I feel like I’ve aged a full year over the last month. Ugh. Wherever you are, I hope you’re staying afloat. Let’s do what we can where we can, and let ourselves find joy wherever it appears. For example, me and my sweetie watched Purple Rain for the first time last night and had a great time. Shoutout to Jerome Benton.

In case you missed it, my second episode of X-Men Horoscopes came out, in which Lodro Rinzler and I discussed Uncanny X-Men #292. We had a great time riffing on the Morlocks, the branding of Rogue, and what’s the deal with Mikhail Rasputin (I still don’t know). I also recorded an episode of Make Mine Multiversity with Elias Rosner! Tasked with discussing meaningful Marvel comics that I didn’t work on, I chose New Avengers (vol. 1) #27-37, which was the Leinil Yu-illustrated arc between Civil War and Secret Invasion. I think it’s coming out sometime this month, with the exact release date to be determined. Keep an eye out!

We took a couple of trips last month. As mentioned in the last newsletter, we saw both Neko Case and James Acaster! Neko, as expected, was excellent. She brought the same bite, humor, and heart that she had when I saw her in 2009, and played an excellent mix of new songs and old favorites. Other highlights included the venue (pictured below), the BBQ joint where we got dinner (shoutout to The Rusty Pig), and the guy in the audience who looked just like me. If we’d been wearing the same hat, it would have gotten ugly. Same-dresses-at-the-prom ugly.

Acaster was a week-and-a-half later at Massey Hall in Toronto. It was an experience. I wasn’t too familiar with Acaster, having only seen two of his specials a few years ago, and this was his act. I was fully not in on the joke until he explained it at the very end of the show. My sweetie, however, was all in, and she laughed very hard throughout the show…but not as hard as she laughed at me when I told her what had happened. Love conquers all.

I didn’t get a picture of the auditorium, but I did get a picture of the kitchenette in our CA$216-per-night hotel room. Canada knows how to treat people!

Sound Effect of the Month:

Tip: You don’t have to bust your ass to do a good job

A few weeks ago on Bluesky, I was reading my feed (against my better judgment), and there was a quote meme going around. This was my contribution:

I feel I should elaborate.

Here’s the assignment I got that A+ for:

This was a third-year Kubert School assignment given to us by Alvin Pettit (I forget the name of the class). The assignment was to make a throwback-style poster for a contemporary film. I chose to do a ‘60s-style musical as the theme—both because it was a style I knew and liked, and because it gave me the chance to make fun of the fourth-hottest musical of the 2000s (I sure as hell wasn’t going to make fun of Wicked, Chicago, or RENT—my girl homies back in Rochester would have kicked my ass).

Now that I’m looking at it again, this probably took me an hour instead of twenty minutes, but the point remains valid. I fully expected to get my usual C+, but instead, Alvin found nothing to criticize. He said I executed the assignment perfectly, and graded me accordingly.

I truly didn’t understand what had happened. Not only did I feel like I’d cheated somehow, but at the time, this piece meant absolutely nothing to me. I did the thing, printed it out, and got back to work on my sequential art samples. But hey, I must have done something right. I still used it in my end-of-year portfolio to show to prospective editors and employers, since it clearly struck a chord. For all I know, this was the piece that convinced Joe Caramagna to make me his intern at Virtual Calligraphy.

What I realize now is that grade was fully earned. If something you’re making feels effortless, that doesn’t mean you’re cheating. This poster was born from two years of comic art boot camp, learning basic Photoshop at an early age, and a lifetime of artistic growth. Everything you make is built from that, and if you execute something quickly, that doesn’t mean it’s worthless, or—whether it’s grades, cred, or cash—you should earn less for it just because it was “easy.” If anything, you should earn more for it, because you’ve still done the work and you’ve beaten your deadline.

Also, you’re not cheating if you’re using tools or shortcuts. Without going too deep into the details (to protect the innocent), I’ve known artists who refused to use time-saving tools or shorten their workflows because they felt this would devalue their craft. The best example I can think of is the refusal to use a template to draw a true circle, because a template circle would be too inorganic, even in an underdrawing (this really happened). I think there’s a deeper lesson here than to “work smarter, not harder,” because the more time I spend with this, the more it feels like self-flagellation. I know that we’ve been trained to think that suffering for your craft is romantic, but like the idea of selling out, I strongly believe it’s something that should be done away with. Pain and frustration are part of any artist’s journey, but that doesn’t mean we should cling to them.

…Anyway, I’m Elizabeth Gilbert. Thank you and good night.

P.S. If you were expecting “You don’t have to bust your ass to do a good job” to mean “You don’t have to hone your craft to be a good artist,” then tough luck. Get to work.

P.P.S. Just to reiterate, I’m not referring to generative A.I. imaging when I speak of labor-saving tools or techniques. Generative A.I. imaging is, at best, a crutch. A crutch that drinks water.

Community:

• Si Spurrier and Vanesa Del Rey’s The Voice Said Kill is getting a TPB release soon, and to promote/celebrate, they’ve released a 30-page preview on Bindings! With Hassan on letters!

• Mike Maihack just announced The Moonlit Spiral, his all-ages fantasy OGN that’s now available to preorder!

Recommendations:

• Comic: The Love Bunglers. I got a Love & Rockets collection for Christmas, and the rear cover text says The Love Bunglers “may be [Jaime] Hernandez’s greatest masterpiece in his thirty-five year career.” I really hate descriptions like that—especially when they’re right. This story is incredible—a rare romance where two middle-aged on-again-off-agains finally get over themselves, and you learn why they’re so messed up. It’s first and foremost a romance, but make no mistake, it’s dark. Very dark. Graphic-depictions-of-child-abuse dark. Do not serve to children, not even ones who loved middle-aged romance.

  

• Non-comic: Hey Arnold! You probably know it already. It’s just a good, chill, children’s cartoon show with a pure-hearted protagonist, a funky jazz soundtrack, and a lot of jokes for the grown-ups in the room. Go watch the Pigeon Man episode. Or any episode with Oskar.

Stuff with my name in it (February 2026):

2/2:

• X-Men Infinity #5

2/4:

• Absolute Batman vol. 2: Abomination TP/HC

• Batman #6

• Uncanny X-Men #23

2/9:

• X-Men Infinity #6

2/11:

• Alien vs. Captain America #4

• Daredevil: The Dark Art TP

• DIE: Loaded #4

• Star Trek: Lower Decks #16

• Venom #254

2/16:

• X-Men Infinity #7

2/18:

• Absolute Batman #17

• Knull #2

• Star Trek: The Last Starship #5

• Star Wars #10

• Star Wars: Hidden Empire Omnibus HC

• Uncanny X-Men #24

• Wonder Woman #30

• X-Men #25

2/23:

• X-Men Infinity #8

2/25:

• Batman by James Tynion IV Omnibus vol. 2 HC

• Daredevil: Cold Day in Hell HC

• Helen of Wyndhorn Deluxe Edition HC

• The Power Fantasy #16

• Predator: Bloodshed #1

And finally, the cat photo:

And now I’m off to letter the Jimmy Olsen/Carnage short for DC’s Superman/Spider-Man. VERY exciting! I love Matt Fraction and Steve Lieber!

Have a question you’d like me to answer in a future newsletter? Ask away in the comment section!

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