The current storyline in The Protectorate was originally plotted at 5 issues… but there’s more story to tell, so now it’s up to 6. Issue 6 will be a bit different than the first 5, and will span the 5 months of that storyline, intersecting with those issues occasionally. I’m about 1/4 through the script now. There’s much less action, compared to the first five issues (issue 5 in particular). It’s much more character-driven, an dfocused on a single character who showed up briefly in issue 1. I was originally planning for it to be a one-shot, but I think it works better folded in with the rest of the storyline.
As there were initially only 5 issues in the first story arc, my plan was to release them as a trade once all five were completed. With the addition of a sixth issue, however, I’m going to modify that plan somewhat. I’m going to put issues 1 through 3 together as a single volume, and I’ll do the same for 4 through 6. I’m redrawing several pages from issue 1 that I was never completely happy with (and I’ve posted some before-and-after pictures on the Facebook page), and those new pages will be in the collected editions. Once the whole storyline is complete, I’ll also collect all six issues together into a single volume.