Bad news: injured shoulder = hiatus :(

Ye gods, I'm having a bad month of things. Unfortunately I have injured my right shoulder and, whilst it hasn't incapacitated me entirely, it IS making drawing and using the computer to colour my artwork difficult and painful. To proceed as such would probably cause more injury from which the likelihood of recovery would be considerably lessened. While I get treatment for it I have decided it is indeed time for a short break from tooning and I will take the rest of October all of November off.

As long as the physio goes according to plan I anticipate being back on deck from December. So, sorry about that - no comics for the next month but I'll be using the time to write, etc since that's much less dependant on my right hand...

Back & Forth

Usually when the story gets to a certain point there isn't much I can add via commentary... stuff is happening and that's about it. Despite that, I haven't said much for a while so I should say that the current batch of pages are all about trying to advance the story at a reasonable pace. Cutting between Kaycee and Fatima/Tom and Freya/the Mutates and Oz Magellan HQ allows me to avoid some exposition and allows each participant to be further advanced in the story after each cut. Haven't tried anything like this before, will be interesting to see how it works out - hopefully it doesn't end up being a confusing mess but I thin it's working out OK so far...

Wombat-Man Fan Art

(Just realised I hadn't posted this to the blog and really should have...)
Check out this awesome fan-art of Wombat-Man by Joey here...

Apart from the fan-art comp I ran earlier this year it's been so long since I received any freely offered fan-art I'd almost forgotten what fan-art was...! And then, out of the blue I got this wonderful, wonderful piece from Joey

Check more of his art:
http://www.drunkduck.com/The_Order_vol_1/index.php
http://joeyjarin.blogspot.com/

CROSSOVERLORD: Rochelle & Charisma cameo

For any readers familiar with The Crossoverlord this may be old news... the cover image for the latest chapter is a brilliant take on the Crisis on Infinite Earths' death of Supergirl cover and features a whole grab-bag of webcomic superheroes... including Magellan's very own Rochelle Kwon and Charisma Epoch. Check it out here... see if you can spot them without using the reference guide.

In fact Charisma's appearance is a bit of an error - Al Schroder, who as you know is the cartoonist behind Mindmistress (also one of the lead characters in The Crossoverlord and seen in the pages of Magellan here) suggested to cover artist Neil Purcell (of Daisen) to use "Rochelle and Epoch" but Neil's (self-confessed) unfamiliarity with Magellan and my own hugely inadequate cast page meant he ended up using Charisma instead. Oh well! I don't mind... and I'm certainly sure that Charisma doesn't mind!! Score one for her over her father, eh?

Great cover, Neil!

5.45-5.46: The battle continues...!

The battle so far has taken less than a minute so anything could happen!

We've seen a bit of what the Forn can do now - control of the elements... with "the elements" being earth, wind, fire, water. I had an email from one reader saying "ugh, more magic", however the Forn's control is no more mystical than Storm's is of weather, or Terra's is of earth, or the Human Torch's of fire... it's an ability inherent in all Forn like singing is in humans, it's just that some Forn can do it much better than others (like singing in humans!). Jenna's down for the count but we'll get to see Bif in action shortly.

Also we see Lin-Lin (aka Hidden Dragon) in action, or do we? She is meant to be invisible after all. I was tempted not to draw her in the frame at all but opted for an Invisible Woman approach - even so I faded her blue outline right back. I like the fact that when I look at that last frame she's not immediately apparent. Anyway, she's not the only invisible character to appear in Magellan - there was also Vanishing Vanessa from The Baxter Gang (in Go!Anna's dream sequence).

Girl-A-Matic relaunch

In exciting news for the Modern Tales group of webcomics, Girl-A-Matic (GAM) - a sister site to Graphic Smash (where Magellan is primarily housed) - has relaunched with a new look and a new code base.

This code base will eventually be moved over to Graphic Smash and I'm happy to say that the comments feature appears to now be placed under the previous/next navigation buttons... the fact that, in the current/old coding the comments sit above those navigation buttons was causing a number of headaches (mainly breaking navigation on some browsers but also meaning readers had to scroll past many screens worth of comments before they could click on 'next') so I shut it down some months ago.

I always greatly appreciated the comments of readers - not only was it a great source of quick feedback it also became a community for fans of the comic. There's no date for the relaunch of Graphic Smash on that code-base but rest assured, if all goes to plan, it will be sooner rather than later and comments will return.

I must admit I haven't read all that many comics on GAM... which is naughty of me, the webcomics there are entertaining and high quality. Now the new site is up and running I plan on redressing that oversight!

5.43 - ATTACK!!

Both Kaycee and Go! miss their chance to save the day and so today's update kicks off "Newb cadets v Oz Magellan and freaky monsters"! Who will win??

I was quite happy with how the last panel of page 5.43 turned out - there's a fair bit happening but it's not too confusing. I had hoped to include everyone but couldn't squeeze in Lin-Lin, Bif or Joe.

Anyway there will be plenty of action for the next few pages!

5.40 - Welcoming Committee

Whew! Finally got that page - #5.40 - drawn and coloured. It ended up being a lot more involved to produce than I expected... but I shouldn't be all that surprised given the number of characters involved. So this page brings us roughly to the mid-way point of the story.

I had expected this story would take only 50 pages... clearly I'm wrong in that regard! So I'm thinking 80 or so. I don't want it to be much longer than that. Despite my intention for brevity it was the defeat of Oz Magellan which bumped up the page count. Originally it was intended to only take a few pages but then I started using it as a way to properly introduce each character - plus I wanted to show them being picked off one by one to make their defeat seem a bit more plausible.

There's still a fair bit of ground to cover in the story but things should speed up somewhat from here on in...