Voyager (Patreon)

My extended family takes me all over the planet. It's not meant to come across as bragging and apologies if it comes across as that. Everyone's getting older and I just want to see everyone as much as possible while I still can.

The travel and accommodation were as budget as possible but I still know I'm very privileged and as I'll explain one day soon, that actually does in a roundabout fashion help keep this webcomic afloat - for many years now at that!

I also like mentioning all the different places in the world new Exiern-related pages have been posted from, it's remarkable what technology makes possible these days!

Along those lines and along the way this year, I thought why not use the opportunity to cross paths with a few of our webcomic associates and here's a couple of trips that were successful and one on the to-do list.

Firstly, a brief shining moment, there was a direct connection between Reykjavik, Iceland and Hamilton, Canada courtesy of the Icelandic budget carrier Play (home of Electric Gecko and creator of Puck plus a rocking Transformers collection!) which I knew I had to do and I did back in January 2025! You might have seen some mentions of the trip here and here!

I did actually go on to transit through Toronto, stop in New York to visit a friend and then more family before making it to Vancouver. Unfortunately, Marshall Reeves of Yesterday Bound and the yearly Exiern Halloween Special for almost a decade now has since relocated to a few hours away and that was just a bit too far to make it this time with the time I had.

September 2025 after I saw my parents in Sri Lanka me seeing more family in Singapore as well as some of the people I work with before we headed to the Philippines for a work conference as well as met the rest who went directly from Australia.

That's where I used the opportunity to finally meet our very first professional artist who remade Drowemos's original pages from the very beginning and then continued the story for many years afterwords, Studio Katsumi (then Studio Boom). They still do one of the Exiern: Dark Reflections stories (Dark Reflections: Chaos) and they've come back more than once to help keep the weekly update schedule afloat. They really are the lynchpin of everything here, we help them financially with our contributions and they very much help us with our story.

Finally, there's Oglaf (very NSFW) who over time and long after following them on Patreon, I discovered that not only are they Australian, they're practically my neighbours! So, of course that one being the journey that requires no planes, trains or automobiles and just a short walk is the one that hasn't happened yet. We may well have been in the same shops and cinemas and not even known it!

We're working on it!

I guess the point of this whole post was highlight what I have done but look at this seemingly much easier task that I haven't done yet. Much like the story of keeping this webcomic running and even my life in general, I suppose!

On the subject of people I haven't met yet and could also pass on the street without realising it's them, this series of maps very kindly made by you guessed it, Sean Harrington of Spying With Lana!

(Maybe 2030 once I can work out where he is!)

We now close to the strains of Jasper Byrne's Voyager.