Wow, hi everyone! The amount of times I’ve rewritten everything in this blog and attempted to put all my thoughts of gratitude into words only for me to keep doing it every few months with some new thing. Yes, this site has been around for a while, and so have I, trying to be a professional artist with a professional site. But I’m always grateful to be here doing exactly this, and always grateful for everyone who reads my work or makes a purchase from the site, or retweets/reblogs a post, who drops into Twitch chat and joins Discord, and literally any and every other way to support.
In 2023, I decided that I was going to finally publish Blackbirds, this story I’ve been working on for so many years. It’s literally about time to do it, and has been since my first thinking about it. But wait! I also have four other stories to tell! What to do with those? Well, those can come out later, we’re focusing on Blackbirds! No wait, if we’re doing Blackbirds as a webcomic what if…
So yeah, this is as much an experiment as anything I do, and I’m happy to do it. To at least try it. So then began the marathon creative days, trying to write scenes and draw pages, and get them done fast. When June hit, I knew I had enough material to get started. Six pages a week in progress meant I was well ahead of my goals but it was slow going only because I had school and work. But I’m doing it!
I said to myself if nothing else, Blackbirds is the story that MUST get told. All the others can wait if they have to, but this one can’t. If you ever came to watch me draw on Twitch, you knew Blackbirds was complete. You saw it happen live, and the only thing that needs to be done is adding dialogue to the pages. Blackbirds was ready to go to print, and be the latest book in the IOF shop. The problem is that it takes me, currently, way too long to complete a single book the way I want, so it’d be months before the next issue would be out, even if I pushed myself hard to complete stuff in a month. In fact, Blackbirds wasn’t supposed to be out until the Fall this year as a printed book!
But no, it’s time. I really wanted this story in the world, to be read and enjoyed as much as I wanted it to exist. Along with it came all other stories that were tied thematically to it: Hedge Kingdom, Dragoon, and Black Mercury. These are all key pieces of a background narrative that will unfold in the pages and, like any good fan of a story, I don’t want to spoil anything for others (I do enough of that on Twitch).
I’m probably over-extending myself to get these pages up but I want you to enjoy what’s here. So please, enjoy what’s here and let me worry about my pacing and upkeep. The way the pages are posted lets you add commentary and your own notes about what you’re reading so please have fun with that! And with me posting every week, you’ll definitely see something new, on a regular basis!
The first scene, six pages of each title are free forever to read. I think they’re engrossing enough to get you interested. But after that sixth page, the series will be $2 a month forever and ever. Additionally, each story has a publish date so new pages of Blackbirds and Hedge Kingdom are published on Tuesdays, and new pages of Dragoon and Black Mercury are published on Thursdays. That’s about 50-cents per week for each story, and your subscription is worth so much gold because it tells me that you enjoy the stories and you want to support their development and my work. For that, as always, thank you.
This is my first ever webcomic. My first ever webcomic line-up. Please enjoy it with my blessing, please come back to read the pages week after week. There is more to come with the website, with the pages, and with IOF in general. And if you’re curious, yes there is a subscription plan being developed for those who want to follow all four stories. Stay tuned, that will be announced at a future date.
Thank you and take care!!