Turns out I am very optimistic about dates. I was under the impression back in October that I'd be nearly ready for release by now. Unfortunately reality is where I am actually working on the comic and reality moves a lot slower. That's not to say that I haven't made progress, as I have been working on the pages but I can't deny that trying to finish a large chunk of pages isn't pretty draining.
That's okay though. It isn't a sprint as I called it back in October, it is a marathon. Comics are all about endurance. You work on each page one by one. One page isn't that bad, I've spent longer working on a single illustration than most of these pages. Where the marathon aspect truly comes into view is when you look over your desk and see that you need to do 20 more pages just to have the beginning of the story done. If I was a lesser person I'd throw in the towel at the true scope of what this comic thing entails coming into plain view but thankfully I am delusional.
The main thing is that the late 2025 release date I had optimistically pined for in October is not going to happen. My new ETA is now January 2026 on the optimistic end, and February 2026 on the more realistic end. Even if I did somehow crunch hard enough with a full time job in order to finish the pages I need done before the end of December, there is no way I am releasing during the holidays. That is just asking to get buried under two billion Christmas/New Year's platitudes.
That's all the updates I have for now. I'd say I'm about 30%~ of the way to completion, and I plan on picking up the pace this month so hopefully that number shoots up quite a bit by 2026.