This issue ended up as a strange, staccato chapter, two shorter stories sort-of welded together. One of the luxuries of webcomics is that I’m not beholden to fixed comic book lengths, but with that there’s a risk of producing one endless, unbroken storyline, with no real peaks or troughs, just update after update. That works well in funny comics, where “arcs” are of secondary importance to telling a good joke, but I’ve found that dramatic comics get a bit mind-numbing unless there’s some kind of structure to them. Nonetheless, I seem to break my own rules sometimes; while I think the individual events of chapter 7 are a big deal (the Ulenites invade! they’re forced away from the inn! Padri is destroyed! Anthem’s father dies by Maresh’s hand!), this chapter never really gelled into a dramatic whole.
But next time!–the arrival of the wyrds! Gilgam confronts his people! Lyca rekindles her will! And Kawunei defies fate! And eventually, we’ll learn more about that clever little ring Anthem made!
I’ll await with baited breath.