Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

The Swansons start talking about organizing a search party to find Maurice and Cathy, but then they show up on horseback, just in time.

And that's pretty much the end of it!

I'm falling way behind on posting. I'll have to try to stick to my schedule better; most days I spend hours just resting and I suppose I could cut into that and get more done on the computer, which hypothetically doesn't burn a lot of energy.

I'm also falling behind on editing the graphic novel, though, and I'd like that to be a priority.

Here's a panel in progress:




Still pretty stylized art, but better than the daily comic, and takes a lot more time. Honestly, certain other tasks besides 'just the art being better' take up more time. Right now I'm rewriting the French dialogue so it hits more salient points, is entirely in French but clear enough so that an English-only speaker can understand it, and chopping it down so there's a lot less of it.

My original plan was to have Maurice translate all the French dialogue, but that would mean we don't meet Cathy until he does, and that kills her entire early story arc. And that would be brutal.

Important note: I've explored all my options in presenting the language barrier. Seriously, ALL of them. My comics critique group has been very helpful in poring through graphic novels and digging up more options for me to consider. This is my favorite option.

I'm writing the French so it's accessible to anyone fluent in English. This is one of the options! It's the one I'm choosing.

I'm making this note because people always want to suggest that I present the French dialogue another way. I won't. This is my way.

But it's time-consuming, because I also want it to be palatable to French speakers. Using an English-tangent synonym for the word I wish to use might sound good to you, but to my friend in Québec, it might just sound wrong and weird.

I also rewrote Cathy's poem. She wrote it in English, but she's failing English 1, so it's dang near incomprehensible, in the way that only someone who's trying to 1:1 French to English can achieve. It took me three years. Two years and three hundred sixty-one days of that were procrastination. So it took me about four days.

Then I accidentally deleted part of it because I was using my Wacom stylus as a mouse and I guess I shouldn't've done that.

Life is tough! Gotta believe there's a light at the end of this tunnel! That's what the daily comic is for - to give people the opportunity to read my work and tell me they like it, so I remember. Making an entire graphic novel in abject solitude isn't possible. I simply wouldn't do it.