So way back when, Defans Amis was just Alette and Beau in a writing group called Umbagog, where anyone could build characters and have them run around the group's universe, writing with and off of each other. A lot that I was excited about for Alette and Beau was for them to interact with other people's characters and have other writers be more involved with the story's creation. But now, that was something like 3-4 years ago. The group has since effectively died, leaving Defans Amis with a pretty big, immobile, extraneous appendage. I'm disappointed and a bit frustrated that I don't get to have that anymore, but ignoring that part of my ego, I've decided to instead reinvent the universe and cut off the connections to Umbagog (outside of one guest character, Yena, whom I still need to deal with). I'll be spending a good chunk of the next month or two doing new world building, finding ways to incorporate/adjust old lore into new lore and producing new characters, locations, history and all that fun stuff.

There are a few things I know I'm gonna add, like a greater focus on the wilderness and wildlife as well as a significantly emptier world (I know it's always been empty so far in-comic, but I promise, there were lots of zombies elsewhere lol). There was definitely an apocalyptic event, and I have at least three very zombie-like individuals and a lot of deer that I'm going to have to rebuild around, but Defans Amis will no longer have zombies. I have a few ideas about the cause of zombie-like people and the fate of the world...mooost of them are associated to plants, which makes Alette's gardening and Beau's drugs more significant. The comic will very likely change to an overall theme of the human relationship to nature and our abilities to heal and adapt from it and in it, which I'm honestly far more excited about than zombies.

I'm admittedly mostly excited about designing new monsters, though. :D :p


So all in all, there's gonna be a good stretch of road for everyone to look forward to and I hope you guys can get excited about it too.