Three months have passed like a storm. Election, holiday shopping season, New Year's, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We're coming up on Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day. Holidays always seem to creep up on me, but in part thanks to this comic I've been able to keep them in mind as milestones.

Misfire Reactional is still on its first chapter (as far as readers are concerned, anyway), but I wanted to post some progress statistics since I like statistics, and also because it's a bit early to talk about stuff behind the references. I don't want to keep readers in the dark, but I also don't want to give anything away before the appropriate time. That said, on with the stats!

Just a preliminary note: even these statistics will give away infromation about the future of this story. If you're reading along and want to maintain every last drop of suspense, please, stop looking at this post.

Time elapsed since comic debut (1/1/2009): 41 days.
Pages posted: 14.
Average days per page: 2.93.

Time elapsed since start of work (10/26/2008): 108 days.
Pages planned: 112 (15.3%) (0.96 days per page)
Pages sketched: 62 (8.5%) (1.74)
Pages drawn: 59 (8.1%) (1.83)
Pages complete: 58 (7.9%) (1.86)
Pages posted: 14 (1.9%)

The comic will be 732 total pages including covers. Each chapter is 24 pages (plus 4 cover images). There will be 26 chapters, plus an outer jacket cover for the complete story. As you've seen already some pages will have inserted images, which I don't count toward this total.

Since I've been able to complete pages faster than I've been posting, I'll plan to step up my updates. Look forward to an announcement about that at the end of chapter 1.

A bit about my process, for those who are curious:
Most of the images for the first two chapters were sketched on receipt tape using ballpoint pen. Those sketches were then scanned, enlarged, and reprinted at 5% opacity, and the finished images drawn with artists' ink pens. I used a brush tip for major outlines such as chins and noses, and a superfine tip for most details and shading. To a lesser extent I used fine and medium tips. As the brush and superfine tips ran out I started using new ones, but continued using the old ones where I could for fine lines and shading. Everything after this point is done on computer.

Starting with chapter 3, I'm trying something a bit different. Instead of receipt tape, preliminary sketches will be done on regular paper. This should make scanning, enlarging, and redrawing the images a bit easier.

As always, thank you for reading.

Until next time!