Ensnared Comic Update: Sad News

Hello everyone! Rob here. I know you don’t hear from me directly very often, which only make this more difficult. I hate to use one of these rare communications for bad news…but here we are.

I want to be up front with that news: the Ensnared graphic novel adaptation is on indefinite hiatus. If I’m to be honest with you—and with myself—that essentially means the project is cancelled.

I totally understand any disappointment in this news, and I assure you that me and Tiffany are just as disappointed. We were both truly excited for this, even knowing that it was going to be a very, very big, very long-term project. This decision wasn’t reached lightly, and it was not at all an easy one to make. But…it was the right one.

To continue the honesty, I have always struggled with my inner critic when it comes to my own artwork (to the point that part of me even hesitates to call my drawings art at all). I’ve had my ups and downs with it over the years, and, like a great many artists, have only rarely been satisfied with any art I produce. I suppose one of the results of this is that drawing for me is an almost cyclical thing. I will draw a whole lot over a few weeks of time, riding inspiration, really enjoying it…and then that enjoyment stops, and I stop drawing for a while. For weeks, sometimes months.

I always get to the point of wanting to pick the pen up again, but during those lulls, I really just don’t want anything to do with it. Those are the times when I am most aware of my inability to express what I see in my mind on a piece of paper (or on a tablet screen or what have you). When I try to force myself during those periods, it typically just ends in frustration.

I’ve hit another of those lulls in recent weeks. In very short order, I went from potentially ahead on the Ensnared comic (relative to the one page per month schedule) to falling further and further behind because I could not muster the willpower to work on it, and whenever I forced myself, I hated the results.

To be clear, this isn’t really about the comic itself—this is all me. But this is the worst episode in memory. I’m to the point of hating every line I put down on the page, every mark I make, and it is causing me anxiety and depression like I never thought possible. Silly as it seems as I write all this out, it has become a mental health issue, and I’ve been tearing myself apart over it. That bleeds into everything else in my life, and that’s just not all right.

This project was supposed to be a fun incentive, and I took it on as a way to challenge myself, to push myself to new levels, and to thank all of you. I am sorry that I’m failing to do that after barely making any progress. But better now than twenty, thirty, a hundred pages in. Better I acknowledge what I’ve known about myself, better I acknowledge my own issues, than push myself and make them worse.

I want to thank you all for the support you have shown to our writing, for all the kind words you’ve shared with us, and for all the nice things you’ve said about my art. I really wish I knew how to make the voice in my head shut up and see what I produce the way everyone else does. Until then, I cannot pretend. I cannot provide you false hope. The reality is that I am ill-suited to tackling a project like the Ensnared graphic novel, and that is unlikely to change.

All that said, we will continue to have exclusive art, live readings, and all the other goodies here on our Patreon, and we have some ideas on other things we might want to try in the future (smaller projects). But if you were here for the comic, please accept my apologies. I truly am sorry to let all of you, Tiffany, and myself down.