Hmm, I should talk about the story we just finished.

Back in 2013 just as Fer was wrapping up chapter four, he let me know that he’d be too busy to get started on the next chapter right away so I just wrote an outline for chapter five and left it at that. We uploaded Paul’s stuff and then when that got near the end, I realised I needed to get back to work.

After seven pages, I hit a major writing block. Even though I had the next bit planned out I couldn’t get it to work.

Originally the lack of money wasn’t supposed to come out into the open until later, around chapter six or seven. Instead I wanted to give the ladies of LWI a bit more screen time so I had planned for them to have a girls night out with a few hints that the honeymoon was over for Mike and Chloe. But I couldn’t make that work and I was running out of time, so I decided to cheat and threw in Ethereal High.

That ended up changing everything.

With nothing else feeling right, I brought forward Mike’s shady dealings and had the crew realise he was dooming them. The cast was also expanded to feature Greg and Vanessa, wanting to do some stories with a more successful comic since I had some stories in mind that required a bigger property. That was also altered, since originally the movie project would have been Mike encouraging the cast to translate Emerald Justice to the screen, hoping to skim the budget to pay back everyone they owed without David knowing.

Mike breaking up with Chloe was always planned, though she would be less sympathetic. I was dating someone at the time who had grown up in a rich household (Well, rich compared to most people I knew) and had a hard time understanding my lack of funds or that I couldn’t just take time off work to go on a holiday on a whim. It was near the end of our relationship and I was just getting more and more frustrated with her. I’m glad I cut out that stuff, it wasn’t fair to her or Chloe. Painted her in a much worse light than what had actually happened.

Something also changed? Molly was supposed to come in around chapter six. Her bit with redrawing the pages was in my head since chapter four. But with the different direction there was no real way to include her in the story until later on. When I got to the break up I realised the perfect way to bring her in by making her Chloe’s sister instead of some random art student Mike pulled off the street.

Am I happy with how things turned out? Yeah, I think this will work out better than my original plan that kind of stayed similar to book 1. And now book 3 will have more focus on the newer characters in a different situation. It was always planned to be the movie book but this time with a fresher take than the same old, same old.

I hope you enjoy it. And that you liked the previous comics.

Until next time.

David