Cuckoo's Nest Press Newsletter #4
Hey folks! Not much new material to share this time, as I’ve been busy finishing up the final pages of artwork for Last Band On Earth and tirelessly promoting the Kickstarter campaign. I’m happy to report that we’re now well over our initial funding goal, but could still use your help to defray further unforseen costs! There are two days left in the campaign now, and I’ve been told that I’ll receive a ton of pledges right at the end - but of course my anxious mind is spiraling and insisting “what if I’m the only person for whom this DOESN’T happen, though???”
“What’s The Last Band On Earth???,” you might be asking, if you’ve only recently signed up for the newsletter or if I haven’t taken about it already – it’s possible I haven’t, I have a terrible memory for this stuff. The Last Band On Earth is a dystopian quasi-horror graphic novel I’ve been working on since 2019. It’s about a noise rock band called The Dead Layaways, who are trapped in a semi-post-apocalyptic city ruled by demons. The band wishes to escape this stifling purgatory and find their way home to the “real” world again, and this entire thing may or may not be a thinly-veiled metaphor for depression. If you like: road movies, punk rock, well-rendered black & white art, sad people talking about their feelings/unpacking their trauma, eldritch horrors, and occasional jokes to lighten the mood, you’ll enjoy this book!
At its heart, it’s really about a group of friends fighting to survive/escape a world literally composed of crushing, overwhelming despair - and about never giving up hope. It’s also about the drive to continue making art in a world that's actively hostile towards creative people of all stripes, and that is what I will continue to do as long as I'm able, it's the most punk rock thing I can think of.
Anyway, I’m also told people like seeing process stuff, so I thought I’d spend this edition of the newsletter talking a bit about that!
One of the reward tiers on the Kickstarter gets you one of the original pages from Look Straight Ahead, my first graphic novel originally published in 2013. You might be wondering, "Say, how come I can get an original page from that book, but not one from The Last Band On Earth?" And that's because...there are no originals, the book is all digital. Except...there kind of are, at least for the first two issues?
When I first started drawing the book in 2019, I was still working out how to use Clip Studio Paint and my brand new Huion Kamvas tablet monitor and I still didn't have the confidence to draw something directly into a digital art program. Scanning something I'd penciled on paper and finishing that in Clip Studio, though...that seemed a little less daunting, so that's what I did for the first two chapters. Pictured below are some of my penciled pages.
By 2021, once I'd finished these two chapters, I'd finally made some decent attempts to draw things directly into Clip Studio with the Huion and felt like I was finally ready to maybe try drawing some comics that way. One of my first entirely digital pieces was the cover to issue 2:
And finally, pictured below is the first completely digital page of the book - page 53, or page 1 of chapter 3, from pencils to finishes.
This felt like such a huge milestone, because...I thought I'd never be good at this. I'd been trying, on and off, to draw directly into the computer for the past two decades at this point, and had never made a piece of art I liked that way. The Huion helped, of course, but Clip Studio just felt so much more natural to draw with than Photoshop. (I've talked about this before, but it turns out Photoshop also just sucks for drawing if you're on a Windows machine! Even modern Photoshop!)
It's funny, I initially only wanted to do this because Clip Studio added a timelapse record feature in 2021 and I was like "it would be really cool to make timelapses of my art, and much easier to do it in the computer than with drawings on paper." I had no idea it'd improve my workflow and reignite my passion for drawing in such a huge way!
Another thing I wanted to discuss that may be of interest - Before there was The Last Band On Earth, there was...New Edge!
New Edge was a comic I made in high school, all the way back in 2002. It told the story of a punk rock band of furries trapped in a dystopian city, and hey, that sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? There was no explanation as to why they were there or what exactly said city was, and I never made another issue, so sadly, we never found out more.
I insisted this was a "zine" and not a comic, because there were several questionably written record reviews in the back. (Wow, I REALLY did not like Les Savy Fav's "Go Forth," I would like to go back in time and tell my younger self to calm down about that a little bit, just listen to Liars or Black Eyes instead or something)
Fast forward to 2019 and I begin outlining what would become The Last Band On Earth, and in doing so, I unconsciously decide to revamp the world of New Edge - but THIS time, it has a purpose! It's pretty interesting how stories take on a new meaning when revisited as an adult.
New Edge was a really important and formative project for me, as it was the first comic I self-published, and also the first comic I'd ever completed that wasn't copied from something or based on an existing media property. I was inspired to self-publish not from comics, but largely by reading about the band Fugazi in the book "Our Band Could Be Your Life," and their DIY ethos (I would say Fugazi shaped a lot of my other morals and values as well).
I'm very excited to finally complete this story in the form of The Last Band On Earth, and I hope you'll consider supporting me in this endeavour! Here’s the Kickstarter link again.
I also put together this YouTube playlist/soundtrack of sorts - if you threw all of these songs together into a blender, it might sound a bit like The Dead Layaways, the titular “last band.” Enjoy!
The other Kickstarter I’d like to shout out this time is this one from Ed Willett of Shadowpaw Press, aiming to publish two science fiction novels (one adult and one YA) and one YA fantasy novel this fall. This includes a book in the Dragon Assassin series by my good friend Arthur Slade, author of many wonderful YA novels well worth your time!
And to close out this edition, here’s a really good Halloween ghost decoration I saw a few weeks back, 10/10 no notes.
See you all next time!