Oh hey, another overly delayed comic.

Turns out that some of the stuff in this strip takes longer to draw than I thought it would. Never mind I keep having a hard time getting into a proper comic drawing zone of late. Which is partly why I’ve not played much Legends Arceus in AGES – it’s very much become the “I’ll play this once I’m done my comic work” game, followed by me not actually getting any comic work done, so I don’t get to play Legends Arceus.

There may be a slowdown in the next couple weeks too given I’m starting to hit convention prep season, and have some other things I need to work on. Will see where I’m at I suppose given this storyarc is just about done.

But hey, moving on to more interesting liner notes that aren’t excuses, this is indeed a specific reference to the entire “wow it went on way longer than I thought it would” trial arc pre-timeskip. And yes, that last panel reveal was 100% my entire intention way back when I originally started that arc (over a decade ago. Geezus). At the time, I had some news story on my mind I’d read about with someone being prosecuted over (unspecified) depictions of children in his manga collection, so my brain then went to “okay, what innocuous manga would technically count if we were liberally applying this standards?” Pretty sure there was another one I had on my mind too, but I can’t for the life of me remember which series that was.

Once I boxed myself into this current narrative box, mind, the fact I do pay attention to US news more or less helped feed the hyperbolic direction stuff would take. (I mean, god, just look at this evening’s news leak re: abortion in the US. WTF.)

To end this post on a lighter note, though – Dragonball’s been a favorite series of mine going back to when I started reading the manga at the public library. The anime never drew me in as a kid, but once I got a little older the manga definitely did – especially the lighter adventure fare of the original volumes. But clearly somebody enjoyed it more – one day, on a reread of Vol 1, I noticed that someone had actually taken scissors to some of the more risque panels. (Which would also technically count as iffy, given they depict a teenaged Bulma.)

Also yeah panel 5 is totally inspired by All Might considering that I keep doing Chris Sabat “AHAHA I AM HERE!” exclamations out loud when writing/drawing Captain Freedom.