Maxine and Damien infiltrate the Sanctuary Towers Hospital Center, the base of the Rust Bandits, in their pursuit of the kidnapped girl but come face to face with the only person Maxine fears.
FireStarter returns in 2024 in the thrilling fourth chapter! Chapter 4 is titled Flames and is available to read here: Read FireStarter Chapter 4: Flames
Sanctuary
For years after witnessing the death of her mother, Maxine's motives and mindset toward life have all shifted from her childhood dreams to that of revenge against Veronica's killer.
Finally, can Maxine realize that vision? At the cost of friendships, love, and happiness, Maxine finally gets the chance to confront the villain of her life and bring closure to a pained era. Can she step up and put the serial killer known as Drill into the dirt?
For Maxine, it's personal. For Damien, it's a reckless move. The Sanctuary Towers Hospital Center used to be a place of health, prosperity, and new beginnings. Now, it's a dark perversion. An infestation of Rust Bandits has changed its presence from that of healing to that of suffering. What could they want with a random young girl? What exactly goes on behind those makeshift walls and in the tall, monolithic presence of the Tower of Glass?
All of this is to save the girl. But is it? Maybe Maxine isn't as eager as Damien is to avoid Drill...
Production Notes
It's now been a whole year and some months since the release of the last chapter. Time flies faster than I'd like. I worked on the project throughout my Fall semester, but circumstances changed, and I needed a job in addition to a full-time school schedule, which was overwhelming for me. I chipped away at the project but knew that it would be impossible for me to complete it during the Spring; I just never really had the time or energy at the end of the day after school and work to make any consistent progress.
Again, part of it is also due to nasty trouble I have with my work ethic; I'm often too easily distracted or don't feel like inking a page or drawing a specific panel, so I'll just put it off until I can't. Bad habits die hard, and the only way this has finished is because I decided to focus and try to get those work habits shored up. So far, so good, but this needs to be consistent.
Creating a comic solo is a lot of work, but there is no excuse beyond poor time management for taking this long for 20-something pages. I promise Chapter 5 will not take this long. Technically, I did finish 'Hearts Like Ours' between April and September, so it's not an entire year, but still. The time between chapters is far too long, and I hope that changes.
Maxine in Print
After 4 chapters, I promised myself that I would publish my first volume! I don't quite think I'll make that my first attempt at bringing FireStarter into the physical world, but soon enough, I will! However, I want to get it printed and plan to make print runs of each of the four chapters in a simple saddle-stitch comic format for easy distribution and collection! That will hopefully see an update far sooner than the next chapter. I need to get the PDFs in order and format the comic properly, as well as get in touch with printers to help me get a good result. But before all that, I need to update the art for the print release!
This does not mean I will redraw each chapter; I will go back in and touch up panels that I don't quite feel lived up to what I envisioned or need to be redrawn because I just had a lousy artist moment. FS04 has excellent art, in my opinion, and I'd like a print version of FireStarter to be presented in the best possible light within a decent time frame, so I'll be touching up the chapters! Maybe we can eventually budget for some variant covers here and there and add some cool sketches or extra content in the print release! Who knows!
My Next Moves
I had a plan stewing for the next installation of Feigned Toughness. This chapter will be titled Whispered Wishes, and I want to take a unique approach.
But...
I feel that I am not quite ready regarding the skillset needed to fulfill my vision. I need more practice with gouache and 3d art to achieve it, so I think I will work on FireStarter 5 instead.
FireStarter 5 is titled Burns and will focus on what happens to Maxine and Damien after the events of FS04. This will mark a bit over the halfway point of Part 1 of FireStarter! After this, the remaining chapters go as follows:
Burns <---- We are here
Combustion
Inferno
Cinders
Soon enough, I will have more details to release, but for now, I look forward to details on the print release and updated panels!