Things are never quite so simple with Exiern, including the answers to supposedly straightforward questions like, “When did it start?” and even “How many pages are there?” For simplicity’s sake (among other things) the start of Exiern is generally considered to be from the first day of the reboot on the 6th of September 2005 (the page before it does touch on why it’s a little bit more complicated than that, however, if you’re interested).

On that note, due to one of those bizarre chain of events that are strangely all too common on the production side of things here, it has lead to the return after more than 9 years away of Exiern’s first professional artist. You knew him as Studio Boom, he’s now back as Studio Katsumi!

You can check out his Patreon here (he does commissions!).

To celebrate 14 years and counting of Exiern, we simply said to just make anything he’d like with no further instructions to commemorate Studio Katsumi’s return as well as to mark this anniversary milestone. As you can see, a particularly memorable moment from among the earliest days of Exiern was chosen.

Don’t worry, Antipus will be remaining as the primary artist for Exiern’s main story – he’s not going anywhere anytime soon, we hope!

But wait, there’s more!

Check back here on Monday, the 9th of September for a special announcement below the comic page. The next story page will post later that evening. We’ll also have new announcements about the evolution of a long absent and gestating project soon!

If we could take this time to reflect, a lot has happened in and to Exiern since Drowemos first conceived of, wrote, and illustrated those first few pages over fourteen years ago (there’s that not-quite-that-simple again). And this is our opportunity to open a dialogue with everyone here about the future of Exiern through 2019 and into 2020.

We hate to discuss it, but Exiern runs at quite a financial deficit. The sensible thing to do would be to cut back again the frequency of posts, if not stop the webcomic entirely and invest the money from other sources in some very safe mutual or index funds instead.

Scott and his wife are also waiting to find out if at any moment they’ll get the call to be adoptive parents! It’s very exciting but will, of course, impact what Scott’s been able to invest in time and funds.

But don’t worry. We really enjoy making everything in the Exiern universe (and all the friends we made along the way) so we won’t be stopping unless we really can’t help it. To keep any interruption from happening we’re starting to increase the various direct income streams Exiern has access to.

We really don’t want to over-push the Patreon or other donation options. Everyone’s seen the banners. They’re always there to click on for anyone who wants to anytime. So we’ll be doing a number of things that are quite different going forwards, like more merch on Exiern Effects, and we hope you’ll find them to be something a bit different as well as fun and entertaining on top of everything else.

So, to recap: Welcome back to an excellent artist who made an invaluable contribution to shaping what Exiern is, and there’s a lot to look forward to in the months ahead on top of the usual updates. We’re really excited to share what we’ve been planning with everyone for a while now, starting with this coming Monday!

See you all then!

~The Exiern Team