Posted by Theo Wilde / TuxedoDragon on Jul 12, 2025
Hey everyone! It’s been…well now, over a year since I wrapped up Chapter 1 of Meet Me in the Woods. Time, uh, sure does fly, huh?
To answer what you’re all probably wondering about right off the bat: the comic is still gonna be on hiatus for a bit longer, and I don’t currently have a set date for when Chapter 2 will start being uploaded online - sorry about that! I’ll detail a bit more of how things have been on my side of it down below, if you’re interested. Before that, though, some news about how I plan to continue the comic going forward…
Current Progress…
I’ve got 95% of the pages for Chapter 2 sketched out and laid out how I want them and a solid script to match, which leaves mostly inking and coloring! This time around, though, I’d really like to have a decent buffer, which means I’ll need to complete several pages before they even start going up online, a task which could take…two or three months of uninterrupted work, if I’m being really optimistic. Probably longer. This chapter is roughly the same length as the previous, in the ballpark of 60 - 70 pages.
So, what can be done to help reach this goal? Well…
Financially Funding the Comic
I publish this comic for free, and intend to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. I’ve also heard many suggestions to add an optional subscription as a means of funding the comic, and I’ll be making that available on the comic's Comradery page starting today! The “Comic Supporter” tier starts at $10/month and lets you see pages two weeks early, once I start posting them again. Comradery will also be the place to watch for future updates regarding the comic's progress - subscribing to the newsletter is free! ;3
I’d intended to hold off on launching this feature until I started up Chapter 2, but with how uncertain my current financial and career prospects are, I figured it wouldn’t be unwise to soft-launch ahead of time.
As of now, I’m uncertain how else to give myself more time to work on this…a generous friend of mine has offered to help set up an eventual Kickstarter campaign, but the idea is geared more for physical prints of the comic, and uh…I’m nowhere near close to doing that at the moment!
I’m still spinning other ideas around for how I can make this more sustainable in the long-term, but truth be told, this is unfamiliar territory for me! I’d welcome advice or suggestions from folks with more experience in this area than myself - my email inbox is open at [email protected] if you’d like to get in touch!
Personal Life (or “What happened to put the comic on such a long hiatus?”)
I did not intend to put the comic on this long of a posting hiatus, and I really wish this update was to give you all a solid date to look forward to! As it stands right now, though, it’s been tough balancing making the comic with my personal life the last while: I’ve been burned out from overwork and digging myself out of debt on a very small income for more than a year, and my second go-around with the job market has proven fruitless thus far. If any of y’all have been job-hunting lately, I’m sure you’ll understand how absurd the current market is.
It’s been difficult to work on Chapter 2 simultaneously as I’ve been working on my commission queue the way I’ve had to - I’ve had a constant backlog since summer of 2023 due to an event I won’t go into detail about here, and in my attempt to pull myself out of that backlog I began spacing out commission openings and stretching whatever income I had as far as it would go in between. This in turn ended up putting me under near-constant financial stress, contributing to my burnout.
With no luck in landing a new job, I decided to pull myself back into freelance art full-time while adjusting my process and prices in order to ease my workload. It’s already helped me slowly reduce feelings of burnout, and I’m hopeful that it’ll continue doing so going forward!
Even despite everything, I’ve still been chipping away at working on the comic when I’ve had the energy or drive for it throughout the year…my loved ones can confirm I’m a stubborn critter! My desire to continue the story hasn’t dwindled, and I hope that’s reassurance enough for readers that they’ll eventually see more of it.
Thank you for sticking around, I appreciate every one of you <3
- Theo / Tux