Hey yo! A quick word of welcome to the new subscribers I gained last weekend at the Denton Comic Arts Expo, and any other newbies that have signed up in the past few weeks. Happy to have you! This is a weekly newsletter that will go out every Sunday morning. In it I share new comics early, updates on shows, musings on being an artists and cartoonist and random life updates. Welcome!

I promised in my last newsletter to debrief everyone on how the Denton Comic Arts Expo went. The expo is a pretty small show in comparison to what you might be imagining. There's no big A-list celebs or voice actors. A lot of the creators are local. The vendors range from your usual cartoonists/artists like myself, to a few others that make stickers, posters, keychains, and assorted tchotchkes. And while it's a smaller show, for sure, that doesn't take away from the connections you can make with other creators and the attendees. Several people are willing to open their wallets for your work, and the sense of community is pretty strong.

The highlights of the show was talking to a couple of cartoonists who have books with established publishers. Andy Hirsch being among them who specializes in creating graphic novels that are realistic fiction. He often writes books that are historically accurate, or scientifically sound. The books are informative and entertaining. I dare to say the word educational because I don't want to portray his books as boring or like a text book. But he's a cartoonist who makes comics that are grounded in history, science, nature, etc. and writes for a younger audience. There's not many non-fiction comics made for kids and he's found a niche market to sort of fit himself into.

Rick Brooks is a cartoonist who had a booth next door to mine. He's of a generation just before me and makes a comic titled Mr. Morris that's syndicated in newspapers. He had a stack of blank old school comic strip forms and was hand lettering and inking a comic or two throughout the day. It was cool to see how the cartoonists from not very long ago-really-used to make comics.

Lastly I was introduced to Fishboy's frontman Eric Michener. Fishboy is fun indie band in Denton, TX. and Eric is the band's lead singer who also makes comics to accompany his albums. What else can I say? Go check out their music and read his comics!

As I've mentioned before this Comic-con kicks off the autumn show season for me and it was a nice show to start off with a show that's a bit smaller in scale. Although I felt naked without any After Death books on the table, I'm crossing my fingers I get the next print run in the mail before ArtsGoggle on Oct. 19th.

The After Death

Autobio Comics

Join Patreon, Get Stickers (and more)

Just wanted to take a brief moment to plug the sticker club over on my Patreon, and my Patreon in general. All Patron Members at any tier get monthly happy mail in the form of stickers. Below are August and September's sticker sheets that went out this past week. Want in? You can join my Patreon starting at $2 a month. That's it! Cheaper than a small cup of coffee. Cheaper than any single issue of a comic book. In return you'll get some sweet custom stickers plus see a lot of artwork and illustrations that never make it onto socials. That and my bi-weekly ramble podcast. It's a pretty sweet deal.

What's Making Me Happy This Week

• This week we kicked off October in the best way possible, and that's with our annual trip out to Yesterland Farms out in Canton,TX. It's exactly what you think it is, a good, old fashioned family friendly pumpkin patch complete with fair rides, a petting zoo, food and drink, and after dark things turn spooky with a creepy corn maze, a clown fun house, and a haunted hayride. This year Rhea and I were joined by both of my boys which made it a real family affair. Disregarding the absolutely horrible traffic we had to suffer just to get out of town it was a pitch perfect night. Rhea and I also discovered that we make a quick cameo on their socials from a past visit. See if you can't spot us in this reel (hint, that's us watching the fireworks).

• Really enjoyed this article on one of my favorite cartoonists, JP Ahonen. He's a finnish cartoonist who creates a series about a family of satanists where the father plays in a death metal band. Obviously this has the potential to raise the conservative eyebrow. But what's so great about the comic strip is that Ahonen uses the satanic/metal angle in order to really annihilate the stereotype and instead creates one of the most wholesome and hilarious comics out there.

"The characters look menacing and have inverted crosses and pentagrams on their foreheads, but are liberal and supportive. But people fear what they don’t know or understand. I remember when we were pitching Belzebubs, an executive asked ‘So, if they’re Satanists, do they eat babies?’ and I realized we still have ways to go!

Overall, the stories are heartfelt, even cute, and when Lilith and some other characters do dodgy stuff, well, those never really pan out for them. But that’s a source of humor, as well. I don’t want to write perfect characters, although I’ve sometimes joked that Sløth might be a role model for me. He’s a weird dude, but he’s a good father and a loving husband, and I try to be the same."

And that's it for this week! October is officially in full swing, I just hope the temperatures are cooling down where you are because here in Texas, the highs are still in the 90's and it's not feeling very Autumnal lately. Here's hoping things cool down by the 31st. Thanks for reading, talk to you again next weekend!

~b

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