What's Happening - September 2024
September! This month has felt like getting hit by a truck!
Welcome to my monthly newsletter, giving you updates on the things I’ve been lettering, reading and writing this month.
What am I lettering?
I was doing some math earlier today and realized that, as of about the first week of June this year, I had already passed my total lettered pages from 2023. As of this month, I've now double that number.
I'm of two minds about the amount of lettering I've been able to do. One, it's awesome I'm getting so much lettering work. My first direct market lettering work was announced at the end of last month, and that's hopefully the first of many. I've also been doing a ton of lettering for Pat Shand and Space Between Entertainment, which means (maybe even more than the book in comic shops) my lettering work has gotten in front of more eyes than ever before.
On the other hand, I also still have a full time job as a Special Education teacher, am in the final semester of getting my masters and credential, and took over as department head for special education at the middle school I worked at for this year. A lot of times it feels like there simply aren't enough hours in the day. Or that there are exactly enough hours in the day as long as I don't do anything but work at my day job, go to school and make comics.
If you're wondering why I seem particularly reflective in September of all months, I'm going to be turning 29 at the end of this month.
I'm sure I've talked about this in my newsletters before, but one of the ways I structure my comics making is that I make comics to make comics. Almost all the money I make off of lettering ends up being put back into making my own comics. The problem is, I'm so busy right now that, even though my incoming comic creating money has doubled, I simply don't have time to get started on any other comic projects. I'm hoping that'll change once I'm finished with my masters, but if not... I'm going to need to do some thinking and prioritization about what is really important.
Anyway, it's funny. All that talk about the amount of stuff I've been doing, and there aren't actually any Kickstarters I'm working on to actively shout out this month. Funny how that timing works out some times!
Synap
Now, I don't have any active Kickstarter's to promote. But get this. Did you know that, outside of Kickstarter, there are these shops that only sell comic books. And this book, Synap, is going to be in those shops. Pretty cool, in my opinion. Here's a little blurb about it:
In the year 2030, a family-run private defense company, Synap, secretly puts together the pieces of a mysterious giant robot while training psychically gifted individuals to one day control it. However, with the startling increase in UFO sightings, the family finds their time is running out to assemble the ancient machine.
The book isn't out until November, but let your local comic book store know you want a copy so that I get to keep making books that show up on their shelves.
Some other prelaunch comics:
Some fun lettering:
What am I reading?
Hunter x Hunter
With everything that I've had going on this month, I needed something to read that I could just let wash over me, and Hunter x Hunter has been great for that. I'm most of the way through the Yorknew City arc, which I've really been enjoying. Like I said, this has really been a head empty reading experience for me, in the best way possible. Yoshihiro Togashi draws some excellent weirdos having some extremely weird fights.
3W3M: Maps
This one is a project I have slightly more mixed feelings about. Three Worlds Three Moons (3W3M) is a collaborative storytelling/worldbuilding project by Johnathan Hickman, Mike Huddleston, and Mike Del Mundo. Just based on the names involved, this is a project I've had a lot of interest in from the beginning. I love Hickman's clockwork worlds and this project has presented the opportunity to watch Hickman, Huddleston, Del Mundo and their other collaborators put together one of these worlds in real time. The project takes the form of a Substack newsletter with one physical volume sent out to annual subscribers yearly(ish).
Maps, the book I'm talking about in particular, is the second of the Sourcebooks that they've put together for this project. And this book, along with the previous sourcebook Systems, really does feel like an RPG sourcebook without the RPG attached to it. Which makes for an interesting reading experiment.
Anyone who has been involved in enough creative spaces knows the type of writer who has put together an entire wiki for their world but never gets around to actually telling any stories in it. 3W3M feels like one of those projects if it was given the budget and powers of three of the greatest working comic creators. Unfortunately, like your friend that has a 100 page document about social relations but still hasn't put together a first draft of their book, the current state of 3W3M leaves me wondering when we'll get to the actual story.
Maps includes a number of cool short comics set in this world, and a ton of fun details about the world. But frankly, there's a reason I books with a narrative rather than just picking up RPG sourcebooks. There are a few ongoing comic projects that are being published by the 3W3M's team, but as someone that's been following this project for 2 years, I'm hoping they can start using all this worldbuilding for some actual storytelling soon.
What am I writing?
There are a lot of things I've wanted to do before I turned 30. Finishing Into the Deep and getting Hero of Legend up and running (with our second Kickstarter coming right at the beginning of October) has meant year 28 has had me hit a number of those goals.
But there are other things I'm hoping I can get running before I hit 30. Before this time next year, I'm hoping I can get a second ongoing comic running as part of this newsletter. I want to get the next volume of Into the Deep up and running and have a good chunk of it complete by this time next year. I want to try and do my first convention, especially now that I have some stuff to show off there (speaking of which, if anyone has any recommendations for cons in the SF Bay Area that are worth attending, please let me know!).
I also know, though, that it's silly to try and put all that weight on one year. Who cares if I don't get some of this stuff moving until I'm in my 3rd decade? Literally no one, except maybe me.
But one of my big goals, which all of you can help me out with, is making sure you're signed up to be notified for Hero of Legend #2 once it goes live. And also backing it! The book is coming October 1st, and I think this second issue is even better than the first. Speaking of which, last thing for this month, check out our amazing main cover that Niccolò has put together:
Got anything else?
Nope! Bye.