A while back, some fellow webcomic artists were discussing the most tiresome cliches of the medium. Near the top of the list was lengthy newsposts begging forgiveness for delays. I've broken this rule more times than I care to recall, so I'll do my best to keep this short.

These outages happen with me from time to time. They've happened on various occasions before, and it's likely they'll happen again at some point. They're unscheduled, obviously. They also don't have a definite end point. My shoutbox posts promising that I'm trying to get a comic up soon aren't intended as stalling and false promises, although I can understand how they might be seen as such. At any particular point during these hiatuses, I'm still hoping I can get a comic up by the end of the week. This is also why I'll sometimes seem to disappear... because if I don't have anything new to promise, I won't feel like showing my face... and, of course, I'll always have an update planned for "very soon", so hopefully in a few days it won't matter... right?

This all doubtless seems a bit weird without me having offered an actual explanation for these outages. Unfortunately, there is a limit to what aspects of my personal life I'm comfortable sharing on a public website. It's also true that once I'm in a hiatus, I sometimes need a kick up the arse to get going again, but that's a bit of a separate issue.

So anyway, this comic isn't great by any means (my first ones following a delay seldom are), but I'm glad just to have got it out of my system. The original plan was for Ess to be chasing Gatamache through a crowded street... It was hideously complicated and was certainly not the most inviting comic to make. The simplified version here is a bit less satisfying, but at least I managed to reference one of my favourite childhood books in the title. Also... yes, that is the same man being attacked that we saw in an earlier comic. That part, at least, isn't just down to laziness.

Next time: a reasonably astonishing sight.