After taking down Yuri Maximillian, Maxine and Damien are rewarded for their daring efforts with mind-numbing patrols. Maxine begins to question if the Government's 'False Peace' is worth letting criminals rule the Western Island.
Welcome back to FireStarter! The latest chapter titled 'Snuffed' is out now and available to read here!
Read 'FireStarter Chapter 2: Snuffed'
On Patrol
Maxine Rubin's frustrations with the NSPD result from what she believes is a lazy approach to arresting or confronting criminals. When she decided to take matters into her own hands, in a few weeks, she could arrest Yuri legally and correctly. Maxine believes that the NSPD could do the same, but the agreement between the gangs and the police called the 'False Peace' prevents either side from engaging each other's territory to avoid conflict.
Maxine plays by the rules, and as a reward, she is tasked with boring patrols far away from any sites where she could 'cause trouble'. Damien doesn't mind the easy shifts but his fiery partner opts to ignore the rules if she gets in trouble following them.
In this chapter, we see the friction points in Maxine and Damien's relationship, Maxine's brazen approach to dealing with criminals, and why she feels so strongly about cleaning up the streets.
Production Notes
Things got busy as they usually do and I couldn't find a workflow that enabled me to make consistent progress on this chapter. October was not a good month for progress because I was swamped with work and other art. However, I started chipping away at the seemingly endless work I had to do with the chapter towards the end of October, and soon enough, I saw the finish line and sprinted toward it! It feels so good to have this one out finally!
No significant shifts in art-style or workflow to talk about for this chapter, though I must say that the ink style from FireStarter 1 has started to bleed over into Heroine Rises. I might do things differently between the two series since Heroine Rises has more chapters and requires me to speed things up to make any progress, but the next HR chapter will be quite similar to FireStarter.
I've embraced that I want to use whatever style/effects I need to obtain the desired effect. Too often I find myself wanting to accomplish something artistically but feel limited by some style constraints I've placed on myself for some reason. No more! While it was probably too late for the full effects to be seen in this chapter, the next chapter will embrace this idealogy to the fullest and hopefully get closer and closer to that perfect vision I have for it!
Madeline Returns!
Now that I'm done with this chapter, I plan to finish the remainder of Chapter 12 of Heroine Rises. I have about half the pages done but feel confident I can get it out by the end of the year. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the future of Heroine Rises, but for now, I plan to continue it and will update you on whether or not that changes. Honestly, I cannot wait to draw other characters besides Maxine and Damien! (Still love them, but we need a short break!)
Once I'm done with that, I plan to continue with FireStarter and work on Chapter 3, which will be titled Embers. I have the script for it and currently working out the storyboards. I hope to use the downtime while working on Heroine Rises to finish those boards and have a solid foundation to breeze through the creation stage!
That's all for now! I might do a small update to tell you about a neat little website facelift I've been working on before the HR12 release.
Until next time,