Yes here it is, another page inserted among the redraws that it has nothing stylistically in common with. My current “plan” is to split “part 1” into two sub parts for my test printing, which necessitates a clean break right about this point, and this will begin part 2 of part 1, because 33 pages cost less to print than 65.

I suppose this could be “cleaner,” and I deliberately disregarded a note I wrote to myself, “start zoomed out,” because I forgot the reason I wrote it. The first scene of a story or in a new location should start zoomed out, or zoomed in, by my reckoning. This is zoomed in, but not taking up enough space that it works. But in the “full” book it will follow directly from an out-zoomed look at the same thing. Of course I then will not need the clean break I set up these two pages to create, but apart from that it explains, or is the closest I have come to explaining where elpse and nemitz are going, and I do not want it to seem like I just made it up “now” when elpse tells the lizard what they are doing in the nextish “new” pages I am drawing, even if I did make it up just now, because when I first drew them I was not even considering them far enough ahead that I considered they were going anywhere.

There is the cost, and also I am at this point terribly impatient with the process and myself, and not interested in spending another year redrawing pages before I finally take the chance and realize “oops” it does not work after eh. It certainly does not work on tapastic, the comic strip community website, where the image size is capped at 940 pixels wide, yet narrower than I already show things, so if anything it will be HARDER to read, and requiring another full set of jpgs at the different size! Oh is my work never done? Moments after my registering, a variety of automated messages posing as human acknowledgment reminded me that people only read comics on mobile devices these days and that I had better plan my project to have big text and vertically scrolling frames. If you have already been drawing a comic for years and haven’t either had a quantifiable success or given up you are a statistical anomaly and not worth considering.
Technology is REGRESSING and proud of itself for doing so. Tapastic is at least immensely superior to tumblr in its display capabilities and organization; it actually HAS some.

By the wuh that is tap-astic, not taptastic, which I was certain it was for several days. I assumed it was some play on “fantastic” that I was not grasping, and perhaps should be glad that it is not a traceable play on anything because I am an ancient out of touch bog monster that barely comprehends what the other bog monsters are doing.

In fact the person who initially had an issue with the red and green imps not being explained also believes that print, the realm of media, is a person who is dead, and so if I trust his opinion at all, only my own latter purpose is served. He also hates old people. Unfortunately old people (that is, anyone older than me, which really is not THAT old) are the ones who buy my pictures at at local art exhibitions! No no no, I cannot connect with younger folk. They have too many rules. They want comic strips featuring minimally defined smiling lumps that always explain what they are doing, except when they are referencing tv shows or movies, references the grasping of which the entire project rests on, which will not be explained, and somehow despite such conditions for readership do quite well for themselves. If I have any shot at selling this comic to anybody it will be the surviving 40-year olds who still buy comic books but are not opposed to the idea of going outside the major established brands, plus anyone I personally coerce who knows they can see it on the internet for free. There are younger comic book buyers, but they already got word that I broke the rules. They know that I have never donated money to incentivize the playing of a video game by a party other than myself or publicly upheld the honor of my “childhood.” Also the comic is kind of boring.

That seems like a bitter plea for encouragement, but the existence of this post should be taken as evidence that against all reason I have not given up. I over-analyze my situation and discuss the negative aspects. But I have been poking at the work almost as long as the audience I am missing has lived; I do not know how to give up! I do not remember what I did before it! Apart from being annoyed at myself for not having started yet, and really want to stop going to school, and I did both those things. That is good!