Actually a little more than half, since I just finished updating chapter 13, and have only drawn part of the original artwork for chapter 26.
Plus, 3 of 4 interludes are updated!
…If there was going to be an Interlude 5, that could involve anything and anyone in the BICP universe, what would you want it to focus on?
The art is hardest to update for the sketchy-pencil style of flashbacks, since you can’t just draw a whole new line and have it blend in with the existing lineart.
The text was hardest in Interlude 2 (that’s the Ann Walker flashback), because there is so. much. exposition. Text bubbles up against the margins in practically every page.
(On the updated pages, you can tell which side is the interior margin because that’s where I started putting the credit line. It’s a handy reminder where to avoid putting text that I don’t want swallowed up in the spine.)
The single hardest item was Bennett’s glasses. Seriously, we’re halfway through the archive and I still hadn’t figured out how to draw them in a straight line with both frames the same size.
Chapter 11 was updated to two bad audiobooks. One mystery where the detective kept making actively bad decisions, one gay YA where the main character’s boyfriend died horribly right after they had sex for the first time. (I noped out at that point and rewarded myself with some fluffy sitcoms.)
Interlude 2 was drawn to podcasts, including the last of the Webcomics Weekly archive. It’s fascinating as a historical artifact — the final episodes involve the artists considering the merits of this hot new thing called Patreon.
Chapter 12 got me through two things I was saving for just this kind of work: the whole audiobook of The Last Hero, and the whole latest series of Grace and Frankie. They didn’t disappoint.
Chapter 13 involved a bunch of false starts. An unconvincing book here, an underwhelming show there. I finally got to the end via a string of medical dramas.
Interlude 3 was updated while listening to most of China Mieville’s The City And The City, which is entirely about the cool worldbuilding. There’s a murder mystery, but it’s just an excuse to hang around in the world, to the point where it was a while after finishing the art before it hit me that I hadn’t finished the actual book.
That’s a huge jump forward — Interlude 3, the Jesus flashback, was posted a whole 2 years after chapter 13 — because I’m going to publish it as a pretty little standalone story. (With the usual amount of bonus art, and an exclusive double-width version of the cover, and more.)
Look out for that in late March!
I wanted to have more of the chapters with the main characters available first…but, listen, Easter is April 1 this year, and I gotta release this in time or else what are we even doing here.