UTC: Urgent Transformation Crisis

Hi, everyone. First off, act 2 of Chapter 12 begins Tuesday, December 17. I’m going to keep trying to put the pages out on Tuesdays and Thursdays but with the holidays coming, updates may drop to one page per week.

If you’ve been waiting for my commentary on the last chapter, it’s finally been recorded. Real talk, though: the reason it’s taken me months to record it is because I have been going back and forth on how to talk about the making of the chapter. As I’ve hinted at over the years, working on this particular part of UTC was a very trying time for me, and I decided that, for better or worse, I should tell the entire story, including the upsetting parts.

Be advised I discuss cancer and armed violence at length, and dip into politics briefly as well. If you just want to know about the making of the comic without the heavier stuff, that’s understandable. All of the essential info is written in the commentary on the pages themselves, so you should look back through the comic archive for that.

One important thing to note that I don’t believe I stress enough in the video itself — I AM OKAY. I got a little upset while reflecting on the events of the past few years but it’s all in the past, and I am having a much better time making Chapter 12. And that is largely thanks to your support through all these years. Thanks for sticking with UTC, and I hope you take some good things out of this commentary if you choose to listen to the whole thing. It’s, uh, pretty long.

The cover for Chapter 12 is now up, and that means we’re almost ready to start the craziness back up once again! The first four pages will be released on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule starting November 19. The schedule may go back to once per week after that, but I prefer rolling out these four pages this month, since we have finally arrived at Thanksgiving in continuity, and the timing couldn’t be better.

So what’s taken me so long to resume updates this time? I’ve been working on the pages for this chapter out of order and haven’t actually drawn the first four pages yet. But that will be taken care of soon, and beyond that I’m hoping to build at least a small buffer to keep the story flowing consistently week to week no matter what my real-life schedule throws in my way. I’m not making any promises, except to say that I’m trying my best to make this comic the way I want to make it and as good as possible.

I’ve been developing this chapter for five years, before I even finished Chapter 10. I’m super excited for you to read it!

The last panel of Chapter 11 felt lacking ever since I posted it. It didn’t really have the right aura of a chapter-ending panel. So I went back and tweaked the background, which is to say, it now HAS a background, which shows them going outside. Enjoy that as my unseen and tantalizingly vague progress on Chapter 12 continues.