In other news…

Well, it’s been a long time coming. I know it’s been a good wait, and we don’t have much of an excuse beyond being generally busy. Five months late busy. But after all my waffling and kvetching, after endless worry and tears, it’s finally arrived. I refer, of course, to Stronghold #6.

This is our most polished issue yet. We have, in the past, tended to rush the last phases of these things, often missing glaring errors or awkward dialogue that needed to be corrected, which we simply didn’t notice until publishing. Those final steps are often excruciatingly dull, and when an issue is finished, we’re often pretty gung-ho about just getting it online already. So we, and by we I mean I, the writer and editor, tend to once-over it and give the go-ahead.

I did not do that this time.

The end result is an issue that should be clear and well-constructed, and moreso than usual. The story, too, I hope to be engaging and evocative, with a distinct personality from the ones that came before it. I try to make each issue its own beast, with a new voice and a new mood to suit both the events and the narrator. I found quickly that I couldn’t rely on voiceover; it’s a bit of a crutch and lets me write prose when I’m trying to write a comic. So I have tried to limit that sort of internal monologuing to Ruth’s issues, and the others get their own forms of self-commentary. Ruth monologues; Marc, being in large part the anti-Ruth, does not; Emily explores her psyche in vivid hallucination; finally, Greg is an artist, and makes his own comics.

While you’re waiting, I invite you to check out our forms and post some junk in there about this weird little book we’re putting out. I hope to hear from you guys. We’re making this book for you, so your thoughts are appreciated.

Thanks,

Brian M. Visaggio

We’re officially out of backlog.

That means that this comic is now subject to the whims and vagaries of production of new material. We’re still finishing up issue 4, which isn’t ready to begin posting yet. But it will be soon. So we’re going on a very brief break from story comics, and will, through Friday, be posting some behind-the-scenes concept art and character designs to allow us to finalize the new material.

It’s going to be good. The cover art is done, and the pages themselves are in post-production. We’ll be returning with the new stuff on Monday, and believe me, it’s the best issue yet, the first with both Kevin and myself at peak form. It’s going to rule.

So stick with us, and Monday, things will be golden. Until then, enjoy what we’ve got for you.

Hope is not yet lost.

Brian

You see, writing stories is hard. Writing concise, thirty-page tales with beginnings, middles, and ends isn’t particularly easy when compared to endless To Be Continued’s and eternally-hanging plot threads that can be resolved at the writer’s leisure. That first story — issues 1 and 2 — were made, though, over three years ago, and in the intervening time, I’ve come to appreciate episodic storytelling, and to understand the weaknesses such a format would impose upon the comic: it would devolve into either endless fight scenes or a relationshippy soap opera, and while both of these are valid ways to tell a story, I think both of them are to an extent weaker. As I’ve spent the last few months doing the Great Deep Space Nine Run-Through, I’ve realized that there is a profound strength to the single episode story.

The writer in such stories is freer. It becomes possible to craft your tale around a specific theme instead of vague overtones. It lets you derive your drama from the tension created by thirty pages, and forces creativity. I think back on the best episodes of Deep Space Nine, and they’re the most self-contained. As much as the arc-driven episodes like the six-episode suite that opens season six can be brilliant, they never achieve the elegant simplicity of “The Visitor,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “Children of Time,” or “Duet.” Each of them factors in in some way to the larger narrative, but each of them is best when considered separate. “Duet” doesn’t rely on the historical experience of Bajor and Cardassia, but you could tell that story about any war criminal. “The Visitor” is ultimately, for all its technobabble, about the unconquerable love of a son for his father. The power hangs there because it’s universal.

That’s the direction I want to take this series in. I’m honestly not sure if I’m up to the task, but I hope the exercise of writing helps make me a better writer. This issue takes the first tentative steps in that direction, and issue 4, “The Professional,” and issue 5, (tentatively “The Flower of Carnage”) will begin that process in earnest. Till then, issue 3 is a great story that draws the previous two issues to, I hope, a satisfying conclusion and completing our bloated introduction to Ruth, our main character.

Brian V.

Thanks for reading!