2021 is the year in which I mainly wanted to work on 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. That planning dates back to even before the start of the corona pandemic. And you could say: such long-term planning shouldn’t cause you any problems in the pandemic, Thilo, because most people suffered from the fact that they didn’t had a plan for tthat time – or had to change or cancel all their plans. That is certainly true.
And yet I can say that keeping this planning up and runnig has been extremely difficult. Because it was made for a world that shouldn’t change at the same time. I thought in 2019 that in 2021 I would be working in conditions similar to those in 2019. For known reasons, this did not happen. In addition to the high workload with this graphic novel, there were so many additional topics: The professional world that I work in did change severely. The worries you had about friends, distant relatives and family. And and and. You had to keep pace with all of this, and that was an extra job of a magnitude difficult to fit in making a comic book like this of over 200 pages.
Nevertheless, I managed to stay on schedule and can now happily announce that I am not sooo far away from the last page. At the moment I’m sitting on the crucial and notorious scene with the giant squids (yes, there are actually more than one), an excerpt of which can be seen here. The scene is also a lot of fun, but it’s tough (I’m just saying: lots of tentacles) and also quite long. But I am very confident that I will make it. I just hope I’ll get my new computer glasses soon :).