Happy New Year 2025! Yuka and Beyond.

Hello My Friends,

I want to thank you all for being my most loyal supporters. Over the past week, I've been dealing with severe vertigo and dental work, a reminder of the toll my past health battles took. But this new lease on life brings me joy, and despite some lingering costs, I’m determined to outpace them this year as we head into 2025.

The hardest part of all this is saying goodbye to Yuka. I know many of you advised against taking her back, and looking back, I see the wisdom in that. Part of me is still angry at how she left, intentionally damaging everything we had built together. It felt like a grenade thrown out of frustration.

I know she feels differently but I never imposed unreasonable deadlines on her, and expecting work to be done on time isn’t unreasonable. “When you get it” or “This is good enough” are not things you say to your editor, especially not out of anger. Maybe dismissing her responses made things worse, but what's done is done.

When she left with her went a treasured part of my life. I gave her until New Year's to reconsider, I'd hoped she'd get past all the anger and find it in herself to forgive me so we could give it one last shot, but I haven’t heard from her since. Heck, I still don’t know if she even wants comp-copies of the books she worked on, or how to reach her.

So, it's over.

But KAKASHI will continue. I was proud of her work on KMD2, and I had hoped she would return before the final deadline. I would have looked foolish, but I would have put my ego aside for her if it meant the readers got a continuation of this amazing series. Now, I’m left to find a new artist. The search has begun, and I have several talented applicants in mind.

If this story is ever told, I hope people remember how much I truly cared for Yuka, how proud I was of her, and how much I was willing to sacrifice for her growth. WI and KMD were a labor of love, and it’s hard to continue without her.

But continue I must.

2025 will be a new beginning for Conquest Comics. I’ve learned from my mistakes, and TOTAL CONQUEST (now available on IndieGOGO) will bring a close to all the old work from Conquest Comics.

Going forward, the future will bring greater art and consistency.

YUKA -- if you ever see this. Despite everything, I always believed in you, I’ll cherish the good times, and I’ll always be proud of you. Thank you for spending time with me following Ele's birth while I was isolated at home during Covid. Thank you for working as hard as you did. Thank you for being my friend when everyone else stabbed me in the back. Thank you for sticking by me even when you hated me for as long as you did because you knew I was sick. And I'm sorry if anything I did ever hurt you or pushed you too hard. I only ever pushed you because I could see genuine greatness in you.
  I'll always remember you as the girl shouting "LEEM!" from across the studio while rushing to show me your art. I told you how this would end from the start, but you never did get around to watching episode 13 of THE MAXX.
  Wheever you are now, I hope you're stronger and you're finally happy. Goodbye.

~Leem