What's Happening - February 2024
Here-o of Legend
I live in San Francisco but somehow only found out that the Giants were in the Big Game TM from the nice woman cutting my hair, as she kindly explained to me why there wasn't anyone else getting a hair cut at 3 pm on a Sunday.
Welcome to my monthly newsletter, giving you updates on the things I’ve been lettering, reading and writing this month.
What am I lettering?
A lot! Since the last time I sent out this newsletter, I've picked up more lettering gigs for the first half of this year than I had for the entirety 2023. Which is good! But also a lot. I'm excited to be getting more work, and I'm excited to be showing my work off to bigger audiences.
But I'm also in a bit of a lettering hole, in that my life currently consists of going to my day job, going to class after school, and in between then lettering. I have enough hours in the day to get it all done, but only just. (One of the reasons this newsletter is shorter this month.) Good problems to have, though. And every lettering project I get means a few more dollars to through at my own projects that I want to see in the world.
Anyway! Speaking of lettering I've done, check out some of these projects currently on Kickstarter:
Sinner Takes All
Sinner Takes All by Damien Becton and Sunando C (and me!) is a genuinely amazing comic. But I'll let Damien explain what it's all about:
SINNER TAKES ALL is a supernatural crime thriller comic book mini-series and is for fans of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' KILL OR BE KILLED andFATALE, DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH, and BLACK MIRROR.
From the minds of the writer of Damien Becton (Blackbox Comics, Mad Cave Studios, Band of Bards) , and master artist, Sunando C (End After End, Stranger Things) comes this genre-bending crime comic that follows two desperate people forced to commit unforgivable sins to win their soul back.
Damien has let me stretch my lettering muscles here, making a lettering style that I think is both a ton of fun to do, really matches the extremely cool vibe of the artwork, and is also something pretty different from other comics I've lettered in the past. I think it's rad, and I think you should check it out. The book has 4 days of the writing of this newsletter, so do yourself (and me) a favor, and check it out.
Some other prelaunch comics:
Some fun lettering:
What am I reading?
All Against All
All Against All is a gorgeous book. Written by Alex Paknadel, with art by Caspar Wijngaard and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, it's a book with such a solid elevator pitch that it's easy to diminish what's cool about it to just that pitch. "What if Alien was about aliens being hunted by a single human?" or "What if The Predotor was a man, and he was hunting aliens?"
It's such a fun, smart high concept pitch that, even if the book sucked, it would probably still be compelling to me. Luckily, the book doesn't suck! It's actually quite good, especially in the art department. Wijngaard is maybe one of my favorite artist working. He is able to use color in a way that completely throws away any attempt at realism and is better for it. One of my favorite things is reading a comic that could only be a comic, and Wijngaard's art is something that could only work in a comic book.
I don't know if I've written about it here before, but Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou is one of the best letterers working. I don't always agree with his lettering choices, but they're always interesting. All Against All is a book whose lettering I adore. It's able to be stylish while still fitting into the art style of the book and being legible. Awesome work, from the entire creative team here. Worth checking out.
The Earthsea Cycle
I don't know if it will sell any books or convince anyone to read Hero of Legend, but one of the biggest fantasy influences on my writing of this series has been Ursula K. Le Guin's fantasy series. I've been re-reading them this past month, for a few reasons. One, to inspire myself as I'm working on future chapters of Hero of Legend. Two, they're really easy books to read, since they're written for children. But they're still really, really good. Le Guin writes some of my favorite prose. She's able to pack so much story and so much world into such small books.
In the past month, I've read A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore. They're all good, all in their own way. I've read these three and the fourth book, Tehanu, before, but never read the last two. The first three are all very good, but also very bought into the idea of Powerful, Important, Wizard Men in a way that I have a bit of a hard time with. Tehanu, written many years later, is a response to almost exactly this problem, but was also missing some of the stuff I really loved from the first three books the first time I read it.
Taking a small pause to read something else in between the first three books and my re-read of Tehanu, and we'll see if my opinion on it has changed at all since the last time I read it.
What am I writing?
Hero of Legend is here! It's published, out in the world, and 10s upon 10s of people have read it!! If you haven't read it yet, hey, check it out here.
I haven't been pushing the story as hard as I probably should, if I want to get new readers. But that's partially because I think the first episode, while good, is a little sleepy. I'm excited for episode 2, which'll be coming 3/5, which kicks off the main story. Here, look at this cool page from the upcoming episode:
Action! Excitement! Weird wolves! Bow and Arrow! Musings about fear! What more can you ask for? (Really, please, let me know if there's something else you want to ask for.)
With all that being said, genuinely really appreciate those of you that took the time to check out episode 1 and shared it around the internet. We really appreciate you joining us for this journey.
That's it?
Indeed. Bye!