The First Right Proper SQUIDVERSE Update Thingy.
About a bunch of stuff really.
First off, if you’re receiving this & actually don’t want it, I’m so sorry & there should be an unsubscribe button below! Kill me with fire, nuke me from orbit, I say. With my profuse apologies.
But otherwise, uh, hello.
I’ll try and do these at least once a month.
(This one is horrendously long, so just skip to ORIGINAL HATE if you want something vaguely interesting & wish to save yourself from most of my blather. )
I’ll try and update you folks on anything interesting, the status of things, and most importantly, how many appendages my imaginary assistant Nigel still has. He has a habit of losing far, far too many. His nickname is already “stumpy”.
It’s been a while for many of you. ( and for some, maybe a week or two since you signed up, for which you have my thanks! )
I merged my old mailing list into the free Substack platform instead, since apparently, I need a degree in computer science for my moron brain to figure out how to use MailChimp, which actually bought out my older service provider.
I’ve been debating about when to do my first proper update, & with so much going on & so much travel & shows, I’ve been constantly on the back foot far more than I’d like.
But with the clouds, *almost* parting and some clearer skies ahead, figured now is as good a time as any to start.
HE-BROS:
So.
Some quick logistics stuff.
If you were gracious and magnificent enough to be a member of the SQUID ARMY ( my little Patreon fan club thing where I make and show almost everything I do these days ) or grabbed a HE-BROS art book ( Where I drew/painted all my favourite MOTU characters and then some. ) or wax-sealed pack off my online store, they’ve finally been going out in batches. Another one today/tomorrow. Sorry for the holdup! Not least because I had to wait til I knew what my new address would be & when I’d actually be moving into my new home, which happened all rather quickly... & then far too slowly....so I could even take delivery of my new books. Moving interstate sucks. Especially if you have a major deadline to hit as soon as you’ve vaguely got the new studio room up and running!
SUPERMAN/BATMAN THE AUTHORITY:
Oh yeah, that Major Deadline thing. That’d be for DC comics for their SUPERMAN/BATMAN AND THE AUTHORITY SPECIAL #1 which just so happens to be out in stores this Tuesday... I think? Either way, I got to draw superman for the first ( and probably only time, if the powers that be have any good sense, ) but it was a lot of fun and all thanks go to Phillip Kennedy Johnson who knew exactly what I liked to draw. I’ve never really done flat-out superheroes before, but their energy power thingies are fun…
But anyway, that’s all done, & will be the first thing I have in actual stores for quite a while. BUT... it’s about time I raised my ugly head in general, which is why this first proper update took so damn long...
A BUNCH OF BLATHER ABOUT SOME BIG THINGS:
So if you don’t know, I’ve been eeking out a vague existence for the last few years, having blown most of my personal finances on trying to get a Kickstarter, that was technically in my name... but the money actually went to a bank account controlled by a little company I was part of, with one business partner who had a habit of spending company money like a personal slush fund, & promptly resigning once the cupboard was bare. & me, the trusting fool assuming grownups were In charge & had enough to see the project through. Well, I got it almost fulfilled... and then promptly collapsed in a heap mentally & physically once I realized I still had to figure out a way to eat & keep a roof over my head, with a few more than 100 backers left to go, & me not having a spare $17,000 handy since then. ( yup, that’s roughly how much is outstanding, I shudder to think how many tens of thousands I personally already spent getting the bulk of it all done )
Suffice to say, I’ve been prone to anxiety attacks & the burden of getting that monkey finally off my back, after a couple of fits and starts already. So it’s time to figure out ways to actually get comics into the world, that I’ve already been making, predominantly for the Squid Army in fancy editions, & make things right for the last 100 odd folks who never got books. ( plus the follow-up one which helped a little until I collapsed, being a few folks on BLOODSONGS volume 1 )
But I’m a lot stronger these days & it’s time to go back and grapple with it. & finally collect a *lot* of material from projects I’ve been working on since. ( & maybe even do a second printing of DAGON *my* way, & recoup a little money off it, instead of it costing me upwards of $70,000. ) Because comics is what I do, & the way I landed in the mess in the first place. ( besides trusting a sociopath for far too long…or at all? )
So, operation payback shall begin!
ORIGINAL HATE:
Thus... sometime soon this November, I’ll start some promo for my first real horror-type original work since 30 Days of Night, with ORIGINAL HATE. Hardcover. 120 odd pages ( I forget, I’ll have to count them again! ) and comic-sized. Some of you will already know what it’s about. For those that don’t... more soon! ( although if you like people being ripped apart, evil billionaires & other species of humans, it’s hopefully something you’ll dig. ) And yes, that’s a sample book I already had printed. Because I can do that. I can, in theory, even do singular variant covers, for a pricey amount, a one off, legit printed cover edition of 1. ( So I might actually offer that as a thing. )
Yeah, I missed the perfect October/Halloween for it, I know, but so much travel & waiting on a damn paycheck to set everything up properly... sigh. November isn’t the greatest month to take a stab at crowdfunding, but I figure getting back into the game & delivering is just as important. With a portion of any profits going to slowly paying back problems of the past while still trying to keep the lights on.
I have my supply chain all worked out ( they’ve yet to tell me they’ve run out of paper & are US based, so no more problems with overseas printing in far off Asia, waiting months on a boat & their middlemen, who nearly destroyed my sanity several times ) aaand some folks to even help me fulfill when the time comes. I’ve done everything wrong *and* right with crowdfunding already, so it’s going to be a weird experiment doing it again now that the rest of the comic world thinks they’ve discovered it all and mainstreamed it. ( Which is quite nice, even if there’s a lot more competition. )
Phew.
I’ll shutup now.
There’ll be plenty more to yap about on the bunch of other projects I’m actually still doing or about to start soon as well, but I’ll save that for the next one of these.
Hail squid, And thanks for bearing with me! ( And do you mind the odd update when I have things going on? )
-B
San Diego October 2021
Appreciate your hard work. :) sample book looks great.
I am super excited for the Original Hate book. Bummer about the dumb-bags, but glad you are coming out the other end.