The Green Knight's Belt has ended and, as promised, the follow-up is a new story that I've been working on since the end of November. Headsmen has started today. I hope people like it - it's very unlike a typical webcomic in that I've really worked hard to give it some production value.
One thing I've been telling people I wouldn't be able to do is release it in colour. For a while I considered asking a volunteer colorist, DFG, to color the story for me, but I decided against it because I couldn't offer her a decent deadline.
Then I got some Photoshop tips that helped me cut the time to colour a page in half - tips that will also come in handy when I'm working for print. And suddenly, adding colours — simple ones at least — changed from something that I'd have to set aside large blocks of time for into something I could do in stolen moments. So I decided to put in the effort and add flood fill colors to the high-res files. I may even be able to print the comic in colour when the time comes. Each comic now takes less than an hour to colour, unless there's a new setting or character that I've got to pick a colour scheme for.
I expect to be able to simplify my workflow further in the future. Right now I letter in a different program than I colour in, but between Headsmen and the next new story I'll start doing that in Photoshop as well.
Meanwhile, enjoy Headsmen! It's set just days after the events in The Green Knight's Belt, with Kel taking a different role from the one we've seen so far. In the stories from the 1990s, we saw Kel as a surly, put-upon character, but considering what we learned about her background in stories like The Rite of Serfdom, she must have initially considered being with the Gang as a step up from working for the Green Knight. Also, she can't have had much of a notion how the human world worked in those initial weeks in the forests near Dungil Fens. This story, then, is intended as a bridging chapter between The Green Knight's Belt and the stories that follow it.
