On Hiatus
Hi there,
The blog's going on hiatus. I don't know how long it'll be, but long enough that my Patrons have had their billing paused for the next month, and I presume will have it paused for at least another month after that.
There will probably be infrequent updates, letting you know about any possible events or releases once some things get sorted out. But the blog as a regular feature isn't going to be back for a while and I want to talk a bit about why.
The biggest reason is time. On average, one of these blogs runs me about 4 hours to write, to properly source, and to make sure it gets posted everywhere it needs to be posted. When you add in some of the other maintainance stuff, I'm generally putting in about 18-22 hours per month just toward this in all it's forms. That's both not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things and also 2+ work days that I'm adding to my schedule mostly on weekends. And I just can't do that right now.
I have a lot of travel scheduled this year--somewhat accidentally, but y'know, I just got back from WonderCon, I'm away next weekend and then again about a month after that, I've got multiple travel commitments set for September/October, including the big one of our wedding/honeymoon trip. Particularly that last thing requires a lot of extra planning and time spent to get ready because it's both my first time traveling internationally in a long time and that even if it wasn't an international trip would have a lot of life-adjusting that needs to be done.
I'm now just shy of 3 months at Boom! and things are picking up as I'm taking more responsibilities on my plate. That's great! I'm very excited for you to see some of what I've been working on soon! But it's also necessitated some adjustments in my work/life balance because it's changed my workflow.
I said at the beginning of this year that I wanted to write more and that you'd see more personal projects for me. But while I have a few things in the works here and there, I've been bad at keeping my own projects on track. If I'm not keeping on top of my own schedule on this and making sure I've got both the time and the emotional work-bandwidth to make stuff I want to make, I'm certainly not doing it for my collaborators either. And for a lot of it, that's fine, but I feel bad leaving things in the void too. And a new thing I'm working on, not a personal project in the same way but that I hope to be talking about next month, is also going to need a lot of additional time and attention from me.
And lastly, it's hard to keep up. From the get, this blog has been a place for me to of course talk about my experiences making comics and hopefully help foster creators with that knowledge, as well as a place for me to talk about current events, both in entertainment and the world at large. And there's so much going on, I don't know that I can properly invest the time to anything that I want to. I expressed that in my last blog a bit--having so much I wanted to cover that I was trying to make these bigger picture things and would have to shuffle plans a bit to make room for some of the smaller stuff I wanted to do too, but as we all know, the world just keeps going and I don't have the heart try to chase everything right now.
So, before I go on hiatus, I just want to touch on a few things.
As of posting, the latest siege on Gaza has been ongoing for 6 months. Over 33,000 Palestinians have been killed in that time in Gaza, with more in the West Bank, other parts of Palestine, and internationally. People are starving. People are displaced. Non-Palestinian journalists, aid workers, and activists have been killed. It is a tragedy. It is a genocide that the world is watching and that so many people are rightfully calling out for what it is and a vocal minority is refuting with one side of their mouth while cheering it on with the other. We cannot stop talking about it. We cannot stop trying to help however we can. So once again, I suggest you call, you fax, you email, you contact the White House, you send your reps snail mail, you nail your demands to their doors, you show up for demonstrations, protests, and organized events. You can put your money toward getting Gazan's eSims. You can donate to the organizations trying to provide relief: Doctors Without Borders, PCRF, or PRCS, just to name a few. You can engage with cultural works and with Palestinian writers and artists. You can see how you can help the AMP, the BDS movement, or JVP. It is overwhelming and it is easy to feel helpless in the face of what's happening, but it should also feel overwhelming in the options available to you to do something.
And while we must care for Gaza, we cannot forget all the other places and peoples who are suffering: Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ukraine, and so many other places. We cannot forget that here in the US, there are so many people who are unhoused, endangered at the border, endangered and enslaved in the prison industrial complex, and being perscuted for their race, their gender, their sex, their ability, their very existence.
Greed is rampant. Money is being funneled into the pockets of the already extraordinarily rich at the expense of art--see, the constant churn at WB with the number of movies being shelved in what is essentially the scam plot of The Producers to the continued reveals time and time again that all A.I. models are just stolen work. I'd link to this week's New York Times article, but y'know, I don't want to drive traffic there and the other article I saw talking about it USED FUCKING AI FOR THE HEADER IMAGE. (As a side note: if you see folks using AI, call 'em out on it. I know there's a ton of stupid pro-AI bullshit happening on Twitter, a website I'm not even on anymore, and I know that there are plenty of generally well-meaning people who have either bought into the hype train or who apparently are too ignorant to actually know what it is they're doing/too proud to walk it back cough, my local PSL party cough, but pushback and resistence is important. So many places are adopting this bullshit in a rush to be relevant and a mix of legal pressure as every AI company faces a zillion lawsuits and social pressure as we continue to fight back is the most meaningful way to get AI out of these systems because, again, it's about greed over all else and if it's hurting pockets, we're doing good). Also planes are falling apart in the sky, which doesn't feel great when I've got all this travel planned. And, of course, despite all the "proof that the economy's doing well because wall street's doing well", any average person can tell you again and again and again that it's a struggle to get by right now. Prices are artificially inflated because of greed and the dollar doesn't go as far as it used to. Things like the 99cent Only Store--which has it's own problems of not actually only being 99 cents and the general issues that plague a lot of similar "value" retail shops--is going out of business and I know that it is going to affect a lot of places that're otherwise food deserts. And don't get me started again on the connections between greed, puritanism, and the erotic economy (but maybe sign this ACLU petition and keep an eye out as I hear some organizations are drafting more definitive statements). Oh, and boycott Molson Coors!
If you've spoken out about harassment in this industry, good. Talk about it. Keep other people safe. Share your experiences and take the time you need to grieve and to heal. I'm so sorry that there are so many vindictive people who are more concerned with harassing you or calling out "cancel culture" than with your safety. I also hope that those who lost someone this week get their time to grieve and heal, even if for some it's now more complex. I get that a lot of comic books themselves are about seeking justice through non-traditional means and that it usually involves punching people, but boy would it be great if more people could empathize with the people who make comics looking for accountability--acknowledgement and steps to change for the better since its nearly impossible to remove the harm that was done--much less justice. And I get that it is hard because, as I said earlier in different ways, while comics is a community and I believe that the purpose of community is to come together and work towards common goods, it is very diffused--we are never all in the same place, physically or digitally; we're often not in the same place emotionally or mentally, and there is so much happening in the world that can draw attention away from what's happening here. So, if you speak out or in support of those who do, thank you.
There's a lot more that could be said, but once again, I'm coming up on 4 hours on something I really didn't mean to have take so much time. So, here's the last of it.
It's National Library Week. Go give your library some love. Maybe become a friend. Libraries need all the friends they can get right now.
My pals John Barber, Andrew Griffith, Ronda Pattison, and Chris Mowry have a new comic on Kickstarter called Signa. I haven't read it yet, but knowing the team, I know it's good. Maybe give it some cash.
Becca and I are getting married and that's expensive. You could give us a gift, you could join Becca's Patreon, you could buy something from their updated webshop, you could pre-order their Godzilla Rivals: Mothra vs. Hedorah cover (that doesn't give us $$$ directly, but you could!), you could check out my webshop, support my Kofi, or check out my eBay! Any and all of those would be appreciated.
Unless dates have changed, from now through the end of next month, you can pick up things like Godzilla: Best of Destoroyah, Sonic: The IDW Collection vol. 4, Sonic: Fang the Hunter #3 & #4, the Brynmore TPB, Sonic Vol. 16, Godzilla: War for Humanity #5, Godzilla: Mechagodzilla's 50th Anniversary one-shot, Godzilla's 70th Anniversary one-shot, Sonic #69, and maybe Sonic: Spring Broken at your local comic shop. And then come June, we should be shifting from my very last IDW titles to my first Boom! ones.
That's it for now.
Best,
David
P.S.: Have a photodump!
