In 2010 I graduated from college, moved out of my parents’ house, and used the experience to start actually drawing the original comic I’d been making all these plans for.
In 2016, I thought I’d have the story finished by 2018. In 2018, I figured I’d be through by mid-2019. Now it’s 2020, and I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around the fact that we are finally clocking out for real.
…and since it’s ending after 9 years, same as And Shine Heaven Now did, this means I still haven’t qualified for TVTropes’ Webcomic Long-Runners list. (When it gets to 2024, everyone remind me how I’m not allowed to end Leif & Thorn for at least another year.)
This art, at last, is the full-cast portrait based on the results of the Unnecessarily Long Favorite Character Poll. (Could’ve been more of them, but I made an executive decision to leave out “characters who only appeared on a single page and/or never got real names.)
A special hat tip to whoever-it-was that made a point of checking every box, so every character got at least 1 vote, and they all got to be drawn in the end.
If you run into any problems seeing new comments or loading new pages, let me know!
…I realize this is complicated with BICP, because the problem might be “the update is late.” Could’ve tried it on Leif & Thorn first, but that site has more visits and more updates, so the fallout from breaking it would be bigger
And I’m already using And Shine Heaven Now to test a competitor plugin, WP Super Cache. (Which will come out on top? Place your bets now!)
But I’m A Cat Person had overactive caching issues this past week, same as Leif & Thorn did — it just wasn’t as obvious, because this site doesn’t have daily updates for readers to notice when they’re missing.
Good news is, it’s fixed now! Any pages you loaded since Friday the 6th, you’ll have to refresh them one more time — but that’ll get you a non-sticky version from here on out.
Other good news: the proof copy of BICP Volume 7 arrived, and I got my cat to pose with it!
What a stunning model of grace and elegance.
(His name is Marshmallow Fluff. He’s still nervous about being petted or touched…but he’s come a long way from his “squeeze into the smallest corner possible and don’t move” stage, thanks to almost 6 months in a stable home, with regular meals and all the toys he can swat.)
Volume 7 is the one that opens with here’s what you missed on BICP, which means less space for bonus material in the back. But I added an extra 4 pages and managed to squeeze a few cool things in.
This is also the volume where I started putting full shading on the original pages — which made the art-updating process go a lot faster.
Chapter 23 (along with the recap that preceded it) was edited to the audiobook of Good Omens. Because I wanted to revisit it after seeing the Amazon miniseries…and yes, there’s a physical copy on my shelf, but I did not have time to sit and read it.
Chapter 24 was updated to the 4th season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. That show started rough, but boy has it hit its stride by now.
Chapter 25 was touched-up to the 2nd season of Mindhunter. Which…was awfully short. Possibly I needed something else to ride through the last few pages, but it wasn’t long enough to remember.
Chapter 26 — the first one where I didn’t have to add a new credit line, move a single word balloon, or add padding for a 2-page spread — was finished off during half the audiobook of Hollow Kingdom. Just half! Then all the work was done!
(I listened to the rest of it while doing other print-prep stuff. And queuing the next round of single-issue PDFs to release on ComiXology and DriveThruComics.)
This…might actually be the last of the page-redrawing efforts. Chapters 27 onward might just be released as-is.
Your artist will be a vendor at this year’s Flaming River Con, a one-day convention for LGBTQ geek culture!
It’s September 21, 2019, from 10 AM to 6 PM, hosted at the Cleveland Public Library.
I’ll be doing on-the-spot sketch commissions, and selling Volumes 1 of both BICP and Leif & Thorn, along with mini-prints, pins, and a whole heap of fanart.
Here’s a quick preview of the panel schedule:
Follow Flaming River Con on Facebook or on Instagram for vendor details, volunteer opportunities, and anything else you want to know.
Because of them, the Tiernan pins are in production — and the Patrick pins are already here!
(The part of Monster Cybele is played by a bunny planter I got in a post-Easter sale. Cheapest BICP-themed accessory I’ve ever gotten.)
The colors in the photos are a little washed-out by the flash — in real life, he looks like he popped right out of a BICP page and into your hands.
Unlike with the books, the pins aren’t going up online for general sale. If you missed getting a preorder, they’ll be available on Patreon eventually, and will be used as extra rewards in future Kickstarters. Stick around!
(Shipping for 2 pins is the same as for 1, so you might as well get both!)
They come with free ebooks to sweeten the deal, and there may be other digital treats posted for backers along the way.
This is a Quickstarter, which means the fundraising goal is low ($650) and the deadline is near (July 11, at 11:59 PM, US Eastern). Good news is, there’s no limit on backers, and no rule against overfunding.
