Whew. It’s been awhile since I’ve been able to update Variables but over the next three weeks, expect to see updates coming fast and furious as I wrap up this issue before my fist convention in late May. My plan is to have the entire 24 page issue completed by the end of the month.

I’ve been playing around with a new printer I bought, trying to put together some new prints (you may have seen some of them posted over at my Rocketpig Studio site), and just got back from a great New Orleans trip. I’ve always wanted to go to New Orleans and the city lived up to my expectations. It was a wonderful vacation of seeing the great architecture of the city, experiencing amazing music, and eating some of the greatest food I’ve ever had in my life. I’m definitely going back as soon as possible and it will be hard to resist placing a future Variables story in the heart of the city (I already have the story in mind).

On to the comic… this page was another 20+ hour endeavor. What you see here is the main panel of the page and the background was, yet again, a huge challenge. I’m still not happy with some of the elements I draw in backgrounds (primarily, the shadows and shading) but I’m happy with this page. I’m determined to be the best background artist in webcomics someday. A weird goal but given how little treatment proper backgrounds get in the genre, a worthwhile one.

In case you couldn’t tell already, this sequence is leading to the ultimate destruction of Karter’s life and his status within the Athens community. Over the next few pages, he starts to really show that his moral code can be warped to fit what he needs to do to achieve his immediate goal. It’s an interesting segment of story and knowing what I know about the future of the character, he has to go through a deconstruction to set up future events. This story has been a lot of fun for me to write and I only wish I could get to the second (and final) issue faster than I am.

As always, see the entire first issue of Variables 2002 by clicking here.

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