Writing to you all with more updates than usual. I’ve spent the last month and a half in a comics drawing daze, working at a rate that I haven’t since 2019.

New Comics

I’ve just finished inking the last page of Young Shadow & The Watchdogs. It’s a comic I’ve been running on my patreon for a bit, which you can read at this link.

I started drawing it in August of 2022, thinking I’d be able to wrap it up in time for a Halloween 2022 release. Obviously that didn’t happen. I had to leave it on the side while I did paying work, or was too burned out to think about it. Looking back, that’s how the first Young Shadow collection went as well.

Fantagraphics will be publishing Young Shadow & The Watchdogs, as well as doing a reprint of the first book. I’m really excited to have that back out there, as the first printing disappeared pretty quickly and has been out of print since 2023.

Young Shadow & the Watchdogs – Fantagraphics

Young Shadow teams up with the Watchdogs in a do-or-die baseball game against a roster of ghosts and ghoulies! Will Bolt City survive? Young Shadow usually protects sci-fi Bolt City by making deliveries for the food bank and rescuing pets. But this time around, he needs to focus on two things: hitting and pitching! When Young Shadow and the eight Watchdogs — Elmore, Gerry, Larry, Gomez, Marta, Ketchum, Rolando, and Junior — investigate a concerning chemical sludge being dumped into Bolt City's w...

Young Shadow: Tunnel Vision

I spent most of July working on this new short story for Shortbox Comics Fair.

I’m proud of how it turned out, but also relieved that it’s helped to pull me out of the funk I’ve been since the pandemic started. I’ve been candid on the patreon about the general feelings of malaise (look at the state of the world), and how it’s affected my work. It was nice to be hyper focused and get the work done. Now to keep up the momentum.

I had another comic idea for Shortbox, but it would’ve been too long to finish in time. It’s called Plus Man & The Roadkill, which was inspired by a long drive from Kentucky to Florida back in April.

Here’s a drawing I did to start getting the feel of the story:

I’ve decided to make that my next self published project, which will run digitally first over on patreon. I have things set up over there so you can see basically everything for $1/month. That includes almost 10 years of back posts. Patreon support helps me immensely while working on these comics, so if you want to see more, sign up at this link.

Original Art

If you’ve made it this far down, thanks for reading. I’m trying to get rid of the pile of original drawings I’ve got in my webstore, so I’d like to try something new. I’m entertaining reasonable offers below list price on all of them. If you see something you’re interested in, but can’t afford it, please email me. All my in-stock originals are at this link: https://bensears.bigcartel.com/category/original-art

T-Shirts

I’ve reprinted these for the first time in a bit. They’re available here, and will hopefully begin shipping in the next couple of weeks.

Lastly, I have a new song available for free over on bandcamp. It came from a demo I recorded in June 2022, reworked last October, and finally polished and had mastered last month. Check it out here:

The Gleaming CorridorDew Point

Thanks for reading!

-Ben