HOME | DD

Description
Here’s a long story. I had a solid idea for how Season 3 of Modest Medusa would end way back at the end of Season 1, and by the time Season 2 ended the major plot points of Season 3 were pretty solid in my mind. With that kind of skeleton structure in mind I like to work out a week or two worth of strips in my head at a time, and I usually don’t come up with the exact dialogue until after I’m lettering a strip (so after all the drawing is done). This is how I’ve written the comic from the very beginning and it usually works pretty well. This worked well for Season 3 until right up after the end of the Wither Away story arc, when I realized that I knew exactly how I wanted the season to end, but I wasn’t sure how to get there, and what I was sure of is that I had a lot of loose ends that weren’t particularly exciting to me. Little (and maybe not so little) details that really needed to be addressed but weren’t really very exciting. Things that I should have spent some time thinking about so I could make them funny and interesting. I hadn’t and they weren’t, and all I could think is that I really just wanted to move on to the big finale and the bits I’d been working toward for the last 200 pages.

So I thought about this over the last two weeks while at Fanime down in San Jose and while working on the last few strips. I spent some time trying out different gags and working up some clever ways to make all these little things fit together nice and funny and neat. I came up with some good stuff and some okay stuff and a lot of really not so great stuff, but the end of it was that no matter what it was 12-25 pages of extra stuff before I could get to the season finale. Now here’s the thing: That shouldn’t have been a problem at all. I should have told myself to do the story right, give it the space it needs and take my time to bring everything to a conclusion. But… this season has been pretty hard, and the Wither Away arc was especially draining and the season was already going to be well over the 100 pages I had originally envisioned. More than anything, I was just ready to wrap everything up, and the thought of doing another unexpected 12-25 pages was just too much. So I had this idea to do a single summary strip that would cover all the loose ends in one go and get everything out of the way. It wasn’t a great idea, and I put it aside while I tried to write something better, but in the end it’s the idea I came back to.

So I posted that strip last Friday. You can read it here: [link]

Okay, so I thought it was kind of clever. But on the walk home from my studio after I posted it I realized that the summery was a mistake. That kind of short cut wasn’t going to add anything to the story. It would save me some time and effort, but a year from now I wouldn’t be happy with it and I couldn’t image any of my readers would be either. So by the time I got home I had decided to pull the strip and resolved myself to finishing out the season the right way, even if it meant doing 25 extra strips I wasn’t super enthusiastic about. In fact,
I needed to find a way to be enthusiastic about those strips and make them work.

So the Friday strip got yanked from my site before more than a few people saw it. It stayed up on DA and Drunk Duck though, and you can see the comments here and there for yourself. Some people thought it was okay and a lot didn’t, but I think I was right that almost everyone would prefer actual strips over a summary, so that’s what’ll happen. I do want to be clear that the negative comments did not influence my decision. I had made up my mind by the time I got around to reading any of them.

So starting with this strip I’ll be fleshing out the events from the summary comic. You can think of the summary as a spoiler if you want, but I’ll do my best to make this content worthwhile and fun, and I guess we’ll get to the end of the season eventually!

Description
Here’s a long story. I had a solid idea for how Season 3 of Modest Medusa would end way back at the end of Season 1, and by the time Season 2 ended the major plot points of Season 3 were pretty solid in my mind. With that kind of skeleton structure in mind I like to work out a week or two worth of strips in my head at a time, and I usually don’t come up with the exact dialogue until after I’m lettering a strip (so after all the drawing is done). This is how I’ve written the comic from the very beginning and it usually works pretty well. This worked well for Season 3 until right up after the end of the Wither Away story arc, when I realized that I knew exactly how I wanted the season to end, but I wasn’t sure how to get there, and what I was sure of is that I had a lot of loose ends that weren’t particularly exciting to me. Little (and maybe not so little) details that really needed to be addressed but weren’t really very exciting. Things that I should have spent some time thinking about so I could make them funny and interesting. I hadn’t and they weren’t, and all I could think is that I really just wanted to move on to the big finale and the bits I’d been working toward for the last 200 pages.

So I thought about this over the last two weeks while at Fanime down in San Jose and while working on the last few strips. I spent some time trying out different gags and working up some clever ways to make all these little things fit together nice and funny and neat. I came up with some good stuff and some okay stuff and a lot of really not so great stuff, but the end of it was that no matter what it was 12-25 pages of extra stuff before I could get to the season finale. Now here’s the thing: That shouldn’t have been a problem at all. I should have told myself to do the story right, give it the space it needs and take my time to bring everything to a conclusion. But… this season has been pretty hard, and the Wither Away arc was especially draining and the season was already going to be well over the 100 pages I had originally envisioned. More than anything, I was just ready to wrap everything up, and the thought of doing another unexpected 12-25 pages was just too much. So I had this idea to do a single summary strip that would cover all the loose ends in one go and get everything out of the way. It wasn’t a great idea, and I put it aside while I tried to write something better, but in the end it’s the idea I came back to.

So I posted that strip last Friday. You can read it here: [link]

Okay, so I thought it was kind of clever. But on the walk home from my studio after I posted it I realized that the summery was a mistake. That kind of short cut wasn’t going to add anything to the story. It would save me some time and effort, but a year from now I wouldn’t be happy with it and I couldn’t image any of my readers would be either. So by the time I got home I had decided to pull the strip and resolved myself to finishing out the season the right way, even if it meant doing 25 extra strips I wasn’t super enthusiastic about. In fact,
I needed to find a way to be enthusiastic about those strips and make them work.

So the Friday strip got yanked from my site before more than a few people saw it. It stayed up on DA and Drunk Duck though, and you can see the comments here and there for yourself. Some people thought it was okay and a lot didn’t, but I think I was right that almost everyone would prefer actual strips over a summary, so that’s what’ll happen. I do want to be clear that the negative comments did not influence my decision. I had made up my mind by the time I got around to reading any of them.

So starting with this strip I’ll be fleshing out the events from the summary comic. You can think of the summary as a spoiler if you want, but I’ll do my best to make this content worthwhile and fun, and I guess we’ll get to the end of the season eventually!