I’ve gone back to editing Errant Story pages for the time being, on the theory that if I do the layout editing I can turn them over to a guest letterer and hopefully get them done faster. The pages I’m working on now are from Volume Two, because we lost the ones we edited the last time we sent it to print (in fact, we lost the edits in the formatting scramble before printing, so Volume Two only included about half the corrections). These are the pages where Poe got creative with layouts (compared to the boxes that make up most of Exploitation Now), which was great… right up until now, when the page proportions have to change slightly for print. -.-’
I am so slow at editing these pages. Later pages I actually have an automated conversion process to resize them, and that takes care of almost every layout issue, but these more creative panel layouts are killing me because they just need so much work. Back in the day, Poe wanted edge to edge art but had never heard of bleed, so now I am either going to have to add details to allow for bleed, OR change the design of the page to not be to the edge. I’m going with whichever one seems like it will look best, but usually that isn’t the one that’s easiest. Since I am doing all this work, though, the pages are looking fantastic, and they’re high enough quality so that we can realistically resize them to pretty much any size so long as it maintains the proportions. There’s a poll up on our forum asking what size you’d like us to use.
I’ll admit, the temptation to throw my hands up and go work on Errant Roads instead is quite strong at the moment. If I can ever finish all these comics and really work on it, Errant Roads is going to be SO AWESOME. It already has tons of world-building information that will probably never be specified (or in some cases even mentioned) in the comics, but which is still very much a part of the overall shape of the world. Everything is being checked against Poe’s unwritten internal notions about future stories, so it should all be pretty consistent by the time it goes to print, too. I am never going to finish all these comics, though. When I finish the 1500 comics currently in my hopper, we will start making MORE comics with Errant Tales, not to mention the ever-expanding archives of Does Not Play Well With Others. Still, every day is a little bit more progress, and as soon as the early volumes are edited, I’ll feel comfortable putting the print collection up for Kickstarter. Here’s hoping that’s soon!
^-^’