In 2016, I started a webcomic as an expansion of my first completed 24-hour comic. I fell in love with following this hero’s adventures, and I wanted to tell a larger story within this world. For a while, that’s what I did. For the first new story following this character, Autumn Wing, I wanted to do a “test” story, something I could put my all into while ironing out the kinks so that when I started the “real” story, I’d have a stronger baseline. I decided to put my own spin on the “hero comes into a cursed village” story. I had tried to be clever with the curse, and build it around a theme of what kindness looks like to false hope and grief. So the curse Autumn had to break to save this village, was a curse of constant grief: the villagers were tormented with visions of their deceased loved ones. They got to relive watching them pass, over and over again, and experience it with all of their senses. Autumn would help the villagers, and even the “villainous” mage, work past their grief.
In 2017, suddenly, my uncle became very ill. It all happened so quickly. Hospital visits, late-night trips, tears. Through it all, what became my only escape, my only solace, was throwing myself into my comics work. Working on Crown of Fire was the only spot of my life I felt I had any control over. I took my pages, my laptop, and whatever else I needed, into the hospital with me. Then…they told us he would be ok. That his surgery was successful. That he had to be watched but he would be fine.
And then…he wasn’t.
Something they had missed. Something completely unrelated to why he was there in the first place, snuck into our lives and snatched him right out from beneath us.
Everything fell apart. Everything was so quick. I remembered everything. Every moment. Every subtle shift in anyone and everyone’s energy, tone, mood. I remember the last words we exchanged. I relived these memories. Over and over and over again. And somehow, that “curse” I had conceived felt like it was reality. It felt as if I couldn’t breathe or escape. My heart was broken.
I tried. I tried to finish this story. “The Tragedy of the Phantom Mage”. While I was working on it, it went from the “test” story to the real one. Went from 45 pages to 100. And I had invested my heart into it. The heart that would break. After it broke, I tried so hard. But when I touched those pages, when I opened that sketchbook…I smelled the hospital room. I heard the quiet sobs of my mom and my aunt. I felt the trepidation of my family. I didn’t expect that escaping into that story in those times would taint it with the memory of those times.
No one knows this. But I almost quit. I had almost stopped making comics. I know there have been times before where i said I’ve come close. But…this one was it. I had very nearly destroyed this work for myself. The work I consider to be my calling.
I couldn’t quit.
Because as much as those times had hurt, had stung, he wouldn’t have wanted me to give up on my dreams. He wouldn’t have wanted to be buried next to the work that he had told me he was proud of. I picked up my pencil and my brush again. I made a comic in his honor, and as a way to teach myself how to put my broken heart back together. Heart-Peace. i had finished it, and it still hurt, but I could breathe again. I had felt connected again. To my calling, to my uncle, to my own life.
And then I tried again. I tried to pick up where I left off with Crown of Fire. And I couldn’t. I still smelled that sterile smell. Still heard his last words to me. Still sensed the quaking of my loved ones’ hearts when i picked up those pages. And I was a completely different person. The person who started that story, never left the hospital. He’s still smelling those smells and waiting for good news. He’s still trapped by the Curse of the Phantom Mage.
But I can draw Autumn again. I finally have felt in a place where i can rejoin him on his quest to forge his halo. I’m back to a point where telling those stories dominates my thoughts, drives the work I want to be doing with comics. Stories I hope are felt by people’s hearts, that show kids who struggle with self-worth as I did growing up, that they have worth. Their lives, their stories, have meaning.
As far as The Tragedy of the Phantom Mage…I can’t go back there. At least not yet.
I almost didn’t write this. Part of me just wanted to say nothing, drop some FIRE comics with a new name and format, and let that first story fade away.
I can’t let that be who I am. I don’t know how many readers I was getting. But I wanted to apologize for leaving you all in the dark for so long…and doing what I personally hate in stories: leaving a cliffhanger unresolved.
But I can’t. I just…can’t. I have to move on from this story. Even if that means leaving it unfinished. I am going to keep working on these stories, now called “Autumn Wing and the Crown of Fire”, but this particular story is going to be unresolved for some time.
From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. So when I start posting pages of the new story I’ve been working on, the true “beginning” of Autumn’s quest for the Crown of Fire, I understand if you decide not to come along on that ride. But I hope you will. And I hope you all understand.
I wrote this because I wanted something to be a bridge between what this comic was, and what this comic is becoming. I wrote this because I needed, for my own sake, to acknowledge what happened. I needed to reassure myself that I will never ever stop working on the things that matter to me.
This is a goodbye to Crown of Fire as it was. And a welcome to Autumn Wing. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll keep using this site for my pages or make a new one, but I’ll mention that here once I decide.