Autarch
CREATOR
4 days ago
Project Update: Your Rewards are (Finally) Shipping, so It's Time for An After-Action Review
Attention, Ascendants!
Star-Spangled Squadron Volume II is now en route. All of the books arrived at our US warehouse in mid-May, and our partners at Studio 2 Publishing have begun to process and dispatch your rewards. US backers should expect to receive their rewards within 5-10 days (depending on the vagaries of shipping and handling) while Canadian, European, and Global backers will get rewards in 2-3 weeks, or perhaps a little longer if located on the far side of the globe.
It is a genuine delight to be able to tell your rewards are finally en route. This project has been beset by problems from the get-go and there were times it felt like it would be my first "failed" crowdfunding campaign. I actually had given myself 18 months (August 2024 -> February 2026) rather than my usual 12 months to ship this book. Even with 6 months of padding, we were still 4 months late! I thought it was worth doing an After-Action Review (AAR) of what had transpired to cause the book to be such a struggle.
Star-Spangled Squadron Volume II is now en route. All of the books arrived at our US warehouse in mid-May, and our partners at Studio 2 Publishing have begun to process and dispatch your rewards. US backers should expect to receive their rewards within 5-10 days (depending on the vagaries of shipping and handling) while Canadian, European, and Global backers will get rewards in 2-3 weeks, or perhaps a little longer if located on the far side of the globe.
It is a genuine delight to be able to tell your rewards are finally en route. This project has been beset by problems from the get-go and there were times it felt like it would be my first "failed" crowdfunding campaign. I actually had given myself 18 months (August 2024 -> February 2026) rather than my usual 12 months to ship this book. Even with 6 months of padding, we were still 4 months late! I thought it was worth doing an After-Action Review (AAR) of what had transpired to cause the book to be such a struggle.
- Despite early momentum, Star-Spangled Squadron Volume II ultimately didn't fund as much as I had hoped it would. That meant the budget wasn't large enough to cover the page count I needed to tell Aurora's story the way I wanted to tell it. I therefore decided to moved forward with a 56, rather than 48, page book despite the funding shortage. I knew that comic illustrators will often work at a lower rate if I gave them more time, as they can fit in the art in between other projects that way, and thought it would be worth the slower pace. to have a more complete story.
- Despite increasing the length a bit, I really struggled on the script. Partly this was due to brain fog brought on by health problems which I've written about elsewhere, but partly it was that the story simply needed more space to be told properly. Therefore I increased the length again, this time to 64 pages. I think this was the right decision creatively, but it meant the project was now further behind schedule and well over budget.
- Unfortunately, progress was further stalled because we had to change colorists mid-way through. I grossly under-estimated the delay all this would entail. Changing colorists meant re-doing the earlier pages of colored art in order to maintain consistency; that was on top of the 16 pages I'd added to the story. While I had hoped for a 2 month delay, it ultimately led to a 4 month delay.
- When the art was finally all inked and colored, it went to our amazing letterer to finish. Normally our letter can work with the swiftness of a swooping hawk, so lettering was scheduled for 1 month. Unfortunately, ill fortune struck hard: She suffered an illness in her family and the necessities of caregiving delayed her work. Ultimately it took 3 months for the lettering to get finished, so that was a 2-month delay.
- It therefore wasn't until October 2025 that we had a finished PDF and could start delivering the digital goods. Because of the delays, we included some additional PDF rewards for everyone. These were received with high spirits. I am genuinely thankful for all the goodwill and patience you guys showed through this slow process.
- It was now November 2025 and concerns over a prospective tariff war between the US and China led me to investigate alternative shippers. That search took 2 more months and ultimately was fruitless. I wasn't able to find a US printer that could do a small batch of offset print full color. Attempts to use digital color printing couldn't match the quality of Star-Spangled Squadron Volume I.
- Since the threatened tariff war never actually happened, we ended up just working with our Hong Kong-based printer GPSD again. GPSD had printed the first volume and working with them meant the second volume would be a perfect match. They did a great job, as always, and by February 2025 they had finished printing the book and the associated accessories. It looked like we would ship out in March!
- Unfortunately, for reasons outside my control, we missed the deadline to ship out the books before the Lunar New Year. Missing that deadline left our books sitting in port in China for another month. The books didn't reach the US until April 8th.
- Then, when the books finally did arrive, they were flagged for "additional screening" by DHS and languished in port in California for another month. Perhaps DHS had been alerted that the books described how ordinary people could become humans of mass destruction and were concerned about the security threat? Who can say. Eventually they were cleared for entry, removed from their containers, and dispatched by truck to Studio 2's warehouse in Knoxville.
All told we lost about 4 months from expanding and redoing the book's script, inks, and colors; 2 months from the letterer's medical leave; 2 months from evaluating alternative printers; 1 month from missing the Lunar New Year deadline; and 1 month from the DHS port inspection. All told that was 10 months of delay, which ate up the entire 6 month of padding I'd put in the schedule and then pushed us 4 months over that. Thus February 2026 became May 2026.
Be that as it may, the project is finally done and the books are en route. I think of how Xenophon must have felt when he led the 10,000 Greeks home to Greece from distant Persia. This has been my Long March, my Animeabasis. Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you love your rewards when they arrive!
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