Hey guys, I'm super far down the line at Top Web Comics because it's the beginning of the month! Help me out and vote for me, please! I've posted the sketchy thumbnail version of this page as incentive :D. I know you're wondering, why would she run through the forest without shoes on? Well, couple reasons. One, I enjoy drawing feet. Two, it makes it easier to transform later without losing her shoes. Three, she's a werewolf and doesn't actually notice that the ground hurts adn it's fucking March in Michigan. Late March, I guess, because no more snow. I got tired of drawing snow. I went to the Disney school of drawing splashes. (Not really, but I always thought effects animation would be a fun job...if it still existed. Ugh.) I also enjoy how purple this page turned out. Just...purple. We have now had characters staring at this house from every angle but behind it. I choose whatever angle seems convenient to the layout I want, and I wanted something rather dramatic here. I had considered putting her up on the hill again, where we first discovered the house, but I felt like that wasn't really enough cover. I hope we're all ready for an emotional "I have no idea what I'm doing but my friend and brother are in danger so I have to stop being a wuss" roller coaster. It'll take awhile. We're in the part where the car is slowly clicking up the tracks, and you know shit's about to go down, but you can't even see the peak of the hill yet. So if you find yourself getting antsy that these pages aren't fast forwarding to crazy werewolf fighting action, just know that I've got a plan! The climax of this chapter has been something I've been working on since I started this comic, trying to map out how to get to this point and how I wanted to navigate Malaya's emotional journey so this part would make sense. I'm aiming for that sweet, sweet "FUCK YEAH!" moment that I've always dreamed of! I'm going to pull it off. My standards are really high, so if I find it satisfying, hopefully you guys will too, but it's gotta be paced right. Webcomics aren't great for making this work, but I'm going to do it. Anyway, hello all the new people from last week! I hope you've come back this week! It's always interesting when some new group of people get word of my comic, because I see this HUGE spike in my site stats as people start going through the archives to see if they want to stick around awhile, and then it drops a little the next day. And a little more the next day. Then a little more. Then a bit more. But I always love when I get one of those big spikes! Makes my week very exciting lol. Every time I get down about how much time and effort it takes to make this comic, I keep reminding myself that things are generally going up steadily. I can't be mad about progress, especially because I've only been doing this a year and a half with no prior fanbase to follow me into this project. It's tough to look at where other comic artists are who have been making their comic about the same amount of time but seem so much more popular, but then I have to remind myself that it's not a race, and they generally had a following before they started their project. There are a lot of webcomics to choose from, so I'm just glad that everyone who has been following mine seems to like it and wants to stick with me :). Makes all this work worth it! In TV news...I don't have much TV news actually. I've been watching my way through Malcolm in the Middle, which was one of my favorite shows when it was first on. I'm always surprised by the people who are so shocked that Bryan Cranston was amazing in Breaking Bad after playing goofy Hal for years. Like, if you watch Malcolm in the Middle, the whole cast is fantastic. There's not a bad actor in there, and considering all the crazy stuff Cranston had to do to play Hal, it's obvious he's got range. Besides, you can go from comedy to drama much easier than drama to comedy. Not everyone has the personality to pull off both. (And honestly, Breaking Bad is pretty funny on a lot of occasions, which is why it ended up being so good. The occasional absurdity really sold the drama.) Other than that, I started watching Xena. I only ever watched Xena occasionally when I caught it on TV during its first run. I watched the final episode when it aired! I did not know what was going on. I hadn't watched enough to have a clue, but I felt quite proud that I caught it regardless. I just watched an episode where Xena swipes a baby out of a villains hands, then punches a dude, then throws the baby kind of far to Gabrielle, and basically proceeds through a whole fight scene where everyone is just tossing a baby recklessly back and forth. That baby would be dead from a traumatic neck injury in real life, but this is Xena, so it's fine. The actress for Gabrielle was...not so good at this in the first season. She's still charming as hell, but could really use to tone it down a little in the overacting department. Okay, I gotta eat breakfast and then go plant some hydrangeas. Ugh, pray these live. I do not have great luck with planting bushes. I think if I amend the clay soil with enough compost, I should be okay. Hydrangeas don't do too badly in clay soil, but the rhododendrons I planted last year died in a week, so who knows. (Rhododendrons don't like to be planted at the end of the summer, oops.) I have one very, very large oak-leaf hydrangea in my yard that my mother planted. It well exceeds their normal maximum growth height because it's now about eight feet tall. The reason? Well...I had a lot of cats growing up, and as they died off, we had to put them somewhere? So, it's the best fed hydrangea in the whole Midwest, and my childhood animals have been put to good use postmortem >_>.