My buddy Jane Irwin, best-known for the two Vogelein graphic novels about a mechanical fairy, launched Clockwork Game: The Illustrious Career of a Chess-Playing Automaton in March 2008. It’s really a graphic novel, serialized online with a page every Thursday.

However, a year later, she reconsidered, first announcing the strip’s ending, then making it a hiatus. Now, the wait is over! The strip is back.

Jane will be posting multiple pages until she’s caught back up to when the comic went on break, at which point she’ll return to a page-a-week update schedule. (She estimates that’ll be about three months from now.) If you read it before, you may want to reread, because she’s made some edits and additions, including the new six-page prologue that she’s started with.

I’ve taken this nifty elephant from page 2, setting the stage for the story, since it turns out to be a clever mechanical clock.