TWO FISTED HOMEOPAPE July/12 - EVERFROST #2 Out This Week!
Plus thoughts on the word spondulix.
♫ I applied for a rescue dog,
But if I get you dog,
You're rescuing me ♫
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2021 -- beyond.
Time for me to speak real loud; for capitalism!
I have a few things coming that you might wanna know about, and your wallet will be happy to exchange some spondulix for these creative good times.
EVERFROST #2 IS OUT THIS WEEK!
This Wednesday marks the day we drop the second issue of EVERFROST, and for all of the worldbuilding and frenetic pace of the first issue, this one slows it down and lets Van and Co steep in these things we have built.
I’m really proud of this issue. It’s a complete little arc all on its own, and it ends with Van in a worse place, again. Sami Kivela’s art in this is beyond gorgeous, natch, and Lauren Affe colours him so so very expertly and brilliantly. There’s a lot to love in the story, but I’ve also ended the issue with this brilliant one-page….”thing” that when I saw it I was over the moon. It’s not a huge thing, but it’s also one of the things I’m just most excited about ever in my comic making career. It’s almost silly, ludicrous, but I also think if you’ve been here long enough, you’ll dig it, and so I hope you do. I won’t hint what it is, I’ll just say, enjoy the comic, enjoy the story, and then enjoy what comes on the next page.
The issue also has some written back matter, another piece of fiction for your “Further Reading” after Everfrost, and it leaves us halfway through the tale now with two more issues to go.
EVERFROST ON COMIXOLOGY
If you’ve been waiting for a digital opportunity to read our sci fi story, you are now in luck:
Click here to Buy EVERFROST on ComiXology!
We finally got the first issue up and live on the digital realm that is ComiXology - and astute readers will notice #2 is actually already live there as well. Consider it a gift. Those waiting have waited 4 weeks for the first issue to drop, so now you get the second issue half a week early.
BLACK BEACON #1 IS ONE WEEK AWAY!
***Cue the Flailing Arms Kermit GIF***
I’m really excited for this to drop in single issues. It’s already come out within the Heavy Metal Magazine - the first two chapters have, actually, but that’s a smaller audience. Now, we have our own space.
I really love the scope of this tale I’m telling with Sebastian Piriz expertly building this world visually. The dude is a genius and his designs and layouts and thought in this are all A+ - I really want everyone to give this story a chance. We’ve packed the issue with some world building back matter that was a lot of fun to write, and isn’t in the magazine, and the issue is also only $2.99 [USD] so it’s a buck cheaper than most on the stands.
When you pick up Everfrost #2 just check in on whether your comic shop is getting Black Beacon #1, and if they’ve got a copy to set aside for you all sorted out :]
It’s a six issue tale, and I just reread the script for #6 this weekend and it’s one of the most beautiful and elegant things I think I might have ever written, and it includes spaceship crashes, huge powered-punches, and a whole lot of heart.
If you’ve got it in you - make 2021 the Year of Reading Two RKL Sci Fi Comics [I’ll come up with a catchier name in post].
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What’s next? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m currently trying to line up what’s next. I have little to no idea, and I’m trying to be accepting of such a thing. But it’s kinda all I can work on right now, so it’s designed to swamp my brain.
There’s all the launch and print stuff for EVERFROST and BLACK BEACON, and ongoing homeopape and Patreon duties - but then I need to know what comic I will write next.
I’m so close to the finish line on the SHE Vol. 2 script, and I’ll hopefully be able to push the next project with Louie Joyce to the forefront...soon. My hopes are to script SHE Vol. 3 - but I also wanna line up a new gig.
I had a count - there are like 7 quality and viable publishers who are always willing to look at my stuff, and they all come with various benefits and detractions - some have huge page rates, but they take a lot from media adaptations, or just control the IP in general. Some leave all ownership and extended profits with you, but that means there’s exceptionally little in the way of page rates.
It’s a balance. And it’s one we get a conscious choice in.
So I’m loading new stories and thinking about new characters and trying to line that next thing up that I can dive into. It’s the most tumultuous time where days and weeks will feel pointless in what you do, but it’s all building towards something that might be huge. It’s...tiring, but all part of the process. It certainly gets me thinking about what I wanna do and say next.
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ASD&D.
Honestly, I should’ve played D&D with my kids during this past week, but I think I got a bit lazy. It’s back to school this week, so it’ll be harder to find time, so I should’ve stepped up. Bit disappointed in myself that I didn’t.
I have continued to look through the RPG Journal Zines and I found another one - LOST IN THE DEEP
I linked to this one when I found it, but now I’ve read it and can confirm it’s awesome. You’re the last dwarf in a travelling party alone in a mountain mine system. The game takes you through some dark places.
It’s definitely making me want to write something The Wretched - which is the system/structure many of these follow. It’s a good structure, and when done well opens players up for a really varied and creative experience. I’d love to write one for my school D&D club to use, so I’ll continue to mentally tinker with that idea.
And last time I talked about LONG HAUL 1983, and so I used that RPG to write one single entry of my trucker trying to get home and it’ll go live on my Patreon this week, or the next. So it was fun to play with one of these, and see they totally work.
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PERHAPS YOU'D CARE TO SAMPLE
Elsa Charettier draws BLADE RUNNER - this video from Elsa is genius.
I had a big chat on YouTube with Whack Comics - sprawling, and fun.
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GRIST FOR THE MILL
BO BURNHAM: INSIDE - this Netflix comedy special came with a lot of online kudos - so I wondered if it was really worth all the hype, and if it would really be as good as you hear, and yet I also felt very intrigued. So, given an afternoon to do laundry and prepare dinner, I watched this in the background and have to admit it’s a true piece of genius in a lot of ways.
The guy, Burnham, is this kind of bratty Proto YouTube comedian kid who started when he was like 14 or something and is fairly designed to just annoy me - little kid on the internet thinks his streams and thoughts about the world around him matter enough for a global audience.
You know, the usual old person gripe about anyone younger than them getting on the internet and asking to be heard. I think it just stands for anyone seeing anyone younger take some spotlight. It’s a mixture of hating the arrogance, and also cringing at how much we know what we didn’t know at that age and wishing we could erase it, or maybe shut ourselves up. Or maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, Burnham, obviously a bratty little kid, but that kid isn’t making this special. That kid turns 30 during the making of this special - a special filmed completely inside his own little abode, solo, with no other human contact, assistance, anything. And he’s brutally honest about it all. That’s what got to me - the honesty beneath a lot of this, and the skill with which he shows it. He’s commenting on the pandemic, and isolation, but also the internet, and the replacement of real lives for digital lives, something which has always been an option, but became a default through the pandemic in America.
It’s a show mostly filled with songs, some might call some of them ditties - some feel thin, silly, the kind of click bait I’m sure he’s maybe built a career on. I don’t know, I’d literally never heard of the guy before. People “Big on YouTube” are not a thing in my world view. But then I started looking at the way he films most everything in this special, and the snippets of himself he reveals, and I started to understand this whole thing better.
Burnham grew up on the internet - both consuming it, and feeding it with his own content - and it seems like he’s realised how problematic that might be. He uses framing and lighting to show how toxic and pointless a whole mess of it is. It was the lighting that constantly got me, because he’s just one dude in a home with some equipment. He had to innovate and think and be creative, and for that I was just in love. But there are so many little moments. I’m certain nearly all, maybe *all*, of it is specifically chosen. The moments on honesty, the breakdown material, all of it, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s false. The guy’s making an almost pseudo-documentary - but he’s also trying to best get his point across. I definitely don’t think this guy was living his best life in lockdown and he fooled us all into thinking it was trash by cluttering one room and telling us how hard he’s had it.
It feels like Burnham might just be a guy figuring out that he’s not that kid making songs anymore, and that he’s a talented and privileged dude with a chance to be honest, and it feels like he’s taken it. I’m sure many of you were already ahead of the curve on this one, but if you haven’t watched INSIDE yet, please seek it out. It’s incredibly and deceptively razor sharp.
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Be one of the good guys, because there's way too many of the bad.
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POST CREDITS SEQUENCE
Writing the word spondulix way above made me research the word’s origins, and it comes from the name of a shell that people would use as currently ‘way back when.’
I thought, for a brief moment, imagine just going to the beach and picking up some more money. When you’re always taught “money doesn’t grow on trees” you think it’s something special and sacred and verifiable and yet in the past it could have literally grown on trees because currency was whatever people felt could hold wealth. Shells, rocks, just shit you’d find lying around.
You can’t do that anymore, no fucking way, not with Uncle Capitalism needing you to trade some of your time and soul for the sweet spondulix - not just a wander down the beach, or whatever.
But then I also got thinking - I just got paid for a comic script. A decent chunk of beach shells, honestly, and I realised I sat in my office from 10pm until midnight for a few weeks last year and now suddenly my bank account is replenished. I just made up some characters, made them say stuff I wanted them to say, tried my best to make it all make sense and be enjoyable, and from that I’ve magicked money into my life. I can feed my kids because I stayed up after they went to bed and played pretend.
I don’t even need any of the government certified and stamped plastic that we used to exchange. I just need access to the internet and now some digital code says I can buy some chilli/lime corn chips. Honestly, that’s buck wild.
It almost sounds worse than cracking the wall of a salt mine a few times a week and then getting an envelope with some paper in it.
But I don’t think it is.
There’s a chance to make money grow on trees - with the right amount of privilege, hard work, opportunity, and desire. You can turn stories into money, or videos into cash, or dance skills rehearsed and refined into some coins.
If we all agree to it, we can enter the sphere of commerce in a much more interpersonal way. I saw a kid playing his piano and singing in the city centre the other day and sent my two kids over with a $5 note to put into his case because that kid’s out there trying and we should support that more. He should know money can grow on trees, and you can feel worth in being creative and connected.
Commerce and money doesn’t always need to be defined *for* us because there are many ways we can engage with things of worth and better our lives because of the skills we have.
Lee of WHACK COMICS put me on EVERFROST before it dropped, and man did it deliver. I've read the second issue, and with only one complaint I thought it was a great follow up and I can't wait for the rest of the series.
Thanks for putting yourself out there. Glad I signed up for your newsletter, excited for more EVERFROST, and I'll keep an eye out for BLACK BEACON for sure! Happy Sunday/Monday!