Yesterday was the annual Talk Like a Pirate Day around these parts, and to celebrate I talked like a pirate and rewatched the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies. They're fun movies that equally romanticize pirates and challenge the romantic myths. I'm sure I'll see the third movie again someday. I saw it at a midnight showing when it first came out, and between that and The Dark Knight I figured out that I shouldn't go to long, exciting action movies that late, because sitting in the theater that late makes it hard to maintain the adrenaline-pumping investment that those movies demand.

It's been nearly a year since I began drawing this comic, and I've nearly finished 5 chapters. That's a pretty good pace, but it's draining, especially since with every chapter I've taken on new challenges. I'm not gonna stop… but I gotta slow this train down.

Chapter 5 has a lot of characters. A lot of crowds. A lot of sheets drawn separately and then composited together… which actually ended up being more work than the full-color presentation of chapter 4. I think I've drawn as much for this chapter as I have for the entire comic before it. No joke. I'm now working on the covers… that's right. I saved the covers for last, and now I only have a couple days to finish them, because chapter 4 wraps up this week.

For chapter 5 at least, I'm dropping back to 2 updates a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That should give me the time to get well ahead again, and to make sure that what challenges I take on for chapter 6 get the right amount of time and attention.

And now for what we all came here for: statistics!

Time elapsed since comic debut (1/1/2009): 262 days.
Pages posted: 112.
Average days per page: 2.34.

Time elapsed since start of work (10/26/2008): 329 days.
Pages planned: 309 (42.2%) (1.06 days per page)
Pages sketched: 142 (19.4%) (2.32)
Pages drawn: 140 (19.1%) (2.35)
Pages complete: 133 (18.2%) (2.47)
Pages posted: 112 (15.3%)

44 units added between “drawn” and “complete”. 60 is the goal, but as long as I can maintain 40 or more a month I'll easily make the updates on the new schedule. The “planned” should have a lot more pages in it, since the last few months have been very productive for scriptwriting… but until I actually put all that together I'm not gonna claim those points here.

Once more, my thanks to everyone that's been reading. It's very encouraging to see others take an interest in my art, and I enjoy the comments.

Onward!