The Richest Man in Town and Metal Candy Press
I told you that next time you heard from me I'd have a new comic out. I didn't lie.
The Richest Man in Town is a really special one too, because it's my tribute to my grandpa, my mom's dad, Larry Dean Heneke, who I got my middle name from. I wrote a memorial blurb for the comic, but since y'all are kind enough to subscribe and read these, I'll share it with you here for free:
"I wrote this story for my late grandfather Larry Dean Heneke, 1938-2021. He was well-known for his above and beyond willingness to help people, and charmed everyone he met. He loved western movies, so I wanted to write him as a western hero, but in a way that was true to who he was. Matthias did a wonderful job capturing his likeness, and it was fun getting to share his catchphrases. I wish everyone got to know him, but much like the hero of a western, he came to town, made lives better, and went off into the sunset."
He helped my dad build our deck at my childhood home, he helped me move more times than I can count. And it wasn't limited to family, everyone who knew him had stories like that. I think he was still helping people with electrician shit shortly before he died of bladder cancer. And he would make friends faster than you could turn around. The title of the book actually came from my Uncle Tom, Larry's brother, invoking the quote from It's a Wonderful Life to describe him in his eulogy.
As I said in my own speech at Larry's funeral, he was always kinda like Superman to me. So it's cool to be able to put him in his own comic book. He definitely saved the day more than enough times for more than enough people.
The best place to buy a copy is on Itch, https://chrishutton.itch.io/the-richest-man-in-town. This is because it has the pay-what-you-want function, which has allowed a lot of sweet people to pay more for our books than we're asking for over the years. But if you want to pay just the base cost ($2 for the first month and then $7 after that), feel free to use our website too. https://www.metalcandypress.com/
Metal Candy Press? What's that?
That, my friends, is my new publishing imprint with my friend Matthias Lissak.
We first got introduced in 2013 by Riley Hopkins, my friend and Matthias's brother in law, because Riley wanted to make a supernatural western comic that I would help write and Matthias would draw. Despite a lot of work being done on it, that project never wound up coming out (although that might be changing in the near future, devil emoji eyes emoji). However, Matthias and I kept in touch over the years, and in 2020 finally started making and self-publishing comics together.
Now, we've decided to take that partnership to the next level, with a singular identity for the books we make together, a website where you can find them all, etc.
A new illustration Matthias did of characters from all the comics we did before the official launch.
May 3rd was our launch day, announcing both the imprint and The Richest Man in Town as our first book under that banner, and it went, like, stupid well. A lot of people showed up to support us, but one was a really big surprise. 
Matthias has been drawing and posting dope character designs like that for years, and this was the best possible timing for some of that to finally take off. Lil Nas X retweeting them on the day we announced our new imprint and comic was insanely good luck. We started selling more copies and my Twitter was getting so many notifications it was slowing the app down more than Elon already had. So that was pretty wild and cool. My pro wrestling carny instincts were immediately kicking in like "okay so now we put 'Lil Nas X's Favorite Artist' on all our shit."
Anyway, we're both really excited about Metal Candy Press and all the books we're gonna be putting out together in the future. I'd talk about where the name came from, but it's all on the website and this thing is wordy enough as it is. The part that isn't on the site that I will share is that the MC in Metal Candy also aligns with our names. Cute shit, right?
Here's one more freebie that's included in TRMiT: our Coming Soon page.
The last piece of very exciting news here is that The Richest Man in Town is going to be the first comic of mine that I'm getting printed. I'd make a bigger deal out of this, but we're doing a relatively small first run that's mostly designed to give free copies to my family. But we've already made some hook-ups and some copies are going to be sold in comic book stores in Chicago. I may try to get some in stores in the Quad Cities and Detroit as well. And who knows, maybe we'll do a second printing so everyone who wants one can get their hands on a physical copy. I intended for this book to just be a small thing for family, but the comic made it onto both the Top Sellers and the New and Popular lists on Itch, so thank you to everyone who got it there!
Last couple things here:
A wrestling podcaster was kind enough to play my choose your own adventure text based game Be the Indie Wrestler on his podcast The Wrestle Special, and it was awesome hearing a fan have so much fun with it.
If you never played my game based on my experiences as an independent pro wrestler, you can find that for free here. You can even play it on your phone.
And a new episode of my podcast Dragon Ball Uuber is out today on Riley Hopkins and their Amazing Friends, which I think people are going to very much enjoy, because we sent Goku to divorce court.
That's about it for me. As my grandpa Larry would say, this day (newsletter)'s shot to shit. For now, please consider buying The Richest Man in Town digitally and/or spreading the word!
And next time, I'll be married :)
From Detroit with Love,
Chris (05.07.23)