What better way to mark the 1st anniversary of Avania’s launch and the Avania blog’s 1000th post, than to write the bi-annual status report of the comic? You tell me, but as I just finished drawing the 4th issue, this feels quite timely! (View this on my DeviantArt to see the pictures!)

To quickly recap, Avania launched exactly one year ago today on July 8th, 2018, after about 5 years of dedicated work (and close to 10 for general development of the characters and setting.) It felt like such a long journey to reach my goal of three finished issues before I’d publish, but now that I’ve been posting pages every week for a year it feels perfectly normal.

I’ve of course kept working on new pages and artwork all this time, so let’s have a look at where Avania stands currently:

  Issues Published: 2 - Pages Published: 50 (not counting covers)

  Issues Completed: 4 - Pages Drawn: 90 

  Issues Written: 15 - Pages Written: 310

  Total Planned for Season 1: 17 Issues, 360 Pages

And that’s just season 1 of at least 3! As you can see, Avania has a long road ahead of it, and pages are much quicker to publish than they are to draw. So, as I’ve previously mentioned, when the comic reaches the end of its first story arc of sorts (and about ¼ into the overall season arc) I am planning on switching to an on-off pattern of finishing a chapter, and then posting pages every week until it is done. I think this will be the best compromise between trying to maintain a weekly post rate once my initial buffer has been run down, and ensuring at least as much care and quality I have strove to provide in my pages so far. Of course, my ultimate goal is to work on Avania full-time, and thus be able to post weekly… Or more! 

I am also very much still planning to release Avania both in digital high-rez format on Comixology, and as printed comic books. Originally I had intended to do so sooner, but as I have found myself finalizing things once again for publishing, I decided it would be preferable to tackle these other formats once the webcomic was taken care of. Now that Issue No.4 is almost ready for a test print, I would like to take once last pass to get all the issues looking as good as possible before I start taking orders… But if you’re interested in physical Avaniacomic books (and/or high-rez digital ones), then do let me know, because it won’t be too much longer now!

That said, Issue No.3 is just beginning (in fact, the cover is up now!) and it has some of my favorite scenes of the comic thus far. I hope you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed creating them! Stay tuned as usual for the latest update every Sunday night at 7:00pm EST at https://worldofavania.com/

If you’d like to check out some Avania-themed posters, pins, and stickers you can buy, head over to the Avania PX online store! It’s a great way to support the comic and get some nice art in physical form!