Author: Celesse

So, the comic is coming to an end, and it seems we’ve left quite a few people with a sense of incompletion, so I wanted to take a few moments to talk about it.

Leaving the comic incomplete wasn’t our intention, and this ending is the ending we’ve always had planned. But we also planned this comic to be very open in regards to where the story can go in between all of the “important” pieces. This is mainly due to the fact that when I started this comic 8 years ago I thought it would be a SUPER GREAT idea to be able to do ANYTHING with it, not realizing it needed way more structure than I gave it. I wanted to be able to continue the comic indefinitely and wrap it up at any time I wanted to. This sounded great at the time, but I know better now. As a result of this, we ended up with half-formed ideas that would have been better left out, or ideas and characters that were not able to be properly expanded upon. Unless we keep going indefinitely, which just isn’t possible.

I make no excuses for any of this other than I didn’t know better. I admit I made mistakes with the story and writing, but I have learned so much from this project so I’m glad that I did it. And I hope you guys can still enjoy it for what it is. A lot of you have the feeling that there is so much more to be told in this world and with these characters, and you’re right. There is so much potential. But we are going to have to leave that potential up to your imaginations.

THE EPILOGUE

Regarding the “open” ending, this is how we wanted it, but we know you guys want at least a taste of the future of our beloved gang for a greater sense of closure. We are planning to host a Kickstarter to fund the final book very soon, and the most important stretch goal will be an eight page epilogue set 3 years in the future. I have already scripted it out and I think you guys will love it. We hope with your support we can make it a reality!

If funded, we will complete the epilogue for the book and will release it online sometime after the Kickstarter is fulfilled.

THE EDITS

Finally, there is one major loose end in this story that has always bothered me – and bothered you readers as well. This is in regards to the very first mission that Meela and Feral did together back in Chapter 3, involving an older gentleman and his mysterious knowledge of Meela when she was younger. This is one of those half-formed ideas I was talking about before. I thought it would be fun to tease the readers a little and left the burden of explaining this event up to Future Me, who eventually realized Past Me was an idiot and I had no decent way to do it.

In order to round out the story and get rid of that loose end, we have decided to change it. We have made edits to the following pages: Page 62, Page 81, Page 82 and Page 89. I know some of you may not like the change, but I’m much happier with it this way, so I hope you can accept it.

And the original explanation of this event? (SPOILERS – DON’T READ IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE COMIC YET) The gentleman and his wife were known for harboring fugitives in the form of half demons like Meela and her brother, who found their way to his doorstep shortly after their father was killed. They stayed with them for a little bit before an anti-demon group randomly made an attack on the house, setting it aflame. Meela and her brother fled into the night, the wife perished in the fire, and the husband was left with no option but to escape into solitude or likely be killed himself. Feral was the last of many bounty hunters hired by the anti-demon group trying to get at him.

A rather pointless tie-in in retrospect, and something we were never able to explain, so it’s better off just being changed to expand upon Meela’s idealisms and character growth instead. If you have any questions regarding this, please feel free to ask!

THANK YOU

And lastly, I just want to say thank you to everybody that has read the comic, whether you’ve been reading for years or just now found it. Creating a full-color comic isn’t easy and if it weren’t for the support and love of the readers we might have dropped it a long time ago.

We know you’re sad to see it end, especially when there’s so much more that can be done with it, but it’s time for us to move on to new endeavors and we hope you can understand. Rest assured that we have wrapped up (or at least explained) the most important pieces of the story, so anything left open is intended to be that way. We will also be hosting a Q&A after the last page of the comic next week, so we fully intend to explain almost anything you all are left wondering about.

Both Algy and I have plans for new stories to tell in the future, so we hope you’ll keep an eye out if you want to see more from us, even if it’s not related to Strays ;)

Sorry to go backwards on you guys, but we decided we needed an additional page between 374 and 375 to better illustrate the tension and minor passage of time.

So, THIS is the new Page 375 which comes right after this page.

We didn’t intend for it to take up this week’s update, but you can see it’s a very involved page. I hope you enjoy it anyway :)

We’re going to be at Otakon 2014 this weekend! Look for Sugar Bunny Shop in the dealer’s room, against the wall at booth AA08. We’ll have some books of Volumes 1 and 2 available and we’d love to meet some Strays fans while we’re there. Be sure to drop on by if you’re attending!

Okay kiddos, it’s time for a new update on the preorder of the Strays volumes. The biggest bit of information is the books are in production at this very moment and will be here by the end of the month! Woohoo!! They are on schedule to ship to us on December 20th and we should receive them within a week after that. Though we also have to account for a small delay for the holidays, so we expect to get them in hand at the beginning of January at the latest.

To make shipping as easy as possible we are going to start with all of the book-only orders, then move on to the orders with extra items like prints/charms, then we’ll begin working on the sketched-in copies. I am going home for Christmas and won’t be back until January 2nd, so we can’t get started on the sketched-in copies until after that, but we’re going to get them done and shipped as soon as possible. Just please keep in mind it will probably take us a bit of time to draw in all of these!

We also have a smallish change to the books: To meet required specifications we had to increase the number of pages for both volumes to 152. This means little to Volume 1, but Volume 2 now includes a few more bonus illustrations as well as two extra pages of concept art.

To wrap this up, we ask again that anyone who has NOT sent us your bookmark choice (Feral, Meela, Piper or Holland) to do so now. You can contact us at sales (at) straysonline (dot) com. If you do not give us a choice by the time we ship your order you will receive a random pick.

We are also ending preorders on Wednesday, December 18th. If you want any of the preorder bonuses be sure to order by then! The books will still be available for regular sale after the preorder ends.

Hi guys, we wanted to give you all an update on what’s going on with the Volume 1 & 2 preorders. We know we’re seriously behind in our estimated delivery dates, but we had no idea how different mass-production printing would be from our usual print-on-demand method. That on top of moving to a new reno house, conventions, keeping up with weekly updates and now my hand issues, we have really been set back on it.

However I am happy to report we are just about ready to send it off to the printer. We just have a few more tweaks to make and I need to finish one of the bonus images for Vol 2 as soon as my hand is in working order. I’ve spent the last week working on other non-art details for the books with a mouse since I can’t use my drawing hand, but it’s all coming together really nicely.

I wanted to take this time to share some of the new/different things for these two runs, as well as make an announcement about some preorder selections that may have been confusing:

1. If you preordered Vol 2 with the “2 book” option you will be receiving Volumes 1 and 2. If you do NOT want this, and instead want two books of Volume 2, please contact us right now.
2. If you preordered the books and did not give us a bookmark(s) choice, email us with your order number/PayPal email and choice now. You get one free bookmark per book you ordered. You have until we get the books in hand and begin shipping to tell us which one you want or you will be sent a random choice.
3. If you have contacted us about a change in your order and have not received a response within 48 hours, please try again. You can use both straysonline(at)yahoo.com or sales(at)straysonline.com

Now on to the good stuff – information about the volumes!

Volume 1

This will be a totally different book than the version we were selling before. We have gone back and made tweaks to the art of a small portion of the comic pages (mostly anatomy, facial expressions and some consistency issues) and we have also revamped and added to the title/credits pages. There will also be no ad pages in this copy! Well, except for our artist bios and perhaps a small blurb about GaMERCaT ;)

In addition we have revamped the back cover (preview to the right) AND we now have ISBNs! This means we can sell the books on Amazon or possibly in book stores if any are willing to carry it.

Other than that, the front cover and all bonus content will be the same.

Volume 2

Like Volume 1, for this book we have gone back to a good number of the comic pages and made adjustments to the art. Some of it has been updated on the site, but some of it will be exclusive to the book.

For bonus content we are including six bonus illustrations, three of which have yet to be posted online. We are also including 3 pages of information on Lupians and one more page that provides the translated text from Yuen’s journal page in Volume 1. You can preview these below!

We know this has been a long process and we truly appreciate your patience and support. We believe these are going to be some awesome books, so we really hope it has been worth the wait :) If you have any more questions please feel free to contact us!