Hey, pals. Welcome back for the July edition of my newsletter! I hope you’re all staying cozy and free of parasites this month. And to my Canadian readers, I hope you’re enjoying a nice salad.

Well, I’ve got some very exciting news to report this month, so let’s get to it!

UPCOMING EVENTS!

I’ll be at Zine Machine this year! It will be at the same place as usual, the Durham Armory, on October 25th from 11 AM to 5 PM! So far this is my first confirmed fall show, so it’ll be where I’ll be debuting Inoscularum #1! Since Zine Machine is the first place I ever tabled with my comics, it feels right to debut Inoscularum there. I’m bringin’ it on home!

TRIANGULAR COMICS!

I’m very happy to report that you can now purchase my comics “on the web” from Triangular Comics and Zines!! Slasher Bunny, The Sun & Moon Sisters, and Polo Shirt Angels From McMansion Heaven are all available there. Just for this occasion, I printed a snazzy new edition of Polo Shirt Angels using some Scrap Exchange-sourced cardstock and resume paper:

It’s got a lot more heft and texture to it than my previous editions, which were printed on regular copy paper at the self-serve kiosk at Staples.

INOSCULARUM!

At the time of writing last month’s newsletter, I had about 35 pages of gray tones to do on Inoscularum #1. As of right now, I’ve only got 7 pages left! The finish line is so close. I’ve had so many ups and downs while making this book, and it’s been the ultimate exercise in delayed gratification, so I’m really, really, reeeeally ready to finish it and put it out into the world.

About 15 pages into adding tones, most of my gray markers ran out of ink. I didn’t want to stop working to order ink refills and wait for them to arrive, so I just started using other colors. I’ve done this for other comics, and once you’ve figured out a value scale with your colors, it’s actually easy to do.

Here are a few panels in grayscale, where you can see I’ve worked out my values in the margins at the bottom of the page:

And here’s how they actually look:

I had some fun rendering the sunbeam coming in through the window in this panel:

I’ve left myself a generous amount of time for scanning and cleaning up my files, so if I’m lucky, I might actually be done with everything before my end of September deadline. Only time will tell!

Well, those are all of the updates I‘ve got for now. Time for the other stuff!

THE OTHER STUFF!

CRITTER OF THE MONTH!

July’s Critter of the Month is the white-tailed deer! I’ve been seeing these guys everywhere lately. Whether I’m driving home from work, jogging in the park, or just walking around my neighborhood, I pretty much always manage to see a few deer. It’s about the time of year where their fawns are old enough to start joining them while they’re out and about, too, and they’re just as cute as can be. While they’re one of the most common animals in the state, it always feels special to get to see one.

SONG OF THE MONTH!

July’s Song of the Month is A.M. 180 by Grandaddy!

So, earlier this month, I was taking Cooper (who you might remember from this comic!) home to Greensboro after babysitting him for the weekend. Of course, on the way home, I couldn’t resist stopping by McKay’s (the used book/movie/game/instrument store in Mebane that used to be Ed McKay’s in Greensboro, but that’s another story). I was looking for a specific book, which they didn’t have, but I wanted to prolong my time in the air conditioning, so I stopped by the horror movie section and found what I consider to be the score of the century:

Because of wacky rights issues including but not limited to Disney absorbing Fox into its all-consuming doom blob, physical copies of 28 Days Later are surprisingly hard to come by! So I felt kind of gobsmacked not just that I found this, but also that I didn’t get price-gouged for it (it was 9 bucks!). As I drove the rest of the way home, I was listening to some music, and of all the songs, A.M. 180 came on, which is a funny coincidence, since it’s part of the 28 Days Later soundtrack. And as it played, the sky just opened up and started dumping sheets and sheets of rain. It was raining so hard that it was drowning out the song. In the midst of the drought and the heatwave, the sound of getting pummeled by rain while A.M. 180 played faintly in the background was something I felt really lucky to hear.

END OF JULY NEWSLETTER

That about does it for this month’s newsletter! Thanks, as always, for reading!

I hope you get some time to step outside and take a look at the moon. It’s the same moon people have always been looking at! The next full moon is on Wednesday, July 29th.