Hey comic readers! It’s Monday again, and that means another new page. So Annabelle is a Messenger. Just how many of these people are there? And why should Aki care? Stay tuned!

Webhosting Dilemmas

Summer is already halfway over (what is this nonsense? where did the time go?) and unfortunately for me, that means that my webhosting bill is coming up a couple of weeks from now. I’ve spent most of the summer in-between freelance jobs and searching for a more permanent job, but that’s all still in the process and I haven’t landed anything just yet. (Though I’m crossing my fingers, for sure.) Though I’ve made a little bit from running advertising on the site, I’m still a decent way off from what I need.

So I propose this: If I round down the cost to $100, and can collect that in donations or commissions by August 13, I will update twice a week for the whole month of September, Mondays and Wednesdays. Also, if you donate $10 or more, I’ll draw a digital sketch for you of the character of your choice, so it’s kind of like a dirt cheap commission. I’m currently working on a new donation wallpaper that will be up in the next few days, and anyone who donates any amount will receive that, at least. I hate having to do something like this but I’m straight up out of options at this point. :/

If you can’t help out by donating, you can always help out by putting up a flyer, voting, or telling your friends about the comic! (Especially if they’re interested in cheap commissions!) Hopefully I’ll be able to get my hosting taken care of, but if not I’ll try to find some other way to keep the comic online. The domain name is paid up through January, at least, so messenger-comic.com will always link to wherever the comic happens to wind up. I’m hoping to avoid moving everything, especially after all the work I’ve put into the site lately, but I’ll just have to cross my fingers on this one.

Webcomic Book Club

In other notes, I’m participating in a “Webcomic Book Club” that’s been set up by some of the members of the Palace in the Sky Collective, which I am a part of. We’re taking reading through participants’ archives and writing about what we’ve read every two weeks or so to spread the word about all our comics as a group effort. I’m planning to post my notes with my regular updates for the next few weeks as we roll along, and at some point Messenger will be up for reading as well. This week’s comic is Footloose by Alice Nuttall and Emily Brady. Footloose is a fantasy webcomic with a little bit of a twist on the typical kinds of characters and scenarios you see in most fantasy stories.

To summarize, the comic follows the adventures of Keti Jones – a teenage girl who is “One-quarter nymph, one-quarter werewolf, half-human.” Needless to say, her background helps to launch her into a world where she’s surrounded by people for whom this is the norm. She befriends a couple of werewolves, and begins taking classes in Kung-Shoe at “The Dojo.” Things take off pretty quickly from here.

The art for Footloose is done by Emily Brady, and it’s one of the things I like best about the comic. It’s simple black and white lineart with some shading and grayscale backgrounds. The simplicity is really what works for it, though. There are a lot of different characters and a lot going on in the story, so it helps to keep things even. While the artwork definitely improves over the course of the comic, it retains enough of the original style that everyone and everything are still very recognizable, which is great. One of the best things about webcomics is the level of flexibility and room for growth creators have, but it can be just as much a curse. Sometimes styles change so drastically that there’s little resemblance between the beginning and end of a comic. Personally, I enjoy a slow, gradual change in art. It’s interesting to see an artist’s evolution in style, and it also helps the reader to keep up with what’s going on.

In all, Footloose is a fun, lighthearted read. It’s got a bit of bulk, weighing in at 350 pages or so, but it’s a very worthwhile comic. Keep up the awesome work Emily & Alice!

Site Notes

And, as always, the little things that have been updated on the site recently:

– Cast: I’ve updated and tweaked the cast page to make it easier to find characters, as well as include some new information. It also uses Webcomic 3’s new characters system, which is pretty awesome. You can check out individual characters and view the pages they appear on. There are a couple of characters missing portrait art for now; I’ll add them back in when I’ve finished the Chapter Two revisions and started posting them. (Probably in a few weeks!)

– Shop: I’ve reorganized the shop recently, as well as added a few new items. There’s also a new Zazzle shop where you can grab Brave Chio t-shirts, keychains, stickers, and other bits.