underrocksart

Mai the Wrongdoer comic situation

Published: November 4th 2023, 7:00:19 pm

TL/DR version:

• It's stopped for an indefinite period. I has met a fate any solo passion project meets inevitably.
• I can probably continue the comic if I had a team, or at least a colorist artist. But I can't pay much, and I'm still unsure about that. Though, I'm open for your suggestions. If you want to work on the project - we can discuss that.
• It's not cancelled, since cancelling would mean that something was properly planned and announced. It wasn't, so it's rather just stopped for eternity.
• I had a blast making it, but burned out after... 3 years or so? Holy molly. And both the world situation, migration, and me becoming a daddy dad situations weren't helping with that either.

So, let me explain in more details.

Reasons

Well, to name a few:

• Dispite being quite popular in some circles, it wasn't making enough for a living. Partially because of the next reason.
• It took tremendous amount of time and work, overworking and not sleeping till 8AM was a common thing. And also it meant that I had zero time for marketing and promoting the comic. Not that it was aiming to be mainstream anyway.
• Nieche within a nieche. Basically no options of publishing the thing. It won't be published in Russia due to censoring laws, and it was not possible to publish it abroad due to me either not having citizenship or excuses to get one, or even a working visa, or me not knowing how to actually do that. And I tried, I contacted Avatar Press a long time ago and they said that actually hiring me and paying me would be a bueraucratic nightmare for the company. And even then it woudn't pay as much as I earned at the time.
• Sitting on two chairs. The comic started aiming for more serious tone, with a proper story and lore, and that kinda collides with the whole smut gory fetish fest. It's either "drop the story and make smut" or "remove smut so people can actualy read it without feeling weirded out".
• Financial reasons. As I said before - it wasn't that profitable, the ratio of work put into the project and actual output was ridiculous. And when life and empty wallet called - the choice was obvious.
• A burnout. (no, not the one with unlicensed cars) Nuff said, all been there. As a russian proverb says - "I was young and dumb and haven't seen any big d*cks yet"
• Migration, becoming a dad and constant risks of leaving yet another country. It somewhat resolved, but still. It eats up lots of money, so I can't overwork now, and cannot really waste any time on things that don't provide for the family.
• Video killed the radio star. Writing short comics and selling them on Gumroad proved to be faster, more fun,  and more profitable. I will stick to that strategy for a while, since life got so hectic.

What I have now

During the year of hiatus I wrote 2 more chapters as scripts, some are more detailed, some are just a short and solid summaries. Good scripts, I'd say. Probably the best that I've ever written.

Also I did start some pages, but the motivation was quickly lost.

• The next chapter would be a tropical resort/beach bikini kind of episode where Mai finds herself at some kind of hawaiian island resort with Victoria. She, of course, barely remembers anything from the previous chapter, but Victoria tells her that they're here because Mai's uncle decided to get her a vacation after the horrors of the previous events. They quickly realise that their tour guide is quite suspicious, and there's sacrifices being performed by members of the local tribe. They worship some kind of a sea-aqua-man-creature. The rest is spoiler territory.
• There were also a chapter where Mai gets abducted by aliens, and that would be like an entire proper alien movie, with survivors navigating the organic ship, where it's shown in detail how exactly the Gurdian lady's race works. (They're called Flaggelums, by the way) They end up destroying the ship, and Mai dies in the crash. Again. While Guardian lady, still on earth, is watching her long awaited reinforcements burn and explode.
• There will be a new character - a slender dude with messed up face, called The Bastard. He would be the main antagonist of the story, and will team up with the Guardian lady to work against Nyarlathoteph and Mai.
• The Bastard was supposed to get his own small chapter, telling his backstory prior to the events of the comic. It was planned to be the most serious and depressing of them all, and it had NO SMUT in that. Only damage.

Possible options

Well, as you can probably tell, I enjoyed writhing the thing rather than actually drawing it. I'm still passionate for the story, I really dig it, even if I remove all the smut from that - it still turns out to be a solid psychological horror-drama.

And that's the problem. If you've read the previous paragraph - all of those scripts were the lenght of a short movie at least, so it's like 80+ pages minimum per chapter.

Also the "Sit on two chairs" approach wasn't working, and If I'd ever decide to continue the damn thing - it would definitely be a normal SFW (except for gore and bodyhorror) story.  But that obviously demands a proper re-write of the first chapter. Which is, I remind you, OVER 120 PAGES LONG.

Also, working alone on all the parts of the project is ridiculous, please never try that yourself!

After working with a publisher for over a year, and mostly doing line-art for them, I think it would be a good idea to

A: Get a team, or at least a colorist.
or
B: Simplify the style to the point of b/w webcomic, which would look something like One-punch man before the author got a proper artist drawing for him. That option I personally don't like. It's too much design and action in the story, it would totally suck.

While getting a team is a good idea, the financial side doesn't look that good. That is if you're willing to work for anything more than lunch money. I will be honest with you - the whole entire thing earned 1000$ a month and that's it. That's 4-8 fully colored pages with lots of stuff going on, writing, editing, designing and marketing, covers, pinups, anything. Plus commissioned work, monthly.

I'm ready to discuss that if you wish to work on the project, but I can't really offer you much. I'm still thinking on it.