Our Lady Maven Fans,

What an Autumn! I know, we’ve been away for a little while now and I’m sure many of you are itching for updates. I realize it must seem like we just disappeared from the face of the Earth for a while which I’m sure caused some fear and confusion. Apologies for the absence, but a lot has been going on behind the scenes, so let’s get into it!

In A Past Episode…

As you remember, we ran a crowdfunding campaign back in August to fund the first issue of Our Lady Maven. With 66 backers, and a little over $2600, we funded the first issue and have gone into the autumn looking forward to the release of the issue by November. It was a rush, but this was just the beginning!

Sarah had already been working on the illustrations for issue #1 before the crowdfund had even started. Once the crowdfund ended, we had to wait a couple weeks for the funding to transfer to Sarah’s account. As we said in a previous post, the entirety of the funding we received from the crowdfund went directly to buy out Sarah’s illustrating time for the autumn. Truth-be-told, the transfer of the funding out of the crowdfund was the last smooth part of the process for the last few months.

The Website

You probably noticed that there were some inconsistencies with the Our Lady Maven website. By inconsistencies, I mean, it wasn’t available for the month of November. The website has always been slow, and may continue to be somewhat slow the first time you go to it, but I believe we’ve worked out some of the bugs that made it so slow in the first place. This is without mentioning that, yes! The website is also back up (obviously!) which should remain the case as we go forward. I could labor into the deep details for why this happened, but the bottom line is that it was an administration issue (my fault) and I only just now got back around to fixing it. This time around, we will have better speed and web reliability.

Updates

The last updates we published went out to the zoop crowdfund page, but I’m aware we can be doing better on updates as things change. While I get the site working in a more hospitable way, there will be future updates published here that will help keep you all up-to-date on what’s happening with issue #1. This will include updates on when we go to print, and shipping. The coming month will be very exciting! I will be focusing on plain English updates without the frills to make the information easier to understand and follow.

Going Forward

Going forward, things around the Our Lady Maven project will be much more informative and helpful to our backers and readers. Getting information out to you all is a priority for us, and making sure updates are happening more routinely is a part of the plan.

The Art

Addressing the elephant in the room, yes. The first issue is behind schedule. We originally planned to have the first issue out in November, and as of today, the release date is looking more like January of 2023. There’s a slim chance we’ll have it ready before the holiday, but indie art projects are unconcerned with plans and projections. Ultimately, the delays are on me. Before we even went to illustration, I made the important decision to prioritize the best art we can publish. As they say, anything worth doing is worth doing right. When it comes to art, there are only two possible paths; You exercise patience and get an amazing piece of original art, or you rush it and get diminished quality.

We have been regularly releasing proof of work, and I must say, the art for Our Lady Maven issue #1 is incredible! Here are some recent example pages which are fully inked and ready for the issue:

The art, as I see it, has been coming out even better than I had expected. Even parts that had been written one way on the page have an entirely different intensity with Sarah’s illustrations. Sarah’s illustrations have always been attractive for this underlying intensity, but the words accompanying the illustrations makes the emotion of the scenes leap off the page. The building intensity of a simple conversation at a cafe table, when paired with Sarah’s art style, becomes something severe. Something horrifying. You will feel the fear Anna feels in each high pressure situation she finds herself in. It’s this emotion that will become clear to you all from the first time you open the first issue and begin to read it.

Summing It Up

We survived some hiccups and the work continues! Our focus is entirely on getting issue #1 out to you all as soon as the art is ready for prime time. As always, both Sarah and I would like to thank you for your support and for your patience. We know this is taking longer than was promised, but we believe that what we ultimately send out to you all will be well worth the wait!