What's Happening - June 2024

What am I writing?

Mostly, honestly? Tweets, posts, letters, missives, all about how Hero of Legend is on Kickstarter. What's that? Hero of Legend is on Kickstarter? Crazy. I can't believe that Hero of Legend is on Kickstarter.

Jokes aside, Hero of Legend is in fact, on Kickstarter! And hey, you've got just about 3 more days to back as this is hitting your inbox.

Since my last email out to you all, there have been a couple of cool things added to the campaign. First, there's our cover by Erica D'Urso (Inferno Girl Red). Erica is actually Niccolo's partner, and when she offered to make this cover for us, I couldn't have been more excited. I just love how it turned out. I think the color scheme is just gorgeous.

Next, we've got an awesome print by Sam Majkrzak, which was just recently unlocked as a stretch goal. Sam is one of my oldest comic creating friends and I couldn't have been more excited when he reached out to ask if he could draw something for this campaign. His drawing of the giant from Chapter 1 is just awesome. I love the grotesque sense of scale Sam has brought to this piece. Check it out:

This print is going out to everyone who backs at a physical level for this campaign!

This is my second Kickstarter campaign and partially as a response to my first, I decided to keep this one pretty short. 18 days, in and out. I did it to try and cut down on the dead time in the middle of the campaign. With Into the Deep, there was a two week period where we inched upward, only gaining around 10 new backers. I figured I would save myself the stress and try to keep things a little bit shorter and more focused this go around.

Now, was that a good decision? I have no idea. I'll do more of a break down on how things ended up going in my newsletter next month. But I think that I maybe I went a bit too short this time. Hey, live and (hopefully) learn.

Something about how my brain is wired makes it really hard for me to do any other writing while I have a Kickstarter campaign going. I was able to finish the script for Hero of Legend - Chapter 3, and start work on Chapter 4. The first episode of Chapter 2 is going to be coming in 2 weeks, and I think you're really going to enjoy it.

Anyway, if you're subscribe to this newsletter, you've probably seen me shouting about the Kickstarter basically non-stop. But this is going to be my last time directly talking about it here before we hit the end of our campaign. So... Please back it? I love making Hero of Legend. And the better this Kickstarter does, the closer I get to being able to continue making it sustainably.

What am I lettering?

Lots of things! Due to the whims of fate (and the end of the school year being a terrible time for me to try and get any non-day job work done) a lot of the lettering projects I had meant to do in May ended up being pushed off until June. Luckily, I do actually have plenty of time to work on lettering during the month of June!

My biggest lettering update is probably that I've decided it's finally time to buy myself a new computer. The laptop I do all my lettering on is about 6 years old at this point. We haven't quite gotten to this point, but the sounds that my laptop makes when trying to export a print resolution PDF are... not great. And neither is the fact that, if that print resolution pdf is longer than 20 pages, that process can take about, oh, 30 minutes to an hour? Means I've played a lot of Elden Ring over the last month waiting for things to export, but I'd love to maybe have a little bit less Elden Ring playing time during the periods I'm actively trying to get work done.

Anyway, there are also a couple of cool books I'm attached to currently on Kickstarter. So give them a look:

Zeta Galaxy Outlaws #1

This is a book I'm super excited about. Zeta Galaxy Outlaws comes from the amazing Kenneth Laster. Kenneth is an awesome artist and storyteller, and this book is an absolutely blast. Here's the synopsis:

ZETA GALAXY OUTLAWS combines the sharp satire of Sorry to Bother You with the space western genre fusion of Cowboy Bebop. Writer/Artist Kenneth Laster (Try Not To Die, Champions of the Wolf) brings you this dynamic 24-page first issue that opens the door to a galaxy-spanning story about Black excellence, commodification of identity, and finding another way to live. 

It's a fun, funny, action packed sci-fi story. I can't say enough good things about Kenneth's art. His work doesn't look like anyone else, and the way he uses color especially is just fantastic. So please, take a minute and check it out.

Some other prelaunch comics:

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Some fun lettering:

What am I reading?

I didn't include a "what am I reading" last month, so I've actually read a ton of stuff since the last time I wrote one of these. I'm trying not to have this newsletter end up over 3000 words, so I'm only going to talk about three of them.

Death of Comics Bookcase, Vol. 1

Comics Bookcase used to be a comics blog run by Zack Quaintance. It was a really good one! Now it's an anthology of comics all written by Zack Quaintance. And they're all really good too!

I back a decent amount of books on Kickstarter, and there is, frankly, a level of craft proficiency that is missing from a lot of them. As someone making books independently, I totally understand why. Without the structures of a publisher to (hopefully) make sure everything comes together, it can be easy to book out a book that ends up feeling a bit... messy. And while I feel totally comfortable digging into what doesn't work about a messy book that's been put out through traditional means, I think it's a bit mean to do the same for a self-published book. I know, personally, hope much work people are putting into these books. But I also don't feel comfortable lying about someone's book just to be nice. So unless a self-published book is really, genuinely good, I tend to keep my opinions to myself.

This is a long preamble to say, there's a reason I'm talking about Death of Comics Bookcase. It's because it's actually really good! There are six main stories in the book, which I'm not going to all of them down here, but the range of genres and stories present in this anthology are great. Some are one and done, some are part of a longer narrative. They're all really fun, and all play to the strengths of the artist drawing each story. I'm hoping that some of these stories either spin off into their own books or that we get another anthology, because this one was a blast.

Monica

Remember in the last section, where I talked about how I only try to say nice things about self-published books? Well hey, Monica is from creator Daniel Clowes published by Fantagraphics.

I like to think I'm the kind of person who is willing to, mostly, meet a book halfway. Maybe even more than halfway. But when it feels like it's less a 50/50 split, and somewhere closer to 30/70, they start to lose me.

I'm not going to write too much about Monica, because I just don't think there's a ton to say about it. There are some neat formal things being done, but none of that is able to elevate what is, to me, a pretty boring story.

I like a formal experiment. I like a deep character study. I like a book that is, fundamentally, just weird. Monica is technically all of these things, but just didn't have anything that made it interesting enough for me to feel like it was worth spending the time to dig into it.

Overall, it's a book that I think is just fine. Which is fine! But not what I expected, based on all the praise. If you haven't read it, look up the endpapers. Those are, genuinely, pretty cool.

Lights in the Sky

Lights in the Sky is a paranormal mystery following a washed-up radio host who focuses on conspiracies who is abducted by mother who believes her child was stolen by aliens. It's a great book. Winston Gambro, the sole creator of this comic, does an amazing job pacing this story. The main character Ray is an asshole in just the most perfect way. The art is gorgeous, and the whole book is drawn in a scratchy, textured style that really lends itself to the story that Gambro is telling. I don't have a ton else to dig into, except that I think it's an exception book and really worth checking out.

Nothing else?

Nope. See ya!