On the Verge – The Arrow of Time – Page 326

How do you end a 326-page story that’s taken you six years to write and draw? That’s the problem I was faced with. What does it say about me that I found writing the start and the end of this story to be the hardest? I’m sure there’s something worth exploring in there…

Anyway, today we reach the conclusion of THE ARROW OF TIME. I’ve had an absolute blast working on the project and I hope you guys have had fun following along. As you all probably know by now, I’ve primarily done all of the artwork on my lunch breaks. So you’re looking at six years worth of lunches (which is crazy when you think about it!).

So without further ado, here’s the final page…

As I said above, I really struggled with this page. Finishing up the the action at the start of this chapter was easy to figure out. Then, once I’d decided on how to tie up the storyline and visit all the characters again, I was pretty much done. But I really struggled with finding both the words and images to finish the story off. After a lot of re-writes I decided to end the story in the way that I found worked best with a lot of the shorter OTV stories that I’ve done over the years — a little open-ended.

But in the end, I think everything came together and guess what? We’re done.

Despite this being the end of the story, I do still have a bunch of stuff to post over the coming weeks. I have cover art for each chapter (or issue) that I want to post and I’ve got tons of thoughts and notes from the whole process that I want to blog about as well. So more is definitely coming.

The SUPER BIG question that’s still left open is just what to do with this story. I’ve done a very good job of working away and making a comic, but I’ve done a crap job promoting it and getting it in front of people to read. I’d always intended to do some kind of printing but I’m not too sure about that anymore. So I’m going to spend the next little bit trying to figure out what to do with it and hopefully get it out into the world somehow.

You know, after 326 pages (and over 500 if you count all the short stories too) and 6+ years, it’s a little strange to be done. I’m looking forwards to doing some new stuff, but I would definitely like to come back and tell another OTV story. I don’t think I’m done with these characters just yet. I’ve learned a lot through this process and one of the things that I’ve learned is that I really do love these characters. I think THE ARROW OF TIME has come to a pretty tidy conclusion but Hannah has obviously grown a lot and it would be interesting to come back to her and the rest of the Edge gang and see what challenges face them next. I feel like I left a lot of dangling threads — something that I did on purpose — and it would be great to be able to take those somewhere at some point.

Last point for today. I just want to say that I’m super proud of myself for seeing this thing through to the end. Six years is a long time and there were so many obstacles to overcome throughout the process. I had so many chances to give this thing up for a variety of reasons. But I stuck it out to the end and finished. I know that there are a lot of webcomics that don’t make it, so I’m really proud that I managed to finish this things off right and tell a complete story.

Anyway, next week we’ll take a look at some new art and I’ll try to get around to blogging about stuff too. Thanks for reading!

Source: On the Verge