What Would You Like To See On The Patreon?

I've been doing this for a year now, and hopefully it's obvious that I appreciate everyone here, and everyone who has been with me for some time, if not from the beginning. Your support has meant a lot to me, not only financially, but emotionally and has also meant a lot to my family being more secure than a year ago. Thanks for that.

That being said, please remember that there are no hard feelings if and when anyone feels the need to stop backing this Patreon. If you don't enjoy the posts, if the delays in getting the PDFs and prints are frustrating, or if you're simply not in a position to support the site, please don't hesitate to scale back or pull the plug. I'm still not in a position to back Patreons at this point, so, I understand completely. Although I am happy to have backed my first Kickstarter, that being Jay Stephens' newest comic book which was successfully funded. A small show of support, but something I hope to be able to do more often in the future.

Regarding the PDF's for $5 backers, I have a template that Sarah made for me so I don't have to rely on her schedule to get those done. I recently posted two on my own, and no one's computer exploded. My technical know-not-how definitely holds me back here, and elsewhere, I am slowly trying to learn some things, but one area I am still fairly useless in is Photoshop/images. I cannot edit or "fix" or stitch things or clean them up well, if at all. I am still waiting for Sarah to finish the Marvel Villains print, which is now really late as far as when I first announced it. her schedule is pretty full with homeschooling, taking care of house stuff and navigating our situation here. Hopefully, soon. And hopefully I'll be able to start handling more tasks like that as I try to be more responsible and capable in handling more aspects of my work. Also, I don't think I'm going to be drawing anything as large as that Marvel piece anytime soon. Or ever again. 

I still plan to round off the October Experiment posts and continue with the panels and possibly start moving things closer together there to start forming a plot or whatever the heck's going on there. I would like to do more little four-panel comics, and finally get to some new Fun Strips that are sitting unfinished. The same goes for some nearly completed one-page comics. 

I was hoping to get more of those kinds of things done for here this past year. I wasn't expecting to be as busy as we were, between the Marvels Snapshots gig and then the Bill and Ted miniseries, my friend Brian Marshall hiring me for some writing work, and there's also an ongoing situation that's been eating up our time but hasn't yet turned into an actual project.  And probably won't, but the hours were spent, anyway.  

I expected to have more new art to show, but I've been doing a lot of writing between Blackwood, Beasts of Burden and the other stuff I mentioned. It's not always easy for me to figure out a decent "image-based" post or process post that involves art when most of the art is filed away or I've posted it before on social media or whatever. So I'm trying to see what I can do to get some ideas for you, and one thing that never hurts is to ask what you might want to see posted here. 

I do want to finally get the livestream drawing stuff, the hangouts, up and running. I feel more comfortable with that after doing some Zoom interviews and some video stuff for the podcast during the pandemic. And with my therapy sessions, to be honest, they've been going really well and have helped my confidence some. I think. I hope! I hope a lot these days, it's better than not hoping, I guess. And today was certainly hopeful. Actually, it's past midnight as I type this, so yesterday was the hopeful day. Today's still hopeful, but it's the hangover day for a lot of folks, not the jumping up and down crazy. Hopefully there's more of those coming as things are finalized in this insane election. There's that hope thing, again.

I also need to edit down some more of my comics industry/process/advice notes for the $3 and up backers, the problem with those is that they take a lot of work because they were for class talks and weren't written to be read by human beings. 

Anyway. My workload is going into a weird phase that will leave my schedule a little more flexible for at least a couple of months. I have no plans to work on page rate/published funnybooks for the time being to concentrate on private commissions and art sales for a while. There's two reasons for this -- I'm actually making as much if not more with commissions/art than I do sweating plots and dialog, and on top of that, publishers seem to be using the pandemic as a reason -- or excuse -- to cut budgets on projects. 

And I'm just not in the mood to fight to prove myself worthy of rates that are already out of date. The rates they're offering perfectly good mid-carders like myself are pretty sad, and the idea of working for even less than that, or cutting the art budget, that's just too depressing. And too much work for too little. For good or bad, I can't spit out four to seven "scripts" a month like some folks do. I don't put all the heavy lifting on artists and just let them co-plot for no extra money, I don't write "Panel Two: They fight. Make it look good".  I can't. I could stress it less, I know, I'm trying, but that's connected to a lot of emotional issues still being worked on. I write full-script, and I write fairly slowly because I worry (too much) about my stories. So, I'm never going to be rich in the pulp business, I know that, I have know that for a while. 

The thing is, the time it takes me to write a few pages of Blackwood, or even Beasts of Burden, I make that selling a few index card drawings, which are more fun and less stressful. If royalties were coming in, that would make a difference, but they're a pittance. Sales are not there, readership is not there, we lost a lot of momentum with the Beasts of Burden schedule falling off the rails for all that time. Even with two collections in a year, the needle isn't moving. Neither book has made the money back so far. I can't sit and wait. It's easier to draw some pictures for a while, especially after Covid 19 has flipped so many tables in the industry. My drawing hand will blow up, but it will never hurt as much as not being able to pay the bills does. 

 I figure I'll be doing this for a few months and it will wind down and I'll have to find regular work and run around in the wheel some more. For all I know I could get an e-mail tomorrow with a new Bill and Ted series (young Thea and Billie, I'd love that, tbh) or some variant covers, or fall into something in January or whatever. Or get hit by a drone. But it'll also give me a chance to take a mental break, enjoy drawing a little, look through my project notes, talk to a few people about some potential plans. And clean up my studio. And do some dumb comics for you folks. It's not like I can go anywhere. 

So. My commissions list is super-full, which is nice. I have a few 2019 pieces to finish and then I'm on the new batch for next year, and we'll see how that goes. I'm selling index card drawings on Instagram. I don't freak out most nights, I bought an Arkham House book (Ramsey Campbell, on the cheap) and a new pillow and I bought extra art supplies I needed, and as silly as it may sound, that stuff makes me happy. I'm a cheap date, always have been. So I'm just going to rely on myself for a little while, as well as my readers, clients and backers who are in a position to support our work here at the House of Fun. 

Now: I have a foreword to finish for a friend's project (it's sooo hard to write nice things, it's just soooo much easier picking something apart), and a few pages for another friend's project that I'm actually getting paid to write. After that, I'm drawing a lot of Milks and Cheeses, a few Bills and Teds, a Death or two, a recreation of my Deadline cover featuring Fugazi, a Devil Puppet, and some more Milks and Cheeses. And a few things for myself. I'll be posting process on those as they move forward. 

Maybe I'll learn how do do a few extra things in Photoshop along the way.

Thank you for being here, and thank those of you who have ordered a pin-up. They'll be worth the wait, because I overcompensate.

P.S. No, really, what would you like to see on the Patreon? 

P.P.S. Images above and below, someone got crafty at a Wegman's several years ago, and someone took pictures and sent them to me. SO cool.