COMIC UPDATE, 8/1/25

prior update

SCOTT'S TIME TO YAP

Hey, all! Here is August's state of the union for our comic projects. This was a BIG month for us, we changed up our writing style and process greatly for our comics, reducing page counts dramatically. I'll let Bryce talk about that more, but for me that means Kindred Heavens 4 goes from 123 pages to 98! So, that means I get to finish it earlier this year, right?

WRONG!!!

I decided to use the bonus time this gave me to finish up the side yuri comic I was working on. So, no new KH really this month, but I made lots of progress on that comic! It should be posted in late August or early September. Don't quote me on that.

Kindred Heavens pages:

Yuri Comic pages:

BRYCE'S TIME TO YAP

Hey, everyone. Bryce here. I’ve got a lot to yap about this time, so bear with me!

Like Scott mentioned, this past month marked a major turning point in our creative careers. If I’m being entirely honest, our entire view on comics—from a plotting and a writing standpoint—has shifted. And it was caused by a few different things. See, Scott and I have always had a major self-critique with our comic books, and it’s that they don’t feel like comic books. We write slow, long-winded scenes, showing every minute detail and letting things play out beat-by-beat. In a movie or a novel, this is perfect. But for comics, it’s a tool, not a style, at least that’s what I believe. When we look at Kindred Heavens Book One, for example, I think we did it well. The story moves quickly, letting the reader fill in the gaps, and then slows down in the final scene of the book, which makes it FEEL more powerful.

So last year, around August, after Bell County, we decided to confront this problem head-on. We wrote a comic called ‘THE GOOD BAD GUYS’ which had a strict focus on curing this flaw of ours. We wanted to create something faster-paced, with more of a focus on movement and packing as much into a confined set of pages, and panels, as possible. And it worked, sorta.

The problem was we didn’t really get the problem we were struggling with. We thought we did. We thought the problem was our stories. ‘Kindred Heavens just doesn’t FEEL like a comic book’, we told ourselves. ‘We created a story that feels like a movie, and so it has to be slower-paced!’ But that was wrong. Anything can FEEL like a comic book, it’s all about how you write it, and we had a very dear friend give us some personal, and honest criticism. They said: ‘you need to stop pretending you aren’t writing comic books.’

What they meant was this: comics are a limited medium, yes. You only have so many pages, and panels, and moments you can feasibly show. They take a long time to make, they’re hard to make, and they’re expensive to make. With comics, you’re always running out of time, but that’s the beauty of it—you have to be imaginative in the way you use those restrictions, not resent them and be afraid of them.

One page, one panel…that can be an entire moment. Readers are smart and if you show a panel of two people fighting, they can build the entire scene in their heads. They read between the gutters and make connections. And that was our main problem—we weren’t trusting the readers, and we weren’t trusting ourselves, and we were so afraid of leaving a single moment out and ruining everything that we were starting to…ruin everything.

Kindred Heavens Book Five, when I finished my first draft, was 149 pages. 149!!! I eventually got that down to 137 and then it ballooned back up again. It was a book where every single moment was shown. For a long time, that’s just how Scott and I thought it had to be. Kindred Heavens is like a movie, we said. But after getting this advice, we decided to study. We read Scott Mcloud, and Eisner, and Tezuka. I don’t even know how to break down all the conversations we had about paneling, and the construction of a page, and all these little things that help us skip the little things in comics.

I can’t show an examples for KH4 or KH5, because I’m afraid of spoiling things. So I’m going to create an example of our old writing style and our new writing style.

OLD

PAGE 1

Panel 1: Establishing shot of a party at a new place we’ve never seen before.

Panel 2: Closeup of people partying. They’re dancing.

Panel 3: Another closeup of people partying. They’re breaking things, getting reckless.

PAGE 2

Panel 1: A girl stands alone at the party, looking sad.

Panel 2: That girl hears a voice that gets her to lift her head.

Panel 3: It’s an old friend!

Panel 4: They hug, it’s sweet.

Panel 5: They start to catch up.

PAGE 3

Panel 1: They talk about how lame this party is.

Panel 2: They decide to ditch this party.

Panel 3: They’re on the roof of the place, now.

Panel 4: They crack open two beers.

Panel 5: They laugh about being outcasts again.

See how every single moment is broken-down and shown? In a movie, this scene would play out perfectly—because in a movie, you’re meant to show every beat of the scene, since we’re seeing it in real-time. But in a comic book, we aren’t seeing it in real time. We’re seeing it frame-by-frame, piece-by-piece. What that means is that the reader doesn’t need to see EVERY LITTLE THING. In fact, it can be harmful to do so. Here’s an example of how I’d write this exact same scene in our modern style.

MODERN

PAGE 1

Panel 1: Establishing shot of a party at a new place we haven’t seen before.

Panel 2: A girl stands alone, looking sad.

Panel 3: An old-friend approaches her! She’s happy to see him!

Panel 4: We cut to the roof. They sit, alone, now smiling, talking about how lame it was.

Panel 5: They clink two beers together and joke about being outcasts again.

So you can see how this is the same scene just told in a way that uses comics to our advantage. We don’t break down every moment, sure, but we don’t really lose anything by not doing that. In fact, we gain something. Those two pages I didn’t use? Well, they’re two pages I now have to add new things with.

As it stands, using this new style, I’ve recently finished a draft of Kindred Heavens Book Five that is 67—yes, 67!—pages. And know what? Not a single scene, or story-beat, was cut. It’s the exact same book with all the exact same pieces told in a more purposeful way that uses the medium to it’s strengths. And know what? It’s a hell of a lot better. I think it’s more punchy, more fun to read, and every scene has so much more weight. Now, the fun part begins. I have 30+ pages I can add to the book. All these ideas I thought weren’t going to make it in I now know are going to fit in easily.

And so, yeah! I’m sure I’ll have more updates about this over the coming months, as it’s an ever-evolving process, but I’m going to end this by saying that anyone who wants to create comics should read Scott Mcloud’s ‘Understanding Comics.’ I truly think it’s one of the most brilliant breakdowns of the medium ever created, comparable to Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ for novelists.

And that's it for this month! We'll be soon with more updates. As always, thank you to everyone who supports us.