projects also hypes me up and inspires me, so the more the better! fhsvdfhgvhgdfvds Honestly, this small corner of the internet/tumblr that we have going on is kind of like a comfort place for me now, love ya'll ! 🫶🫶🫶

[the-gordianknot117]

About Acquaintances and Human Bonds.

In this post I want to take a look at the “I’m just an acquaintance” moment and examine what significance this line holds in the context of the Esper Sisters arc, its themes and all the characters involved.

This post only takes into account the webcomic version of the arc.

Disclaimer: this is my interpretation of the scene, the characters and the series in general given the current released material. Future updates can always change the meaning behind this moment and add further context to it, thus proving me completely wrong. By the way, I do not ship anyone in the series (more power to those who do, however) and none of what follows implies romance in any way.

First of all, before examining the scene, we have to take into account the arc it takes place in and what was revealed prior to Sataima’s line.

The “Esper Sisters” is an arc entirely centered on the characters of Fubuki and Tatsumaki, whose relationship, already soured by a lifetime of trauma, estrangement and abuse, reaches its dramatic nadir in the confrontation that follows the events of the MA arc. For these reasons, the arc explores the backstories of both characters by featuring flashbacks set in the years of their childhood. In Fubuki’s case, this section of the story contains a crucial and essential episode from Fubuki’s troubled childhood days (Chapter 99: 1, 2, 3 and 4), where it’s explained why Fubuki grew up the way she did, what relationships (or lack thereof) Fubuki had during her growth, and what role her sister and the outside world played in her life (e.g., ”If they bully you, you need to bully them back”, mirrored by Blast’s advice to Tatsumaki). It's not an exaggeration to say that without this fundamental flashback, Fubuki’s character would utterly fall apart and cease to make sense - even the reason why Saitama’s line cuts deep would also fall flat without all the information provided beforehand by the story, as we will see: this memory from Fubuki’s past and everything surrounding it is the keystone holding together the entire narrative of the character and one of the two pillars of the Esper Sisters arc (the other being the Tatsumaki one).

If the flashback alone wasn’t clear enough, in the page that immediately follows, Fubuki explicitly states, with a smug Tatsumaki complementing her words, how she grew up with the only, terrifying company of an oppressive older sibling because no one else dared to approach her with Tatsumaki looming around. This image of Fubuki’s childhood, coupled with the high school flashback from the MA arc (I covered this topic in much more detail here, among other things), paints a rather lonely and gloomy picture of Fubuki’s backstory, a past characterized by a complete lack of significant relationships or personal bonds, aside from her sister Tatsumaki, who controlled Fubuki for most of her life (as stated by the S-Class psychic herself; Chapter 100) and whose shackles are still in place in the present, only slightly loosened but ready to tighten at any given moment (the Esper Sisters arc is a demonstration of this, I wrote a post about it). This isolated and sheltered background made Fubuki long for what was totally absent in her life, human contact, but, given the lack of social experiences and the isolation she suffered from the outside world, she grew up ignoring how to form relationships and with no idea of what a normal relationship looks like, something worsened tenfold by the fact that her only parental figure, the one responsible for her isolation, was also a traumatized and unstable person who rejected human connections and actively encouraged Fubuki to embrace her powers and use strength against others; additionally, in the few interactions Fubuki had with the outside world, reality was presented to her as nothing more than a hyper-competitive landscape dominated by violence and discrimination, where people used force as a way to interact with others and idolatred power as the only indicator of individual worth. Therefore, having been raised by someone who values power above anything else and having experienced firsthand how the outside world only understands strength and preys on the weak (i.e., the bullies who emarginated and harassed her, and Tatsumaki always resorting to violence and resolving any conflict with brutal displays of her telekinesis) warped Fubuki’s perception of reality and taught her that she had to embrace her powers and resort to violence at the first sign of a threat if she wanted to survive. A lesson that Fubuki learned and took to heart. And Fubuki was rewarded by doing so, seeing how people in high school started respecting her specifically and solely for her superior telekinesis, but not for Fubuki herself as a person. This conditioned her to view relationships only through a hierarchical lens and as an expression of the difference in powers between individuals, and that, in order to effectively interact with people, aside from employing force, she had to don a façade of haughty superiority, instead of being simply herself; at the same time, her psychological need for friendship never vanished and remained unfulfilled. This background shaped a damaged human being who, in an attempt to adhere to her “education” while, at the same time, trying to fill the void left by the lack of human bonds, resorted to establishing hierarchical dynamics that act as a replacement for real human bonds, where the role the members play in the organization codifies in terms of hierarchy the disparity in power between them, a template that is very reminiscent of Fubuki’s own relationship with Tatsumaki in a way. For most of her life, in fact, Fubuki was either powerlessly submitted to her sister, who dictated the terms of their relationship and held the power in it, or, later in her life and as a reaction to this, a leader with subordinates; beyond these templates, where it was either being subservient or superior to someone, Fubuki never met an “equal”, someone who, by existing outside of a hierarchically organized relationship/dynamic, didn’t fall under either of the aforementioned labels but stood on the same ground as her. As her experiences show, Fubuki only met an oppressive and tyrannic sister, bullies, followers, rivals and subordinates and for her, that was all there was in the world. People never formed connections outside of hierarchical structures, “power” was what attracted people and closer human connections, like even friendship, were totally out of the picture.

That’s where Saitama’s “group” comes into play. Its existence proves how Fubuki’s past experiences are only a partial representation of the world, that people can coexist on equal ground (so beyond the follower/subordinate templates Fubuki was aware of) and that there are alternatives to the toxic and unhealthy way of living Fubuki was following. The people at Saitama’s apartment do not obtain any immediate or foreseeable benefits from their gatherings; there are no rules or “hierarchies” and there is no grand goal that the group is carrying on following a particular agenda: they hang out simply because they want to spend time together. And Saitama himself is far different from any person Fubuki has ever encountered before: he doesn’t use others for his own gain, he doesn’t judge/value other people on the basis of their strength and he doesn’t take advantage of his incomprehensible power to impose his will or to submit and exploit others. As pointed out by Genos at the end of Fubuki’s introduction arc (Chapter 50), Saitama doesn’t antagonize or oppose anyone, but leaves them be, minding his own business without bothering anyone (unless they pick up a fight or represent a danger). Surprisingly enough, even with this particular attitude and his complete disregard for factions/rank/status, Saitama seems to naturally attract people. And yet he isn’t a “leader”, a “boss” or the “president” of a club. Instead of the usual boss/subordinate roles so ingrained in Fubuki’s mind to the point she can’t conceive of any other way to interact with others, Saitama is simply on friendly and equal terms with those who hang out with him, world-renown S-Class Heroes at that, despite him being only a B-Class rank-wise. Among those connections, what surprises Fubuki in particular are Saitama’s peculiar dynamic with Genos, which completely turns upside down anything Fubuki learned about status/ranking and the way these supposedly affect relationships (“D-disciple? An S-Class under a B-Class...”; Chapter 48), insomuch that later Fubuki asks about this “bizarre” dynamic directly to Genos himself in order to learn more about it (“Demon Cyborg, Genos... are you truly satisfied under that man?” Chapter 57), and Saitama’s friendship with the Strongest Man in the World, King (“How... is someone from S-Class so friendly with a B-Class...”; Chapter 50), that similarly ignores status as a factor that determines human interactions, much to Fubuki disbelief - there is also this little reaction upon learning about Saitama’s connection to Fang (“Bang? As in the S-Class Silver Fang?”; Chapter 51). But what’s more is that the unique rules of this group are applied to Fubuki as well: in this place, Fubuki spends her time and interacts with people outside of any social construct and logic previously known to the character and no one looks down on her with contempt nor up to her with reverence due to rank, status and/or telekinesis because these factors do not matter here, where she is neither a leader nor a subordinate, but “simply” a person; and despite the façade the character still resorts to, it’s always in this place that later we will see an extremely rare, if not unique, example of a relaxed and carefree Fubuki spending time in a casual and normal scenario like having a hot pot with other people to whom, beside working for the same organization, she has no actual affiliation (Chapter 57). All of this is completely unheard of and unprecedented for the esper. What the “group” ultimately represents for Fubuki is the importance of positive and healthy human bonds, of people being people, hanging out with no other goal than to stay together - all things that were completely missing in her life. Undescoring the utmost importance of this and establishing the core theme of Fubuki’s character arc (the importance of human bonds), Fubuki’s introduction arc ends precisely with Fubuki wondering if Saitama will allow her to join them (”Would he also let me...”; Chapter 50; in the official manga translation: “Maybe I could join them?”) - definitely not a casual or random choice from a writing standpoint.

So when Saitama says that he “is just an acquaintance” (Chapter 102: 1 and 2), in Fubuki’s mind, he is basically answering the question she was asking herself back in Chapter 50 (“would he also let me/maybe I could [join his group?]”) and she interprets it as “no”, that the only “group” of “normal” people she bumped into has the doors closed to her and won’t allow her to join this haven of “ordinarity”, even though that is not what Saitama meant there. After growing up in a toxic and sheltered environment, for the first time in her entire life Fubuki finally found a group that represents a healthy and positive alternative to all the deleterious experiences she had - an environment where power and hierarchies mean nothing at all, where people are simply themselves - and this made her desire to join this gathering, only to be reminded by the person who exposed Fubuki to this uncharted and fabled reality that she didn’t belong to the place nor, in the end, was she accepted in it - again, this is how Fubuki is perceiving Saitama’s words - due to being only an “acquaintance”. If Chapter 50 sparked in Fubuki the desire to join a group that represents everything that was always denied to her, Chapter 101 seems to put a roadblock in front of Fubuki that prevents the character from fulfilling (yet) what she has always deeply yearned for.

There is no better way to put Fubuki in front of the fact that her façade - the only way she believes it is possible to interact with others - and her mindset are actually keeping her distant from other people and affecting her life for the worse, sabotaging her chances at bonding with others and forming personal relationships. If we look back at her interactions with Saitama and co., in fact, Fubuki’s behavior there never actually manifested nor made apparent her genuine desire to spend time with the group and befriend them, despite the importance the place holds for the psychic and her actual intentions; if anything, whenever she (comically) opted for the defensive mechanism of the façade, which she used in order to fit in as the “new kid on the block” (more on this later), instead of being more genuine, it was something the members of the group didn’t find particularly endearing (Chapter 57; Chapter 98). It all goes to show how lacking Fubuki’s social skills are and how ineffective and inadeguate her way to interact with people also is (besides work, maybe), especially when it comes to ordinary and informal social settings such as this one; it also highlights to what degree Fubuki’s upbringing warped her ability to socialize with other human beings. While the Esper Sisters arc seemingly resolved the outside issue that threatened Fubuki’s freedom, Tatsumaki, Fubuki’s inner demons, spawned by that nefarious influence, are, by the end of the arc, something Fubuki will still have to face in the future. And if it’s true that, ultimately, the connection Fubuki forged as a leader will prove to be a strong and resilient bond once put to the test, Fubuki’s need for friendships, as in a non-hierarchical, not work/duty-related but informal and equal personal relationship, is still left completely unfulfilled, with a journey far from being completed yet. And, honestly, given how we are still in the middle of the story (?), it would be weird if such an important matter for the character was already solved.

For what specifically matters Fubuki’s reaction, in the past I have seen many write what essentially boils down to “what did she expect? Did she think they were friends or something?”. It’s frankly surprising how this confuses so many people because, once we look at the bigger picture and remember Fubuki’s characterization, the reasons behind her reaction become quite obvious since they are all ingrained into the very identity of the character. Again, Fubuki’s expression is symptomatic of the “fear” of having lost her chance at becoming part of something she always longed for - this also fits Fubuki’s insecurity and self-loathing issues, by the way. Sure, it could come off as an overreaction, especially as it is directed toward someone Fubuki met very recently and doesn’t have a strong connection with, but that is precisely the direct result of a sheltered backstory polluted only by unpleasant memories and isolation, to whom Saitama and his group represent an inedited and positive counterpoint; if Fubuki didn’t lack meaningful relationships (both in the past and her present) and her backstory wasn’t one of abuse and alienation, I very much doubt she would have reacted this way to Saitama’s comment or cared at all about about their relationship in general, but if that were the case, we would be discussing a very different character, and this moment would have no place in that story. Therefore, hearing from Saitama words that seem to lock away this dreamed oasis of normality and friendship is a major source of dejection for a person with her specific history, issues and hopes. Having no idea or knowledge of what a friend actually is and what a friendship/close relationship resembles made Fubuki think (or, better, hope) that the time spent at Saitama’s apartment was enough to forge a bond of that kind, a “mistake” that is quite reflective of how inexperienced Fubuki is in regard to people and how utterly ignorant she is about relationships and the way they actually flourish between human beings. 

By the way, thinking that Fubuki is only interested in Saitama's strength or that she is still trying to recruit him past her introduction arc would completely disregard Fubuki’s entire characterization and ignore several fundamental moments starring the character, like, for example, the one I linked from Chapter 50, one of the most important and character-defining pages featuring Fubuki in the entire series. Sure, given Fubuki’s background and the values the world projected into her, power is a main factor in what originally caught her attention in regard to this new, mysterious B-Class hero and surely affected how Fubuki’s perception of Saitama has changed over the course of the story. But Saitama as his own person and the precedent he sets is actually way more important to Fubuki than the physical strength he possesses, as he is the first source of positive influence Fubuki was ever exposed to: he is unlike any “strong” being Fubuki has ever met before (for the reasons stated above), and his mindset couldn’t be more different from her only parental figure/role model, Tatsumaki. During their fight (Chapter 48), Saitama didn’t fight back and retaliate, but was more concerned about reprehending Fubuki and reminding her what a hero is and what they stand for: he criticized her obsession with ranking and factions in a world where monsters run amok and few individuals stand against them, warning the esper against her egoistical mindset and predicting a scenario that Fubuki will later experience firsthand (the encounter with Garou; Chapter 78) - all things that will be proven correct and true as Fubuki can attest; even though Fubuki tried to recruit him into her group and then “lost” to him, Saitama never considered her someone he had “to bully back” or a rival/enemy who “must be destroyed”; in the interections following the fight, Saitama never demanded anything from her, he didn’t force her to join his “group”, he didn’t coerce her into following his goals nor did he try to dispose of this “rival”, but treated Fubuki as a human being and even admitted her into his apartment - where Fubuki stayed, or kept coming back behind the scenes, from Chapter 50 to Chapter 64, meaning that Saitama allowed her stay as much as she wanted. From this we can observe how Saitama is the one who finally snaps Fubuki out of her harmful way of living and warns her about the dangers of her conduct, leading the esper into a journey of maturation and improvement, whereas anyone else that Fubuki met before him directed Fubuki onto this very nefarious path, enabled her worst traits and encouraged the psychic to embrace the dangerous mindset that Saitama is criticizing and rebuking. More importantly, there is also the aforementioned existence of the Saitama’s group, which represents a gathering of people completely different from the ones Fubuki has ever experienced. As a testament to the peculiar role Saitama plays in her character arc and what sets him apart from those Fubuki met before, the dialogue in the elevator (Chapter 98) highlights (to me) how much of a high opinion Fubuki has of Saitama as a person, to the point that she lowers her façade and talks frankly, without resorting to the act she aways employs while dealing with others: in this scene, Fubuki is overtly praising Saitama while openly recognizing her own limits/shortcomings, right after he surpassed her in rank and Fubuki’s encounter with Garou proved Saitama right about her issues. None of this is something Fubuki would have ever done with someone she considers a “subordinate” or a “follower” (once again, I’m not implying anything romantic) - for a more in-depth look into the scene, the last section of my post about Fubuki in the MA arc contains an analysis of this conversation and what it means in the context of Fubuki’s character arc. This important dialogue makes all the more clear how much respect and admiration Fubuki holds for Saitama, hence why his comment has such a profound impact on her. Furthermore, when Tatsumaki seemingly killed Saitama, this was Fubuki’s reaction (Chapter 105) - ONE truly has a talent at portraying characters' expressions.

So, personally, I don’t think the subordinate angle matters at all in her reaction about being called an “acquaintance”: after all, Fubuki’s recruitment attempt failed and Saitama made abundantly clear to her that he wasn’t interested in her group (for example, this exchange, Chapter 50: 1 and 2; Saitama even remarked it at the start of the Esper Sisters arc), so, unless we want to believe that Fubuki is a dumbass with short-term memory, something not supported by the story in any way, I think there are other factors at play here and the character has other reasons to care for this person by the point the statement is made. It is important to note that, leading to Fubuki’s reacting to Saitama’s acquaintance comment, ONE specifically decided to depict Fubuki’s reactions growing more and more dejected at being called “not a friend” (“友達” [tomodachi]) and “not a companion” (“仲間” [nakama]) - both indicating a close and/or equal relationships between two persons that share a bond - which, for Fubuki, sounds like he was denying her the “right” (for the lack of a better word) to join; meanwhile, ONE didn’t include any reaction panel to Saitama stating he doesn’t work for her/isn’t part of her group because, since she is not delusional or stupid, Fubuki already knew that and recruiting Saitama is a non-thing by this point in the story. By the way, the recruitment stuff doesn’t even qualify as a recurring gag in the webcomic (at least so far) and the “Fubuki’s group” shtick is barely a thing in the webcomic, consisting of a couple of lines at most, which prevents the character from coming off as a stale and obnoxious parody of herself (unless in the future she gets turned into a rather sad and disappointing comic relief background entity). As mentioned before, the only time in the webcomic Fubuki has tried to recruit Saitama for real (up until now, at least) happened back in her introduction arc; past that point, the leader’s antics are a psychological denfensive mechanism she employs in order to hide her doubts and insecurities, to navigate unknown new dynamics and fit in a “foreign” environment, to compensate for her inability to deal with people in “normal” social settings (the hot pot and the Saitama group in general) or her way to ask for help while putting up appearances (the start of the Esper Sisters arc), instead of actual attempts to get him or others into her group. What draws Fubuki to Saitama and his group is not the egoistical aim to have these powerful beings under her tumb, but a desire that stems from personal reasons deeply rooted in her past. Once again, the fundamental page I linked above (Chapter 50) couldn’t be more explicit and unambiguous in its meaning: on it, Fubuki is expressing her true, sincere desire to join this group of people, wondering if Saitama and co. will permit her to do so; she is not, instead, secretly plotting to make them join her group and use them for her own ends. Surprisingly enough, Fang trying to have Saitama join his dojo is just as much a recurring joke as Fubuki's leader stuff (and way more one-note too, lacking all the subtext present in Fubuki’s case), let alone Flashy Flash’s attempts at becoming Saitama’s teacher in the post MA chapters. Once again, believing that Fubuki is only after recruiting others would completely ignore a core aspect of Fubuki’s character - her subconscious desire to form real human connections with people, compromised by the education that was imparted to her, by her traumas, and by the psychological defense mechanisms she employs in order to not appear “weak” - for the sake of boring flanderization that erases what makes the esper interesting and complex. 

Therefore, considering how character-related the topics tackled in this story-beat are for Fubuki, for the reasons stated above, it’s quite reductive, I believe, to label Saitama’s statement as a throwaway gag. Again, ONE made sure to reveal Fubuki’s entire backstory - a backstory specifically centered on a dramatic lack of positive and meaningful relationships and also isolation - before this scene, where, from Fubuki’s point of view, she is denied the right to join a social circle that she is drawn to. This statement ties perfectly into themes that have been linked to Fubuki from the very start (Chapter 50), but also plays into what constitutes the Esper Sisters arc narrative: the “acquaintance” line serves in fact as a lead-up to what Saitama states to Tatsumaki soon afterward, which is emblematic of the core message of this arc and its thematic backbone (again, all things I will elaborate on soon enough). If this was a simple comedic moment unrelated to Fubuki’s personal history, like, for example, how the door gag (Chapter 111) is a joke independent from Flashy Flash’s character and the story of the Ninja arc, then I wouldn’t stress over the importance of this page, but that clearly isn’t the case. Moreover, comedy serving a greater purpose and contributing to the narrative is a trademark of OPM and ONE’s style in general, and while not every single gag in the series accomplishes that, like the aforementioned Flashy Flash joke for example (and nonetheless, it serves to kickstart the Ninja arc and fits the characters), the scene in question between Fubuki and Saitama arc is clearly representative of that principle since it respects everyone’s characterization, takes into consideration their background, has a greater narrative purpose and develops the story accordingly. Beside, I don’t think this statement represents an end point but, rather, a source for future developments for the character(s). Now, I obviously don’t know if there will be a follow-up to it or not, but considering how this scene leaves things open and unresolved, it’s fair to expect progressions regarding this matter. In fact, I don’t see how leaving this relationship in its current state without ever bothering to advance it would make any sense narrative-wise, especially in the context of Fubuki’s character arc.

Before getting to Saitama’s side of things, there is another thing I want to point out in regard to Fubuki because I think it is paramount in order to understand the character and the scene in question.

I don’t keep up with the fan discourse anymore, so I don’t know if this is still a common interpretation of the character or not, but in the past I often saw a few readers describing Fubuki as a sociable and extroverted character. I find it very strange, because every single thing shown about her in the webcomic, from her general demeanor to her backstory, remarks how profound Fubuki’s psychological issues are and how distant and estranged from others she is as a result of her past: Fubuki is shown to have no close connections and to be unaware of how to be socially competent, hence her reliance on a removed and cold façade and the default template of hierarchies as substitutes for real human connections. In the sole instance where Fubuki interacts with people outside of work and under “normal” circumstances (already significant by and in itself), the hot pot with the Saitama’s group (probably the closest thing she ever got to spending time at a friend’s house or a sleepover), she comes off as incredibly ankward and naive, almost socially inept, due to her lack of experiences/social knowledge. I believe that the aforementioned confusion stems from the manga adaptation and, in particular, from its bonus/side art material, but this isn’t the right post to elaborate on the matter. In any case, even the presence of a group of subordinates doesn’t take away from what I stated above; if anything, it somehow accentuates it. Nowhere in the webcomic is it ever implied that Fubuki and the group spend time together outside of missions or work-related matters; their bond is strictly and consistently portrayed only as a boss-subordinate kind of relationship, albeit a positive and ultimately healthy one, in the light of the Esper Sisters arc. The only moment where their relationship progresses past the boundary of a boss-subordinates/work dynamic into a more “personal” territory occurs only at the very end of the Esper Sisters arc, when the Fubuki’s group members show their unwavering loyalty and profound gratitude toward Fubuki, going as far as to be ready to die against Tatsumaki for their leader’s sake (Chapter 105): from what we can see from Fubuki’s reaction, it’s evident how deeply touched she is from hearing their words of resolve and affection, to the point of shedding tears, because nothing of the sort - like someone genuinely complimenting her as a person - has ever happened to her before. If that moment sticks out, it’s because this exchange constitutes the poignant resolution of the Esper Sisters arc, driving home its message while at the same time refuting Tatsumaki’s distrust for others and her nihilistic outlook on humanity. But even then, that lasts only for a brief moment and Fubuki immediately speaks to her subordinates only as a leader, not as a “friend”; furthermore, she turns around and gives them her shoulders, thus hiding her tears and concealing her genuine emotional response to their words, because, as much as deeply she cares about them, she can’t afford to expose her true self and what she perceives is her most vulnerable side. As for the rest, thanks to Tatsumaki, Fubuki was socially isolated, and her only exposure to others as a child were the bullies who tormented her because of her psychic powers (a gift that Fubuki refused to use offensively at the time, before embracing the lesson the world taught her). Meanwhile, in regard to her high school years, ONE outright stated that Fubuki was a dark and unpopular girl (from “Other ONE-Bukuro 3″) - on the same page, Murata then comments that it was very important for him to depict Fubuki with lingering traces of her past emerging from the leader façade, since, after all, the manga was still following quite closely, at the time of the chapters covered by this behind-the-scenes self-published book, the general footsteps of the webcomic, where Fubuki retains the overall vibe she had in high school, and so he had to be very careful at making sure this element of her characterization was preserved in the remake and matched the source material, despite the differences between the two versions of the character (the leader façade being a detail much more prounounced in the manga version, well, in the early manga at this point); and speaking of that time period, the MA arc flashback underlines, through clever visual and narrative choices, how detached Fubuki was from the other members of the “Society of the Study for Supernatural” school club and, by extension, from anybody else: for the entirety of the flashback, which takes place exclusively in a school setting and in its immediate surroundings, Fubuki is consistently shown to be alone and on her own (more on this topic always here), she is never seen befriending anyone or even talking to people at all (obviously, she must have talked to them off-screen, nonetheless, this narrative omission is very deliberate, I believe), but, instead, she is constantly immersed in her solitude, an element the panels perfectly convey by having Fubuki always out of frame, far from others and/or visually separated from anyone else (a few examples) - I think it is worthy to compare how disinterested and annoyed Fubuki is toward the members of the club, an environment she was founder of and frequented for at least some time, compared to Saitama and his connections, people she is drawn to already by the end of her arc despite knowing them for a very limited timeframe. As for the reason people followed her, it wasn’t due to popularity (as a matter of fact, she wasn’t popular, as per ONE’s statement), “looks” or anything like that, but due to her superior telekinesis (as one of the panel I linked above showcases), which further convinced Fubuki that the sole value the world sees in a person is their power and that human connections are born and hierarchically organized only under this aegis (again, I talked about these fundamental topics in the post linked above). And while it is certanly a much more healthy relationship, this applies also to the Fubuki group: they follow Fubuki because she is their vastly more powerful superior who takes care of them and leads them. Power is still a major factor in their dynamic, whereas in regard to Saitama and his group it doesn’t matter at all. [EDIT 23/03/2024] I might as well include Fubuki’s relationship with Tatsumaki on top of what has already been mentioned. The Esper Sisters arc as a whole is centered around the lifelong issues and traumas of two estranged sisters. Dialogue between them is made impossible due to Tatsumaki’s total reliance on force as a way to resolve any dispute or personal problem. Any reasoning with Tatsumaki is therefore impossible, since, after all, the only language she seems to understand is force and Fubuki never dared to defy Tatsumaki before the Esper Sisters arc precisely due to this (Chapter 99).  Furthermore, Tatsumaki has no consideration for Fubuki’s personal feelings or understanding of her sister in general; it becomes apparent when we remember how the two sisters have polar opposite recollections of their past. The detachment from reality is so severe that Tatsumaki has no idea how compromised their relationship actually is, which reveals how Tatsumaki lives in a world of her own, unable to even perceive the fear she evokes in Fubuki, whom she considers a little helpless kid she can forcefully impose her will on. This demeaning attitude toward Fubuki exposes another detail: Fubuki’s shocked reaction after being (apparently) acknowledged by Tatsumaki (Chapter 101; soon afterward, the true meaning of Tatsumaki’s statements will dispel any sense of relief this moment gave to the B-Class) proves that Fubuki was never praised or complimented by the most important person in her life, to the point that the esper is flabbergasted of simply hearing a positive comment coming from the older sibling. But approval from Tatsumaki isn’t simply a matter of self-esteem for Fubuki, it also means that Tatsumaki will stop interfering and looming over Fubuki’s life and freedom, finally liberating Fubuki from that nefarious presence and influence. Regarding their life together, the webcomic depicts a very depressing family dynamic: besides what has already been discussed, in the flashback Tatsumaki’s presence frightened and concerned Fubuki more than the bullies themselves and, in the present, every time Tatsumaki looms nearby Fubuki is shown to be concerned and uncomfortable; even the mere prospect of Tatsumaki taking once again complete control over her life leaves Fubuki utterly terrified (Chapter 100) - this reaction implies so much in such a coincise way, like why would Fubuki be this traumatized and afraid of Tatsumaki if she was actually a lovely sister and the time spent together pleasing? So, overall, not a very edificating picture of a sibling dynamic, and this in addition to Tatsumaki being an unstable, violent person whose common rage outburst and psychotic temper make her a nightmare to have around (as Fubuki can attest in Chapter 102), especially for a person like Fubuki, who, growing up under her threat and being the object of her obsession, had no means to defend herself against Tatsumaki. But, more importantly, Tatsumaki is the most important person in Fubuki's life, the one who raised the B-Class, isolating her from the outside world, and the source of several lessons Fubuki learned long the course of her life, like how to always rely on violence instead of dialogue, disregard human bonds, retaliate to any opposition, and never show any weakness, among other stuff [End of the EDIT]. 

So, considering what has been shown so far, the story depicts Fubuki as a socially stunted adult incapable (at the moment) of living a normal life, and pretty much anything about the esper evokes her friendless, isolated background and communicates Fubuki’s unfulfilled longing for human bonds.

This facet of the character directly ties to the topics of the Esper Sisters arc, where isolation and a lack of human relationships are explored through all the main characters’s experiences and how they deal with them:

for Fubuki, the point has been made abundantly clear already, and it comes down, essentially, to a sheltered and friendless background, paired with a harmful upbringing that cemented and reinforced warped worldviews, and being exposed solely to extremely negative experiences and power-obsessed-people perpetuating a distorted imagine of reality, all of which resulted in the development of what is a very damaged individual, whose traumas hinder her ability to open up to others and form bonds, among other things;

Tatsumaki, who, scarred from her past at the lab and misguided by a poor-timed advice, keeps anyone at a distance and disregards the value of human relationships by following an insane way of life that damages others (her sister in particular) and even herself, to the point that this has created a desert around the esper;

and finally Saitama himself, who, even prior to acquiring infinite strength, lived an unfulfilling and detached existence as a young salaryman in search of employment, completely alone and estranged from anyone else. The result of his training, after the fight against Crablante, only further heightened his alienation and led him to an almost jaded state, incapable of finding any fulfillment or satisfaction in life. Meeting Genos and all the other people who gather around him started to mitigate his condition, but Saitama has yet to understand the value these relationships have and find meaning in other aspects of his life.

Isolation and estrangement from other human beings are recurring elements in all three characters’ backstories and lives (with differences due to their individual histories and personalities). Similarly, everyone of them gets called out or receives a wake-up call by the end of the arc, which highlights how this situation is hindering their lives and puts them in front of their inability/unwillingness to open up to others: for Fubuki, it is the acquaintance moment; for Saitama and Tatsumaki, it occurs in their final conversation, Chapter 106. 

End of the digression.

As for Saitama, he is simply stating the truth. He first met Fubuki at her worst, and, in the interactions they had following it, Fubuki employed her façade the majority of the time - with that being said, while he doesn’t enjoy her company, Saitama in the webcomic actually pays attention to what Fubuki has to say (despite seemingly busy reading a manga, Saitama actually listens to Fubuki’s talk in his apartment and responds to her remaining on topic, unlike, for example, in Flashy Flash’s case, where Saitama only caught on to a single word out of the ninja’s entire monologue, which wasn’t even relevant to Flashy’s recount of his past; Chapter 115), admits her into his apartment and is even willing to follow Fubuki instead of outright avoiding her, which is not exactly negligible stuff if we compare it to how he treats several other characters (he remembers her name and who she is, for starters). Anyway. Only in the Esper Sisters arc did Saitama see a more admirable side of the esper, learning a bit more about her past and her situation with Tatsumaki (Chapter 99 and the followings); besides that, the first time Fubuki was actually genuine and direct with him only happened right at the start of this arc, in the elevator. Therefore, it’s obvious why Fubuki doesn’t represent anything more than an acquaintance to him, and, to be fair, it would be strange if this wasn’t the case. At the same time, I don’t think Saitama is saying this line with the ulterior motive of hurting or insulting Fubuki; if anything, it’s yet another case of Saitama’s trademark blunt honesty and his statement represents a fatual observation more than anything else. As I previously mentioned, in Chapter 99, Saitama is repeatedly shown listening to the sisters’s conversation, and he later acknowledges Fubuki’s efforts after all she went through during the fight (Chapter 102). So, I believe that the real narrative meaning of the “acquaintance” comment and its relation to the core message of the arc become apparent only in the light of the follow-up lines. Soon afterward, in fact, Saitama tells the older esper, who arbitrarily decided that Fubuki didn’t need any human connection in her life and thus was forcefully imposing her own decision against her sister will (Chapter 102), how nobody should dictate the life choices of someone else, that the value of human relationships shouldn’t be underestimated, and then he adds: “This is the power of Fubuki’s acquaintance! You better remember that, you shitfaced brat”. After hearing the reason behind the sisters’ conflict and having witnessed it unfold, Saitama decided to step in and take Fubuki’s side, assisting the B-Class esper fight an overwhelming and unfair battle against a toxic person who looms menacingly over her life and freedom, right when the S-Class psychic was about to re-take control over Fubuki’s life and cut any ties she has with the rest of the world (Chapter 101). Instead of a motivation unrelated to the core message of the arc and its characters, what actually brings Saitama to “fight” against the S-Class is his willingness to help Fubuki against her abuser (Chapter 103; Chapter 104), after the B-Class hero proved her growth as a person. Saitama’s actions, in fact, follow Fubuki’s bravest moment in the entire series (so far) and grant her the deserved assistence she is worthy of after giving her all for the sake of others, the human connections she feels responsible for as a leader. Now, make no mistake: Saitama would have helped anyone else in Fubuki’s place, but I think it is very important that Saitama witnessed Fubuki’s heroic side, understood what she was going through and personally ensured that she could confront her sister without an unfair gap of power on the side of the older sibling, making his involvement in the arc totally earned and organic.

Therefore, Saitama stepping in only as a mere acquaintance emphasizes the central theme of the arc - one of the most recurring themes in ONE’s works in general - which is the importance of human bonds and the unhealthiness of cutting ties with the rest of humanity. In this arc, Saitama is intervening not as a friend, not as her “nakama” nor as any other kind of more personal relationship, but simply as an acquaintance of Fubuki, and nonetheless, he is trying to help her against a toxic person who had (and keeps having) an extremely negative role in Fubuki’s life.  As an acquaintance, Saitama is showing Tatsumaki that no matter the degree of intimacy in a relationship, even a not-so-close connection between two human beings can make the difference in a time of need. Sometimes (like in this case), people who have no personal interest or involvement in a conflict might decide to help others without expecting anything in return or without having anything to gain. This nice subversion of the “power of friendship” is a major slap in the face of Tatsumaki’s toxic ideology and her twisted interpretation of Blast’s original advice, because it proves that not all people are egoistical and that not always human contact ends in exploitation, betrayal and mistreatment. The finale, when, in deliberate contrast to how people used to avoid Fubuki out of fear of Tatsumaki (I mentioned this already), the members of the Fubuki group courageously choose to stay at Fubuki’s side despite being up against a psychotic and immensely powerful S-Class esper (this and the following pages, Chapter 105), and then, when the latter wounds from the MA arc opened again, refused to fight Tatsumaki even though they had the perfect opportunity to finish off the person who wanted to maim them (or worse) up until that point, voicing instead their resolve to get stronger for the sake of their leader, further demolishes Tatsumaki’s biases, her idea of relationships as merely parassitic in nature and her complete distrust for people. The fact this showcase of humanity comes from an extension of Fubuki’s character, her group, makes it all the more poignant in the context of this arc and the sisters’ conflict, where the driving force that leads Fubuki, the heart and soul of the arc, to confront and fight Tatsumaki are, specifically, her human connections: in order to protect them, Fubuki finds the resolve and the courage necessary to face her own fears and traumas, in what represents the culmination of her character arc up until that point. It all goes to illustrate the healthy and positive role human bonds can play in our lives, and the profound impact they might have on our process of growth and maturation. And while the arc does acknowledge that relationships can be harmful and damaging as well (as Fubuki and Tatsumaki’s backstories and conflict demonstrate), it also proves how that is far from being the only case, that human connections are a fundamental part of what makes us humans and that no one, not even all mighty heroes, can live, or should live, on their own, isolated from anyone else.

Concluding the post, I believe the “acquaintance” moment has way more meaning to it than what it might appear at a first glance, because it’s actually deeply tied to the core message of the arc and the storylines of these characters. Removed from its context and without that specific lead-up, it can make for a boring and shallow “meme”, but its significance changes drastically when considered within the narrative framework provided by the arc.

[silverslipstream]

writeblr intro!

Well, hello there! Welcome to my page! Thought I'd finally get around to writing and pinning an intro, seeing as my writeblr recommendations post has gone STRATOSPHERIC and I've followed so many new accounts!

I'm Jeb (he/him), 20 years old, and an aspiring writer, poet and disaster dork from New Zealand (who currently lives in the UK - England, to be more precise). I'm a huge lover of writing and reading science fiction works, particularly hard sci-fi - Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey series and his novel The Songs of Distant Earth were the works that inspired a young me to start taking writing seriously. I also write fanfiction, romance, horror, a smidgen of fantasy, spy fiction... whatever takes my fancy, basically! I also love writing and reading poetry, and hope to have some of my poems published professionally by the end of 2023!

Outside of writing, I'm a huge motorsport lover. Formula One is my main passion, and in fact I originally joined tumblr to post about my then-WIP, The Edge Of Control. TEOC may be in cryogenic storage, but my love of speed and high-octane racing remains: I regularly watch F1, IndyCar and the World Endurance Championship. I also love spaceflight, astronomy, Shakespeare, teen movies from the 80s/90s (ESPECIALLY John Hughes' work), many cheesy romcoms and lasagna. (What? It's literally the perfect food!)

Right, now with all that out of the way, let's get onto the real good stuff... (sorry in advance for the lack of taglists, I haven't remembered how they work!)

links to my work:

jebberjabber on AO3 (my main account, for fanfiction) degnercurve130R on AO3 (for F1/racing works) KesslerCascade on Wattpad (for original works)

works-in-progress

You Can't Take It Back Now!

type: fanfiction (fandom: Bittersweet Candy Bowl, Webcomic) genre: romance (of the sapphic, friends-to-lovers variety) summary: Sue and Amaya have been best friends ever since they met in second grade. They're proudly inseparable, but when a secretive confession from Amaya turns into a sudden kiss from the assuredly-straight Sue, everything changes. Can they navigate their friendship while dealing with their rampant emotions? Is it just drama, or did Sue have more investment into their kiss than she let on? status: six chapters currently complete, with two published on AO3! Bi-weekly updates planned. link: You Can't Take It Back Now! on AO3

White Sky

type: original work genre: hard science fiction/mystery/thriller summary: It's 2094, and the Earth-Luna Treaty Organisation (ELTO) is planning the upcoming 125th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Meanwhile, Katarina 'Kat' Lloyd, a reclusive scientist, is framed for a crime she didn't commit and forced into outer space. Seeking refuge aboard the cislunar debris hauler Dowager Caroline, Kat and the Caroline's motley crew discover that her framing was simply a cog in a much bigger plot - one with dire consequences for mankind... status: currently in the planning stage, rough draft established and plot outline written

works published on Tumblr:

An Acquired Taste - In a post-cyberpunk/solarpunk imagining of 22nd-century New Seoul, a corporate engineer makes a chance meeting with a street vendor and makes an important discovery.

Executive Decisions - In an alternate history where the Cold War went hot, a US Air Force nuclear-bomber crew face a moral dilemma as they near their Soviet target. Operation Trident - A soldier experiences a combat drop on the Belgian coast, as part of an ongoing human offensive against an alien occupation force. Ignition Sequence - An experiment with a second-person perspective where the watcher observes a Space Shuttle launch in Florida.

[homestuckreplay]

To be fair, you have to have a very high wisdom to understand Colonel Sassacre. The mischief is extremely nuanced, and without a solid grasp of mangrit and maturity most of the pranks will go over the typical reader’s head.

(page 759)

If I was making a webcomic, I’d probably take a well deserved few days off between story acts, but not so in Homestuck. We’re back, and kind of, sort of, unofficially, maybe, in Act 3?

For Act3posting, I’m gonna do a couple things.

- Hard cap reaction posts at 500 words. Time to get economical.

- End reaction posts with a command suggestion. I can’t access the actual suggestion box, so can’t influence the story directly, but I still have ideas I’d like to share.

Starting now.

So, there’s a message from Nanna in the front of Colonel Sassacre’s – and not just any message. I’d call this a prophecy. This is real fantasy novel territory, with battles and royalty and chosen ones and protagonists with cool dramatic titles and wise old spiritual guides who know far more than they should. I eat this stuff up even when it’s cliché. I wonder if the story within Sburb and the story outside of Sburb could be totally different genres.

Nanna says this book’s ‘journey will end on the Final Day of [her] life’, with Final Day underlined, so we know it’s plot important. This means she wrote this some time ago, already knowing about John’s future. Signing up to be a Sburb beta tester because it’s the Game of the Year no longer feels like a happenstance. This is cosmically fated somehow, which… is a little sad, because it takes away some of John and Rose’s success from them, if they didn’t get to this point in the game through skill but through destiny. I’m gonna have to get used to that concept, and start thinking through how free will can be exercised in a story that plays with time this way.

These titles are SO cool. ‘...the Heir of Breath and Seer of Light, the Knight of Time and Witch of Space…’ these fuck so hard. I want one. These probably correspond to John, Rose, Dave, and their secret fourth player Todd from Missouri, maybe in the same order we meet the characters, although maybe there will be a surprise shakearound. After all, Rose seems way more associated with darkness than light, and ‘Witch of Space’ feels like it’d fit her way better than ‘Seer of Light’. And no way does Dave have the earnestness and devotion necessary to be a good knight – John, on the other hand, could rise to that challenge.

Nanna’s ‘P.S. HOO HOO HOO!’ could indicate that she knew all along that she would become Nannasprite, and perhaps knew that she wouldn’t be able to deliver this message directly in sprite form, as it would be game spoilers. Or it could be that she always liked to say hoo hoo hoo, carrying the spirit of the harlequin even without being prototyped with the doll. Personally, I hope both are true.

According to the Adventure Map, Act 3 is called ‘Insane Corkscrew Haymakers’. This is really different from the first two act titles, which are both very literary sounding, have musical allusions, and indicate a setup and inciting incident of a story, respectively. A haymaker is either ‘a powerful blow with the fist’ or ‘a machine for curing hay in rainy weather’, and this is not a farm story, so my guess is the punch. Act 1’s title related to John and Act 2’s to Rose, so this should be Dave’s, especially as his narrative is often treated less seriously. Perhaps these insane corkscrew haymakers happen during his rooftop battle with his bro?

> John: Find a prank to play on Nannasprite.

[clonewarsarchives]

Hello there!

I just wanted to write in to express my gratitude and ask a couple questions.

Long story short, I gave up on both the EU and Disney Star Wars canons some time ago, instead choosing to vet the works myself and add them to my own list. This has brought me much joy and breathed new life into this franchise for me, because now, anything I don't like, I can just ignore.

My focal point for vetting is involvement from George Lucas, and so naturally The Clone Wars (Seasons 1-6, anyways) got accepted, and is a huge part of my own canon.

But in doing the research for this project, I have discovered so much more Star Wars to take in than I ever had before. Case in point is the webcomics for The Clone Wars, which I had no idea existed before doing the research for all this in the past year or so.

I was looking for these webcomics in an idle way for a little bit, and finally sat down with Google, and what should I find but your blog?

It's a treasure trove of all materials related to The Clone Wars, so I wanted to say thank you! I am especially grateful to get to read these webcomics, since they were tied to Adobe Flash in some way on the official website, and cannot be viewed there any more within the limits of what I'm willing to do, and so I had accepted that that was lost for me. But your blog has made it not so! So thank you very much! And now, my questions:

Do you mind if I save the webcomics from your blog onto my computer?

Do you happen to have, or know where I could read, copies of Bait, Act on Instinct, or The Valsedian Operation? These were the only complete comics that I could not find on your blog.

Could you tell me more about the UK Magazine? This is another thing about which I know nothing and would love to learn.

Are you aware that the last two pages of webcomic #6, The Fall of Falleen, seems to have the last two pages swapped?

Is there a page missing from your post of Hunting the Hunters, Part 1? Parts 2 and 3 have the pages with the game tease lines at the bottom, but then have another page afterwards, whereas Part 1 does not.

Regarding both the Dark Horse monthly series and the graphic novellas, do you know if these have been collected anywhere, if they remain in print, and where I could buy them online that isn't Amazon?

Thank you very much, and clear skies!

Thank you for the message! Glad to be of help. To answer:

Is it okay to save posts from this blog on my computer?

Yes! Please save anything you like on this blog rather. I started this to offload my hard drive and prevent them from being lost media lol

post issues:

Bait should be the S1E11 accompanion? I did post it just forgot to tag 😅

I swear a few years ago Act on Instinct and The Valsedian Operation were availabe just on dubious free read comic online sites... don't seem to be anymore. here you go

Fixed the pages in Q4 & Q5. Thanks for telling me!

UK Magazine

Its proper name is Star Wars: The Clone Wars Comic. UK got a Clone Wars magazine because the publisher, Titan Comics, is a UK-based company, the one that makes Star Wars Insider.

The monthly issue features episode guide, games and an original comic strip. It was later reprinted in the US as a bi-monthly. The blog followed the UK publishing order since that's chronological and collected in full. Some issues were left out in the US reprint.

Dark Horse series

Both the monthly series and novellas started in Sept 2008 but the monthly series only lasted to Jan 2010 while novellas continued every few months until after the Disney buyout.

No omnibus were made or planned. So if you want a print version, you could only look in the library or the second-hand market.

dubious free read comic online sites have the full set fyi

[meganechan05]

"Rita of Gokkan"

TTFC's original webcomic from Rita's POV.

First 10 Chapters are available on TTFC to read. First 3 Chapters free on BookLive and Piccomo.

(Spoilers ahead)

I'm surprised they managed to create a webcomic in Rita's POV as well as having a weekly release to show more of what was going on in their head.

The chapters are rather short to fit the format of a weekly series (especially a full-colored one), but shows enough of what is going on in Rita's POV. The first Chapter is 43 pages compared to the 14 of other chapters simply bc it goes over the entire opening monologue of the pilot.

(Please note that I am not fluent, the lack of furigana makes it hard for me to read kanji, but I know enough to use context clues to get a general yet vague grasp of what is happening).

The first chapter takes place during the events of episode 4 given it's before arresting Gira but about a week after episode 1. It starts with Morfonia running and Rita then fights off Sanegims outside the castle reminiscent of Episode 5's first fight scene. Even down to Rita's speech as they enter the castle as well as sentencing someone to a -10° cell during a trial.

The rest of the chapter would show a little more insight on Rita and Morf's relationship as Morf does seem to show concern over Rita's behavior after the first Bugnarok attack. The chapter ends with Rita entering their office and cuts to the events of Chapter 1 as Rita recalls it after picking up Gira's Wanted flier (cut to Chapters 2-9)

This is where we actually get more of Rita's inner thoughts and perspectives of the other Kings in the first episode. Specifically Racles and Yanma as those two were the ones causing the most problems for the Chief Justice. Not so much Kaguragi, but there is a moment during the fight where Rita and Himeno kinda butt heads because Himeno jumped into the line of fire after Rita takes a shot at a Sanegim.

I won't say much else as a good chunk of the comic is retelling what happened in the first episode, but it does confirm my headcanon of Rita being way too suspicious of Racles in the early episodes prior to watching "Racles's Secret" which led to them being more than happy to get a DNA sample by smacking the absolute shit out of him. It also shows how Rita is sick and tired of each King's selfishness when all they want is for the Alliance to work for the sake of the people but learn none of the Kings can work together. Something that explains why Rita was so close to throwing hands with Yanma and Himeno in Episode 5 while going "i don't give a fck if you're a royal" to their faces 😂

Chapter 10 is more of Rita going over their past and shedding details on how they grew up after becoming King at 10 years old. It also features a chat with Moffun that is a 180 in style which is very fitting for Rita's mental state (i love it so much~). The chapter ends with Morf calling Rita before Rita heads to Toufu for the arrest.

Honestly, the webcomic is pretty good at being very close to how the episodes played out while also bringing in another perspective of the whole situation. Some details were added in that weren't in the show simply because it makes more sense to know now rather than putting random tiny details together and have a huge theory board throughout the show.

I mean I do have one, but y'know. KingOh lore is insane.

What I do appreciate about this webcomic is how it touches on Rita and Morfonia's relationship in more detail. Even down to Rita's thinking whenever Morf's laid back personality and disrespecting authority makes them hold back a scream mid-meeting 😂

I do wonder how much input Kamihori and TakaMina have and how much discussions made with the artist to bring this side project to life. Or at least how much was planned or if TakaMina was just begging for his little autistic blorbo to have some shining moments that were glossed over in the show in favor of getting the plot moving.

[ff6webcomic]

Hello everyone! How are you all doing? ^_^ I came to give you an important update about Final Fantasy VI Webcomic!

You guys may have noticed that we got an unplanned full month break in March, and we didn’t get any new pages for two weeks during June. The gap between chapters 7 and 8 has been longer than chapters 6 and 7 as well. There’s a reason for all of that and I’d like to explain it to you!

FFVI Webcomic came back with full force in May 2020 after some extensive hiatuses. One of the biggest reasons for that strong return was the COVID pandemic. Everyone had to stay at home and a lot of people were short on jobs. With that, there was plenty of time to entirely dedicate myself to the comic. With a steady schedule, more and more patron supporters came along and the comic could continue successfully. Our Patreon has grown a lot over these last three years! However, as the time passed and life returned to normal, new goals and new expectations were beginning to show up in my life once again.

As these three years passed, new opportunities were emerging and I’ve been finding less and less time to work on the comic. Even with a tight agenda, I was always doing my best to have FFVI Webcomic have constant updates because this comic and its readers are really important to me. However, I need to be aware that FFVI Webcomic is a VERY big and VERY ambitious project. We’re talking about 10 years of project and at least 10 more years to be concluded, if we’re lucky lol xD And, as much as I love this comic, I can’t sacrifice other aspects of my life to be able to fulfill the comic’s goal.

So with all of that explained, it is with great sadness that I’m announcing that FFVI Webcomic will now be updated with one page per month instead of the usual one page per week. 

I know, I know… This was not an easy choice to make and my heart even feels heavy as I’m writing this…This was not a sudden choice either, I’ve been considering the idea for a while and had to make an ultimate decision.

I’m IMMENSELY grateful for all the support, comments and positive feedback that you guys give to this comic! If I could use all that hearty energy to fuel my livelihood I would be rich and wouldn’t have any more financial worries xD FFVI Webcomic is my dream project and if I could make it full time, I would, but we live in a capitalist system and that means you gotta make money to pay up your bills.

Does that mean that FFVI Webcomic will continue with one page per month until it reaches its end? Well, not necessarily. Is that same old thing: The more support the comic receives, the more pages are possible to make. We can still increase the release of new pages but, as its current state, making one page per week as it used to be is unfeasible.

Rest assured that FFVI Webcomic will continue, regardless of how small or big the financial support is! You guys have no idea how many scenes like the Phantom Train, Battle for Narshe, Floating Continent, “Searching for friends”, etc are already done in my head! And as long as Square Enix doesn’t give us a FFVI remake, I’ll be making this comic lol 😂 There’s still plans for that physical book as well! And I’m even considering turning FFVI Webcomic into a collaborative project in the future, instead of being a one person team 👀

With that, I thank you all for your understanding and continuous support throughout these years! This is not the end of FFVI Webcomic. It’s just a different path that this project is taking!

[hiveworks]

OBELISK - Interview with Ashley McCammon

September 2023

The year is 1908. Evelyn Reuter is dealing with the affairs of her deceased father in her hometown of Manhattan. While she takes solace in the homes of her queer friends, grief presses in around her until one day... the mysterious Margot appears in her life.

Obelisk is a 16+ gothic horror/romance comic about vampires and lesbianism. In celebration of Obelisk's return from hiatus, we asked author Ashley McCammon @draculings for an interview.

What was the spark behind making Obelisk? Why a webcomic versus another style of publishing (print, self pub, etc.)?

My original inspiration for Obelisk was in my frustration with lesbian vampire movies - there are so many of them, and none made for a lesbian audience, let alone involving butch women! I wanted to tell that story, and celebrate that point of view. It’s similar to why I chose to set the comic in 1908 - the early 1900s are something of a transitional period, something not explored often when we aren’t talking WWI or the Titanic. I wanted to tell a story about the radical change happening in just a few, unusual people’s lives, in this transitory period. As for it being a webcomic - as a young artist, I always wanted to make one! It’s such an accessible, experimental way to tell a story, where even the website can be part of the atmosphere. Making a deeply atmospheric, spooky comic, that feels the most fitting.

For new readers, how would you describe your two lead women?

Evelyn is muscling through her day to day when we meet her - she’s putting on a brave face, or one that she hopes exudes confidence - but really feels like she has no idea what she’s doing. (The impostor syndrome is incredibly strong - something I think a lot of people can understand!) She’s been left with this enormous responsibility on top of the grief of losing her dad, and having that job and security is pressed on her as something she should be grateful for. She’s absorbed that idea and really hasn’t taken a moment to breathe - or to consider what she really wants for herself. Margot is quite the opposite - she’s a vampire who lives only for her own desires, a hedonist who’s been floating through existence that way for as long as she can remember. For all of her self indulgence though, she’s never connected much with anyone. She holds herself far above people, only ever showing them this facade of a regular person. It’s very arrogant - but it must also be very lonely! (Not that she has anyone to admit that to… yet ;)   )

What can you tell us about what's lurking for Evelyn in the upcoming chapter?

Evelyn makes a very bold choice at the end of chapter two, one that scares her - putting her own desires first, impulsively, in a way that will change everything and surprise even Margot herself. (Patrons read way ahead and will get to see this very soon, and the time she spends with Margot throughout chapter 3 as a result!)

Obelisk is a traditionally inked piece, with some digital final touches. What guided your decision to make this a traditional comic versus a digital one?

It really wasn’t a choice, to be honest - traditional media is where all my passion for making art lives! Obelisk is drawn and inked traditionally, and finished with Copic markers and the occasional paint pen or colored pencil for that killer red highlight ;)

What are some of the challenges in working this way? What do you find rewarding?

It can be tedious to scan, piece together and clean up my pages, but ultimately I have a fairly streamlined process for it and I don’t mind. I love having a physical final product to look at and hold when I’m done with it, it gives me a sense of accomplishment and connection to my work!

Do you have any tips for other comic artists on resuming a series after an extended hiatus?

Put your health first, and spend time reconnecting to your story before diving back in. It’s easy to feel obligated by the hamster wheel of social media and garnering attention, but your own connection to your work in the long-term is what matters most. Obelisk wouldn’t be the same story if I hadn’t had that downtime, and it’s off better for it!

What are some comics that inspire you? Do you have any reading recommendations for fans of Obelisk?

As far as webcomics go, I’m a big fan of Tiger Tiger, Hemlock, Barbarous, and Heirs of the Veil!

What is the best way for fans of Obelisk to support you?

The very best way is through my Patreon! Patrons have immediate access to the next six months of Obelisk pages (that’s my whole buffer!) as well as tons of behind the scenes work as I develop the next chapter and share work-in-progress shots right from my drawing table.

Obelisk updates Wednesdays and can be read for free at obeliskcomic.com 🩸Be sure to white list the site on your ad blocker and follow @draculings for more info and updates!