This week I finished reading through all of the comics I've ever written and I'll admit it, through the highs and the lows, there's a lot of work to be done in my rewriting of the series.

I've always been my own worst critic. I give myself impossible deadlines, I set unrealistic goals, and I'm not afraid of trashing entire issues if the vibe isn't right or the story isn't working. The mistakes that do make it to print are hard to look back at because to a normal person "cringe worthy" is something you move on from, to me, I tend to amplify them, obsess over them and then find ways of making them right.

Looking back, I know the setting of "Universe" was a mistake. Universe came after a pretty successful run on "The Media Elite." It really came about because I had made a template file and accidentally put in volume 2 instead of volume one on the cover of the template issue. Instead of fixing it, I became obsessed with getting to the point where I could have a volume two.

I know I wanted to do super hero stories at the time and I had a ready-made setting in the form of an old world I had created for a role playing game (run as individual player modules online), that seemed to fit well for a comic book.

Boy, how things went wrong after that.

With some adapting, I had a single world divided up into eight zones like an old school video game, each zone a different theme I could work with. The main focus was going to be on zone eight where super heroes had displaced the gods as the focus of the zone.

Then I went a step further! I eliminated al the bad guys! I wanted to establish a world where the bad guys had been wiped out in a final battle and what would happen when the forces of good were left with nothing to do. Again, it all sounds good on paper but...

I should have taken a lot of time off and gone monthly with the issues for it to work. I just jumped into things and I didn't have an overall story line until I made the switch to youtube animations. I had an easier time getting the story across in the youtube animations but without voice actors, well, yeah, that kind of didn't work. It just didn't fit the medium.

It shouldn't surprise you that when I look forward, Universe is one of the series (the other being @insanity), that will be changing the most when we get to those issues. The setting is changing completely. I'm staying true to the story and the characters, but I intend to get there slowly and logically and to take the time to tell the stories I need to tell in a way that makes sense as a comic series.

I have billed these issues as being "new takes on old stories" and that's true. Starting next week with the truly new stuff, you're going to see a lot more changes to the original stories while hopefully making things better. I have a lot less space to work with per issue (20 pages compared to 28-30), and I'm making ground rules for myself to stay focused on what works while living up the spirit of my previous work.

Will it work?

Only you will be the judge of that. So start hitting me with feedback! :)

-Jim

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