I agree with everything you say, especially the criticisms. I think a lot of the pacing issues were less to do with the strip format and more because for the first half of the story I had no idea what I was doing or where the story was going (it actually all grew from the simplistic idea of having a character for which every bit of identity was stripped away - the entire story emerged from that terrible video game cliche beginning!), and at many points I actually took several months off right in the middle of a chapter because I'd spontaneously lost interest in things before another spark got me moving along.
I'm hoping to get a few more stories done in order to put together a second book, as I feel that my artwork and storytelling both improved quite a lot over the course of this comic, and have only gotten better since (not that it's anything fantastic or anything, but for me the art is a tool with which to tell stories that would be difficult to put into words). Interested readers should look at the other Unity arcs which are all listed at the top of the Unity archives (I recommend starting with Planetfall).
I wish the price could be a bit lower, but unfortunately, full-color printing costs a lot, and between that and the distribution costs the underlying per-unit prices add up. The book exists more as a way of keeping some sort of longer-term physical permanence on a fleeting digital good than anything else, though.
Thank you for writing this review.
I agree with everything you say, especially the criticisms. I think a lot of the pacing issues were less to do with the strip format and more because for the first half of the story I had no idea what I was doing or where the story was going (it actually all grew from the simplistic idea of having a character for which every bit of identity was stripped away - the entire story emerged from that terrible video game cliche beginning!), and at many points I actually took several months off right in the middle of a chapter because I'd spontaneously lost interest in things before another spark got me moving along.
I'm hoping to get a few more stories done in order to put together a second book, as I feel that my artwork and storytelling both improved quite a lot over the course of this comic, and have only gotten better since (not that it's anything fantastic or anything, but for me the art is a tool with which to tell stories that would be difficult to put into words). Interested readers should look at the other Unity arcs which are all listed at the top of the Unity archives (I recommend starting with Planetfall).
I wish the price could be a bit lower, but unfortunately, full-color printing costs a lot, and between that and the distribution costs the underlying per-unit prices add up. The book exists more as a way of keeping some sort of longer-term physical permanence on a fleeting digital good than anything else, though.