Thank You, New Patrons! Welcome to A House of Fun Update (Patreon)

We've had a number of new backers in the past couple of weeks and I just wanted to say thanks for joining us here. And thanks to everyone who has stayed for the bumpy ride these past few months.

A few things that are going on here -

Out of the blue, comp copies of BLACKWOOD: THE MOURNING AFTER #3 showed up on the doorstep yesterday. I checked in with editor Daniel Chabon, and while there's some books shipping out slowly from Diamond starting May 20th, Blackwood #3 doesn't have a set date. I don't know if #4 is printed, at the printer's or still on the runway. The trade paperback collection has showed up on Amazon, scheduled for September, although I have no idea if that's accurate owing to everything that's happening.

Also scheduled for September is the MARVELS SNAPSHOTS hardcover collection from Marvel, but considering more than half of the one-shots haven't appeared yet, again, I wouldn't be surprised if that gets revised. We haven't received comp copies on that yet, but I'm going to be signing copies from JHU Comics (along with a few other books) for their mail order/delivery service.

Because I'm on work-insomnia-anxiety - induced vampire hours (I got out of bed tonight at around 10 p.m. "this morning"  only because of a party next door waking me up) I'm not seeing much of the family, so I still don't have the webcam set up (because Sarah has to do it, of course). Not only do I need it for trying out a livestream for the Patreon, I've been asked to do some interviews/appearances with a few comic shops and I obviously need the science-fiction screen working for those. Also, if Paul and I want to do any quarantine episodes of our Tear Them Apart horror movie podcast (episode 12 is now available, btw). Finally, I might get to take part in a Call of Cthulhu scenario play test sometime this month. I've played with this group a few times last year, my first time playing CoC and first time doing anything like this online. Unfortunately, my old webcam wasn't working properly so I was a faceless voice, which was weird. But it's a very cool group and I hope this happens because it would be a nice break. In the first scenario I played my character suffered a very creepy, downbeat fate. I died in the second one! Yay! Both were a lot of fun. I don't think I've played a tabletop RPG in over three decades. First time playing online, obviously. I was nervous as hell! In some ways having my face hidden helped.

I still can't show off anything from my only ongoing comic book gig. I'm writing and doing a couple of covers. I'm also working on a variant cover for  someone else's project. Looking forward to these being announced. BEASTS OF BURDEN: OCCUPIED TERRITORY is still on hold, but if I understand correctly, Benjamin Dewey has continued working on the third issue here and there just to keep it going. Hopefully the project can be unlocked soon so he can start involving again, we finished the scripts last year so we're not affected by the freeze on that one. It's going to be a really sweet series, I think. 

I am affected by the follow-up Beasts series being put on hold. When the "pencils down" e-mails started hitting people I had just started on the outline for the first script for a mini-series (made up of one-shots). One of them is a story I've mentioned online before, which comes out of the last Burden Hill story (Presence of Others part 2). The one I started was meant to come out as a very specific time so we juggled the stories around, but obviously everything's up in the air, now. I have been sent paperwork on the series, so the intention is there, it's just a matter of when and if. Who knows. I've always toyed with the idea of writing a prose story about the characters, but I'm not experienced and right now I don't have the time. Maybe I could write something as a script, to feel more comfortable. Kind of the equivalent of hiding my face on an online game? Huh. Maybe? 

I've spent some times on commissions, and on some Patreon-only comics. I hope to get those done asap. 

I sent the next item to be uploaded as a PDF (to whatever backer level that is, $3?) to Sarah so she can format it . She's pretty overwhelmed but she's also trying to stitch the Marvel Villains drawing into a single image for a print upload for the $10 level. And maybe we'll try to do a print of it, we haven't dipped our toes into prints before and there's a lot going on. I know there's fulfillment set-ups that artists use for things like that but I've never looked into it myself. That's like research. Learning. My head hurts just typing the word "learning". 

I feel faint...dizzy...

See you soon! Thanks...again for being...here...

(Image above post: One of the stops of our 1993 "Destroy All Comics" signing tour, which took place in New Jersey. Not many shops took the bait, but we had some excellent signings that year. One of them is still probably the most-attended signing I ever had by myself (The mighty Bizarro, Wuxtry in Athens, GA). Right around the same time we announced we were putting it together the zine "Destroy All Comics" started up, and I worried people would accuse me of ripping off Jeff Levine's title. He ended up running the tour image above in the zine and there were no problems as far as I know. Other than my getting worked-up over a worst-case scenario that wouldn't have happened to any degree I might have imagined. Because brains!)