Truly Bogus

I'm way behind on the last Bill and Ted script, having two power outages in the last few days from the east coast storms certainly did not help the schedule any. As is usually the case, I wish I could get an extra page or two to wrap the series up a little nicer, but that's the way it goes. 

In the original outline pitch for the story I had sent Death, Joanna and Elizabeth home in issue #3, but as things developed I decided to have them stick around. The ladies get little enough to do in the franchise, and Death is too good a character to lose. But along with wanting a link to the third movie in the epilogue, that means losing pages to give more characters something to do to justify their being included. Everyone should contribute something, even if it's just helping influence or affect larger events to some degree. Or something like that. I'm afraid it was easier to give the daughters more agency than the princess moms, but I did the best I could. 

Apologies for the lack of recent posts, I'll be able to post regularly again once I complete the fourth Bill and Ted script. Roger Langridge just turned in the finished color art for #3 and it looks lovely. I'm really happy with the series, hopefully readers will like what we're up to. I have a feeling I'll be a bit sorry to see the characters go, again. 

An update while I'm here:

- I got an advance copy of the second BLACKWOOD collection, which will be out late next month. I believe the fourth issue is coming out only a week or two before the book ships. Pandemic days, everything's off, or just plain awful. 

- The MARVEL SNAPSHOTS collection with the Human Torch story Sarah and I wrote is scheduled for March of next year. If we have a next year, of course. 

- We finally got the best scans we're going to get of that big Marvel Villains piece, and as soon as Sarah can stitch the scans together to make one image, we should be able to upload a print-version for folks backing at that level. I still have to make some new PDFs and other prints to catch up, which I am aiming to do. And we can ship the Marvel Villains art to it's owner, finally.  Once I order the goddamned tube. This week. I am a wreck. 

- I was asked to do the cover art for a book on the third wave ska days, which, unfortunately, I couldn't fit into my schedule. Sadly, this is a book I was supposed to do an interview for several years back, but I couldn't fit that into my schedule, either. I might be sending some CD/45 art to the folks to use inside the book, so, I may be in there in a way after all. Unless I don't fit it into my stupid schedule.

- I have a bunch of "experiment" index cards done which I will scan so I can post them asap. I'll be selling more card drawings on my Instagram when I'm done with Mr Bill and Mr Ted. I should give a few cards away here again soon. 

- I had my first Zoom business-related meeting. It went well. 

- Ben Dewey is finishing up the colors for the last issue of BEASTS OF BURDEN: OCCUPIED TERRITORY. It's looking fantastic. I don't even remember if #3 has been lettered by Nate Piekos, yet. Time is meaningless, meaning is meaningless. This one is scheduled for next year, and it's a good one, seriously. 

- Realized I'm sort of unemployed after I finish the Bill and Ted book. Which will be good for a week or two, I can catch up on Patreon stuff, commissions, and sleep. I still have a few pages to write for an online gig, but that will wrap up quick. I don't know if the Beasts of Burden scripts I was about to write before the Covid freeze kicked in will be good to go or not. The Bill and Ted license/project fell into place at the right time, but I have no idea if there will be something to take its place on my work schedule. I don't have any cover work for the first time in a while, with the series over and two variants in the can. Gonna have to go fishing. Fishing and wishing. We'll see if that business-related thingie happens.

- I actually spent a little money on myself recently. I'm stuck where I am and have no car and am really unhappy, so I bought a few things for myself to feel better. And they helped! Like it says in the old "Life's Great Rewards" strips, "Small things stave off suicide". I bought my second Arkham House book, Half in Shadow by Mary Elizabeth Counselman, collecting her Weird Tales stories (or at least some of them). It was still sealed, which was nifty. And I splurged some index card art money on a book I have wanted for many years, The Fellow Travelers by Sheila Hodgson. Hodgson wrote a series of radio plays for the BBC that were initially based on unused story notes by M.R. James. I love these plays, as well as the ones she wrote after running out of story germs, all of them feature James as a cranky character in them, and are a lot of fun. She later turned (all or most of) the radio plays into prose stories,  a few of them were anthologized in The Year's Best Horror when Karl Edward Wagner was editing the series. There are a few other stories in the book, as well, and a nice little introduction essay. I still have to track down a few radio plays Hodgson adapted from Algernon Blackwood stories. I also picked up Spider pulp reprint I didn't have, under $10, less than sticker price. Insane fun. Unfortunately, the publisher that picked up where Girasol left off dropped The Spider, so, I'm not far from collecting the rest of those modern reprints. I can't afford actual pulps, so I hope some other nostalgia-minded individual who likes to lose money tries to do some more reprints. I think The Spider is far more entertaining than The Shadow or Doc Savage, but those are the Batman and Superman of the pulps that everyone supports. At least the double-pulp series threw a few dozen stories out there to read. I bet there's digital means to getting them, but reading on a screen kills my head, and I don't have a kindle-style reader right now (I actually grew to like using them a lot, especially the ability to enlarge the text for aging eyes, and best of all, the dictionary. Also, my bad back/neck/shoulder/hand makes reading books tough for me a lot of the time, which absolutely sucks, but oh, well, my fault for bad posture and stupid behavior). This bit wasn't terribly exciting Patreon posting. Sorry.

In closing, I hate August in the best of circumstances, and these are far from the best for the entire fucking world. Holy shit, folks. Hang tight. 

Back to work. Yes way, no way, every night, almost every day.