What's Happening - December 2025
As of December 1st, I am officially on paternity leave. Welcome, to Dadcember.
Welcome to my monthly newsletter, giving you updates on the things I’ve been lettering, reading and writing this month.
Newsletter Updates!
First off, there are some basic structural changes to how this newsletter is going to work going forward. First off, this newsletter is now multiple newsletters! What does that mean?
Well, if you're someone who is here for everything, monthly updates, episodes of Hero of Legend, the serialization of Into the Deep... Then basically nothing has changed.
But, if you're someone who only wants to get this newsletter or only wants to see the comics? Well, now you have the option to pick and choose. If you head to my website and log into your account, you can choose which of the three streams of newsletter you'd like to be subscribed to.
One final, small plug before we get into the actual newsletter: A reminder that for just 2 bucks a month (or $20 yearly!) you can get access to digital deluxe versions of every single comic I make. It costs you less money than backing the various Kickstarters and a higher percentage of that money goes straight to me.
If any of that sounds appealing, upgrade to a paid subscription today!
What am I writing?
I listen to a lot of podcasts. A lot of them about Comics! One of them about crowdfunding comics, specifically. If you're a creator making your own books, Comixlaunch is a great resource for staying up to date on trends and ideas on how to make your Kickstarter's better (though I should note, the only thing I'm recommending here is the free podcast. I haven't given them any of my money!) But over on Comixlaunch, the host Tyler James has a consistent refrain: Every time you launch, you learn.
After finishing the campaign for Hero of Legend #5, what have I learned? Well, I've learned not to do it again. Our campaign ended up finishing higher than I thought it was going to, but still well below my expectations for it. Why the dip between the last few Kickstarters and this one? Maybe it's the economy. Maybe it's that the Kickstarter team was on strike. Maybe it was running a campaign during November. Maybe everyone just hates me now. Who could say?
What I can say is: Hero of Legend #5 is going to be awesome once it's finished. Niccolò has been put together some designs for the next episode:
Who is this man? What's his whole deal? Well, we've got eight pages for Niccolò to draw until we finish up this chapter, and you'll get to find out then!
Below the Depths is also coming along really well. I'm excited for the Kickstarter for that book to launch in June. Leading up to that, I'm serializing Into the Deep monthly, the first part of which went out earlier this month. Felipe has been killing it on the recent pages. Here's a little sneak peak of one of the recently completed pages:
Last but not least, I'm really excited to have some colored pages from SCUM to show off. Maja Opacic, who I've had the joy of working with on a bunch of projects I've lettered, is joining us for this book as our colorist, and the page she has turned in so far are just gorgeous. Take a look at this:
Not sure when exactly this book will get to Kickstarter, but you should definitely sign up for the prelaunch page.
What am I lettering?
Like I said at the beginning of this newsletter, I'm currently on paternity leave from my day job teaching, which has been wonderful! It's been great spending all day with my son, and I've been loving the time we've had together. However. He currently, in order to take a nap longer than 45 minutes, needs to do that in my arms. This has lead to a new era in my lettering work, one where I am able to use a mouse, but cannot easily access a keyboard.
Adversity breeds innovation, though, and so I have entered a new era of my lettering work. No longer do I use keyboard shortcuts. Instead, all my short cuts have now been mapped to a single, left Joycon from my Nintendo Switch with the power of reWASD. If you've read a book lettered by me in the past, oh, two months, it was likely lettered this way.
It took a bit of getting used to, and I'm still a bit fast when I'm able to use my keyboard, but I think I might actually prefer the Joycon to my keyboard? It really narrows down the realm of shortcuts to the things I actually use, and the form factor has been pretty cool. At this point, I'm thinking I might even stick with it even when I'm not lettering with my beautiful baby boy as my constant co-creator.
Comics On Kickstarter
Live now:
Dragon Guardian Elodea #1
This is the first spin-off title in the Wild Wisps universe, which I'm lettering! Had a lot of fun making the logo, too. Was fun to come up with something that matched the Wild Wisps logo that I made while still being it's own, unique thing. Anyway, what is this book about? Well, glad you asked:
Dragon Guardian Elodea is the first issue of an epic fantasy series set in the world of Wild Wisps, a world humans share with incredible creatures known as Wisps. Wisps are magical monsters with elemental powers that can be either commonplace or god-like.
Dragon Guardian Elodea #1 is a double-sized comic featuring 42 pages of story, written by Pat Shand, illustrated by Katia Vecchio, lettered by Reed Hinckley-Barnes, and edited by Chris Halton & Shannon Lee. This is the first new title in the world of Pat Shand's Wild Wisps, and can be enjoyed by new readers and fans of the original series alike.
In prelaunch:
Below the Depths
SCUM #1
What am I reading?
Providence
Shelved by Genre, a podcast I'm sure I've mentioned a few times in this newsletter, has spent the past few months reading through old Alan Moore comics. And it turns out, that Alan Moore guy can really write! One book they did not read, but the conversations on that pod got me thinking of, is Providence. Drawn by Jacen Burrows, Colored by Juan Rodriguez and Lettered by Kurt Hathaway, Providence is Moore's take on Lovecraft, with all that entails. Mostly, it's about taking the stories of Lovecraft, which for all their racism and bigotry, are pretty sterile when it comes to any sort of sexuality, and adding that sexuality back into them.
It's an interesting book. A lot of people standing around, talking. Back-ups that are 5-10 pages of pure text written in handwritting that, sometimes, is genuinely hard to read. And then, every once in a while, some of the most genuinely horrific and terrifying stuff I've ever read in a comic.
The part I think is most interesting (and if you're reading along with Hero of Legend, you can probably guess why) is how the the back-ups compare with the actual comic itself. The structure of the book is this: You read an issue, which follows Robert Black, a reporter who is writing a book about weird happenings in 1919 New England. Some weird, Lovecraftian stuff happens to him. The issue ends. Then you get an excerpt from the character's journal, which cover roughly exactly that same period of time. Which means you basically get the story of each issue twice. Once, "objectively" through the comic. And once through Robert's eyes, in his words.
What this leads to is a really interesting effect, of what is absent from each of these two areas. How does Robert describe the events we see happen to him? How does he rationalize them away? And what is his daily life like, outside of and between the panels that make up the story's actual plot?
Definitely not a book for everyone, the content warnings for it have to be a mile long. And to fully understand the story, you also have to read Neonomicon, which is frankly, exploitative garbage. But it's a fun formal experiment and a really interesting book.
Anything else?
Nope! See you next year.