Thank you to everyone who stopped by at BICS!

I have finally opened an online store. For now, I’ve got t-shirts and some never-to-be-reprinted gallery-quality prints, but I’ll add more over the next month. Put the code SEALMAIL in the notes of orders to get a sketchcard.

You’re So Cool got shortlisted for the Cartoonist Studio Prize! I always thought it sounded tacky to say it’s an honour to be nominated, but it is.

Some of you might know I work a day job as a technical writer for a software company. I’ve been in that field since 2015; it comes easily to me and I used my current employer to get health insurance that covered three years of transition surgery. Freelancing (as a single person with no local family) would not have allowed me to do this, I’m grateful. I don’t want to write instruction manuals forever but it let me rebuild my life and focus on art I cared about. Even though the company is evil corporate hell (I’m not exaggerating), my coworkers and boss are nice people.

It’s looking like my time is going to be up soon. They’d been making noises about AI and I’d been playing deaf, but they put it into overdrive. They’re pushing everyone to use Copilot (which sucks) for everything, or “watch out.” They’re now trying to enforce use, and it feels like a break with reality to see it fuck up, fail, waste time, and produce terrible work but still have upper levels talk about it like it’s the most incredible thing ever. It is forgiven for things that none of my human colleagues are, offered more grace than any of us, and spoken about like a person despite being a shitty fucking website. It’s the worst nepo-baby ever, the adored child of every c-suite bellend who sees it as the solution to the “problem” of paying wages/benefits instead of getting all the money themselves.

I have the standard range of problems with generative AI, but even if it wasn’t a rancid bubble destroying the planet, I’d still have zero interest in using it - even for things I don’t like. I care about what I do, but I don’t think that work I don’t want to do myself has less value or nuance. It’s easy to have a blind spot along the lines of “well it’s one thing to automate (thing I don’t do), but you can’t do that to (thing I do), it’s much more involved.” It’s a kind of creative solipsism I guess. The shallower our understanding is of something, the easier we’re likely to think it is to do well. And we’re often wrong.

Anyway, I’m weighing up my options and thinking about my next step. I’m tired of being miserable, of watching things get worse and so many skillsets be devalued, of lose-lose situations and blatant corruption. I keep thinking about all the comics I could make if I had that fifty hours a week back.

Beast of the Month

Sketchcards

Website Updates

I’ve added sketchbook sections! I scanned my way through a pile and there’s more to come. I also sorted the art pages more, splitting things out to keep series together and make things easier to find.

Did a restock at South Street Art Mart, plus a few new things.

Finally sent copies of Ghost Stories to Radiator Comics. You can buy a two-colour (black and mint) risograph copy here.

Upcoming Shows

3 Rivers ComicCon - June 6th and 7th - Pittsburgh
Flamecon - August 15th and 16th - Manhattan

Recommendations

Keness Printing - I met Ken of Keness Printing (celebrity to me) at BICS and am going to be splitting a table with him at 3 Rivers Comic Con in Pittsburgh in June. He printed You’re So Cool, which turned out amazing, and he prints a lot of queer and adult books. High quality is important, but with some printers refusing to print NSFW and LGBT material, someone who proudly prints for and supports the diverse comics/art community is someone to be extra appreciated.

Ed Zitron - there’s a lot going on with the tech industry, and Ed explains things really well for people like me who aren’t very plugged into that sphere and don’t necessarily want to be. He comes from a position of loving technology and being angry at what’s happened to it, and unimpressed with AI. His articles dig into the history of Business Idiots, the financial realities of AI (spoiler: worse than you think), and discuss the enshittification of tech in general. If you’re going to be a hater you should understand what you’re hating, and one thing I learned from Ed is that I had not been hating the tech industry nearly enough and must do better.