I've been terrible at keeping up with this, so I'll catch you up first...
After a pretty wild 2023, health-wise, work on Stone Cold Automaton began in earnest in late September, 2023. I managed to get all 33 pages of art for the book finished on December 27th, with lettering starting just after New Year.
Being honest, I'm not the best writer.
I don't have a very solid process, but as of now it's like this...
I develop a plot...where it starts, where it has to end up, and what I want to draw on my way through. I then move on to the part I'm good at, art. The real writing starts when I get to lettering. It's just easier for me to develop the dialog while looking at the scene and the characters.
That's likely not the best way to do it, but here I am.
I'm roughly 50% through lettering right now and it hit me (hard)...this book is a little dull. It starts out with some cool action, but it's all dialog and twisty, sci-fi reveals after that. This was never my intention. It was never meant to be an all out ACTION comic, but there was initially more going on. Some of the scenes I cut for length had a bit more punching, shooting, and ick and I think the overall story needed that.
With that, I've decided to drop my 40-page cap and add 7-10 pages. While this means my initial plans for two variant covers is no longer going to be cost-effective, as I'll have to upgrade to graphic novel-style cover and binding, it also means Stone Cold Automaton is going to be a double-sized first issue.
And I get to draw more robots.
That's nice for me.