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Double Update! How do you like the story so far?

Greetings, LadyStar readers! Cat here. I’m the writer for the LadyStar webcomics and webnovels, just one of the seven people who work on this webcomic. (Everything in LadyStar is in quantities of seven.) I’m the person who figures out what happens in the next chapter. I normally try to stay out of the way so our readers can enjoy the story, but every so often I think it’s a good idea to step out from behind the curtain for a few minutes and at least say ‘hello.’

I decided to surprise everyone with a double update today, because we’ve been a little slow with our pages lately.

LadyStar has grown a lot in the last 18 months. In June, we had over 15,000 unique visits between the two webcomics, which is an all-time record for any LadyStar web site going all the way back to the original subdirectory on the Heavy Cat Web. Our direct visits, mostly people who have bookmarked the site, are now twenty times higher than they were when Fury of the Venom Legion launched in February of 2008. The support you folks have shown for this webcomic has been really important to us.

As webcomics go, LadyStar is kind of unique. Technically, the project has been in development for almost nine years. It’s been everything: game, manga, novel, Visual novel, merchandising program, television script, OAV script. We have readers and players who have stuck with us since the original zStory Adventures. I can tell you that LadyStar has never been stronger from an audience standpoint.

Our goal is 100,000 unique visits a month, and we’re on track to get there much sooner than we originally expected. A lot of credit belongs to all of the amazing comics at Palace in the Sky. About half of our overall traffic comes from them, and if you found LadyStar from a link on one of those comic sites, we’re really happy to have you as a new reader.

But mostly, the credit goes to our artists. I’ve honestly never worked with a more professional group of people than our studio team. They knocked out 28 color pages for Venom Legion in 28 weeks, which allowed us to go seven months without missing a single update. Their work on Jessica Hoshi and the Ajan Warriors has been outstanding. All these color illustrations you see here and on the other sites would be literally impossible without our artists, because I can’t draw.

We’ve reached kind of a natural stopping point here on page 45 story-wise. The next scene is the encounter between Kenesh Drun, the Scaled One, an aspirant to join the Blade, and her Excellency, Reina, Vicereine of Kulnas, whose command of destructive magic is unmatched among all but a very few beings. We’re putting a fair amount of extra effort into this battle because we’ve put in a lot of work to get here. We’d sure like the “Battle of Vuran’s Wharf” it to be as cool as we’ve planned it.

We also really need to re-build our page buffer, which has disappeared in the last couple of months. This will help us maintain our update schedule through the battle and into the conclusion of Part One of this comic. Then we’ll take another break to decide what to work on next.

In the meantime, we’ve got some plans for the site. We’re going to be adding new archives for both comics, and doing a total overhaul of the Venom Legion site. A new comments system is going to be implemented on both sites to make things simpler for people who want to talk about LadyStar, and we’re going to install a few new features here and there to make the site easier to use.

I’ve also started a complete rewrite of The Dreamspeaker, and Descent into the Ivyreef Deeps will continue updating on the Ajan Champions webnovel site. And of course, as Ranko would say, the “Goofball Express” will still be updating in the Band Room.

Join in with your Comments!

But we’d really like to hear from YOU! Just below this article you’ll find a link to add your comments. I’m going to try to check back to this page as often as possible and I’ll reply to comments and questions as best I can. I won’t give away any spoilers, but if you’ve got questions about the characters or series, I’ll do my best to answer them. We’d like to take an informal survey of opinions too.

What do you think of the story in Jessica Hoshi and the Ajan Warriors? How about Descent into the Ivyreef Deeps? Anything you’ve particularly liked so far? Anything you’d like to see improved? Any long-time readers think the story has improved from the Visual Novel, manga or games? Anyone wanna buy a Hikousen frisbee? Tell us what you think! We know there’s about 500 readers visiting the site every day, and with the number of comments we get, I’m guessing there’s more than a few readers who have something to say.

We’ll be taking a break for a little while here to get caught up on our pages before the big battle. Watch the Band Room for announcements on when updates will resume. We’re glad to have you all here to enjoy our webcomic project. Thanks for your support.

Heavy Cat Studios DeviantArt Site Update, New Dreamspeaker Chapter and the SupaGamepowa Arcade!

“Hi everybody! It’s me Jessie! Did you see the ship started moving all by itself? Lots of action pages coming up soon! Go see our DeviantArt page if you want a super-neat super-sneak preview of where we’re going after we sail away from the Lakeshore Promenade. It’s called Vuran’s Wharf. It’s a spooky place and there might be monsters there. I hope Cici-chan’s Lantern gots some powers so we can fight. Don’t forget to come see me and Teko on Twitter!”

“There’s a new chapter too for our book called The Dreamspeaker! It’s our free webnovel and it’s about when Jessie joins the band and then we had to fight a monster called a Cryptic!”

“Greetings, folks. Commander Acey from SupaGamepowa checking in to announce the opening of our all new SupaGamepowa Arcade where you can play free Flash games.”

“Yeah, Acey’s games are made out of chocolate just like my number button.”

“Digital Chocolate is the name of the company that makes the game, you doofus.”

“Oh yeah! They’re super-fun to play too. Don’t miss our next update, minna-san! Ja!”

Introducing The Dreamspeaker and Reina, Vicereine of Kulnas

“This is a super-important update because we added a character page for one of the most super-important people in the whole LadyStar story! Her name is Reina and she knows everything about magic and fighting. Sometimes people think she’s not very nice but it’s because she doesn’t want any of us to get hurt. Her character page is really interesting and tells a lot about all the history of what happened in LadyStar before we got our treasures.”

“You should see our new book! It’s called The Dreamspeaker! It’s the first book in the LadyStar story and it’s all about when I found a timepiece in Collins Park that had lots of jewels in it! It’s a webnovel and that means you can read all the chapters for free!”

“And don’t forget we have two webnovels. Descent into the Ivyreef Deeps is the first book in the Ajan Champions Series. In the story we’ve got all our powers and training, and so there’s a ton of battles and lots of action!”

“But that’s not the best part of this update. We’ve got a new page in our new Hall of Warriors, and it’s all about the genius on our team. She’s got an invincible shield and the power to make trees fight for her. She’s known as the Storyteller Warrior, and without her, it would be tougher for us to win when we have to fight. It’s the Ajan Warrior of the Forest.”

“There are many interesting lore updates on our comic site too. You can read about Jessica’s Sword Aria, or about Shannon’s Battle Raiments and Weapons, Chrysalis. the Vicereine Reina’s Elemental Dagger or my Magical Defenses called Shelter Blooms.”

“Or if you want to skip all the serious important stuff, you could just read about pizza or vampires in the Band Room.”

“See? We always gots the best updates because there’s always a zillion different things going on at our web sites. Don’t miss our next updates. The Ajan Champions Webnovels site updates every Wednesday and Saturday, ’cause now we got two books, and our webcomic which is called Jessica Hoshi and the Ajan Warriors updates on Monday and Thursday, and then on the other days we got Band Room updates and SupaGamepowa too. Ja minna!”

Band Room and SupaGamepowa Updates!

“Konnichi waaaa minna! There’s lots going on! We’ve got two different ways to contribute for a page that we can publish on Saturday! Ranko-chan says it’s just like Saturday Morning Cartoons.”

“Commander Acey and Z-bot have been super-busy at SupaGamepowa too. They have two new shops. One is for the Nintendo Wii and the other one is called Animepowa!”

“Acey gots the best games too! There’s this one called Mario Kart that’s a driving game and I always win because I play the Koopa Troopa driver.”

“Cici-chan got her new character page too. Come see us in the Band Room where we got all the latest stuff. Bye!”