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On hiatus until January! Happy new year!

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Me writing one story that I’ve been working on since 2011, first set in 2013, then 2018, and I don’t want to shift the date any further forward because that would inform and change the sort of cultures and environments the cast grew up and was raised on: oh same hat

I had to have reference years for all my books (see website link) to make the timelines work. It’s not obvious for the most part, but I had to set “Roger Mantis” way back in the 70s because the modern age of smartphones and internet would have blown the story out of the water.

I been writing a story that happens in 2015, because I thought it would be way easier, since it’s not that long ago, until I had to add important details to the plot and all of sudden, there’s no info on those very important details I need

I’ve dabbled at writing in the MORFS alternate-history shared-world series. It branches at the end of 2008, and accumulated timelines track political, cultural, and tech milestones. My own (unfinished) scribblings begin in 2032. Avoiding contradictions and misfit details is an ongoing challenge.

“Standard” comic books and newspaper comic strips, on the other hand, have long been notorious for their sliding time scales. Little Orphan Annie was always on the brink of adolescence regardless of the year and the fact that she was a depression-era orphan, and Daddy Warbucks made his money during WWI. Blondie was originally a 1920s flapper. Charlie Brown et al never aged into their teens. Peter Parker’s high school classmate Flash Thompson fought in Viet Nam. Spider-Man and a bunch of other New York-based heroes were shown responding to the Twin Towers attack in 2001. The stories included such timestamps as movies, musicians, presidencies, and holidays, but they always acted like the story began only a few years earlier. The short-lived imprint “Impact” was established with a rule of real-time progression, year to year. Back-to-back storylines were balanced with unchronicled time.

There is no perfect, easy solution.

i enjoy that the comic is locked to 2004. i’m roughly the same age and it’s fun looking back at a world that was still ‘modern’ but so much younger and simpler. if it was based in the 90s that would be totally in your face, but instead i get reminded occasionally that it’s 2004 and it’s like a wink and a hug.

I think I was trying to start a webcomic back when you were still using real paint… and I first started writing it back before it was normal for everyone to have a cell phone.

Eh, it was one of those urban fantasies where the sudden weirdness wasn’t invisible to normies, but somehow it was still a secret. So dumb.

I think in your setting, there is a strong weirdness censor on top of people being careful. Even if someone got video of Jim in full-form or even Bloodcarver, the quality is probably shoddy enough for people to wonder what a condor is doing in Missouri.

For some reason a lot of people think I used traditional media back at the beginning of the comic (you’re not the first to say this, haha), but the comic has always been digitally colored! I used to ink it on paper for most of Orientations, but I switched to 100% digital before Orientations ended!

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