Paladins' Haven

Paladins' Haven is a webcomic by Alexandra Herakai. After a slightly slower start, it was running on a Monday through Friday daily update schedule from mid-May 2005 until the conclusion of the first storyline in the beginning of January 2006. It returned for a two-week interlude storyline in June 2006, and has been inactive since.

In early December of 2008, the artist stated her plans for bringing the comic back in 2009, promising readers that the second storyline would start updating some time during that year. This was confirmed with a post ot the comic's LiveJournal community on October 19th, setting the start date for the new storyline some time between December 30th and January 2nd 2010, depending on what update frequency the readers of the community desired.

History
The comic originally started in year 2000 on a personal webpage, but soon moved to KeenSpace and continued to update there until it went on an extended hiatus in 2002 after some time of sporadic rather than regular updates. These first comics were organized into rough storylines by themes more than plot, and especially the first few such storylines contained a lot of slapstick humor. The author herself also appeared in the comic a few times. Most of these strips were computer-colored, though a few were done in colored pencil, watercolor pencil, marker, or some other traditional media.

The premise of Paladins' Haven was that a secret, magical retirement community for paladins was suddenly struck by a curse which changed the form of the inhabitants. Most of them were turned into furries of some variety, but there were exceptions, especially among the residents who already had some kind of animal form. For instance, a minor God suddenly found himself female, and Colone Patchwork, already a pegasus, was turned into a My Little Pony.

This run of the comic also included cameos of characters from other webcomics, including (among others) Sabrina Online, The Class Menagerie, The Changing Workplace and Unnatural But True.

There was a brief adult-rated spinoff off the comic by the original author, called Lives and Loves in Haven, but it was never restored after the free webspace it was hosted on turned into pay-space.

Present
In the later half of 2004, Alexandra decided to take down the entire old archive and restart the comic with a more serious tone. This new version premiered on January 1st 2005 and the first storyline takes place one to two years prior to where the comic's previous incarnation started out. As a result, the comic features considerably fewer furry characters. Some furred faces are still recognizeable from the first incarnation, including Colone Patchwork.

There were several reasons behind this overhaul. Firstly, the artist felt that her abilities had grown so much in the past four years, the strips would clash with her current skill level. Secondly, the silly slapstick that was so characteristic for the first few storylines detracted from the seriousness of the story she felt she wanted to tell. Thirdly, she felt it would be a lot easier to restart the comic and refrain from procastinating if it was done from scratch with all-new material.

The first storyline of the comic, Intervention at White Sow, was colored by hand using Copic Sketch markers, marking a significant difference in look compared to the earlier incarnation. This version of the story is also a lot more character-driven than the original work.

In connection to the comic's December 2009 return from an extended hiatus, it was migrated from Comic Genesis to a private WordPress-based website.