Guts N' Gutters #6 (March 2025)
Crit One 3 is almost free, folk horror nearly out door(ror) and Jack Van Thomme joins us in our Guttery home,
TL;DR (Too Long, Don’t (Wanna) Read)
Crit One 3 Has Been Printed!
Zona Del Male’s Campaign Ends Today
A New Poem Soon To Be Published
Hellfire High-Rise Cancelled
Into the Gutters: A Special Guest Appears…
Go pick up Bad Music Taste and support on Made in Delco & The Cutting Room Floor Kickstarter!
WHAT’S THE WORD?
Correspondence - a close similarity, connection, or equivalence; communication by exchanging letters, emails, or other messages.
Crit One 3
We surpassed our goal and even got a few late pledges! Crit One 3 has already arrived, and I am working hard to get shipping done ASAP.
Thanks to everyone who supported Crit One 3!
Zona Del Male
Zona Del Male’s campaign ends today! We’re well past our goal, so help us have an even stronger finish.
Hellfire High-Rise Cancelled
As it goes sometimes in publishing, this project is no longer happening. I will be looking for other outlets to send my story, Weightless.
New Poem To Be Published!
A poem I wrote last year titled The They is being published in issue 11 of Transmuted!
The issue goes on sale in June, so stayed tuned for how to snag a copy. Until then, check out Transmuted’s other poetry and art!
INTO THE GUTTERS
Sculpting the Page: An Interview with Jack Van Thomme
This month on Guts N’ Gutters, I’m trying something a little different. This newsletter is meant to connect different mediums and spur thought on creativity, particularly in comics, but as every one of my subscribers has seen, wordy, heady nonsense is also on the table. Fear not, though, today is not the latter.
This month, I asked fellow Comic Jam member and pencil pusher, Jack Van Thomme, to spill all his secrets about how his many interests have transferred to his comic making. Though I do draw occasionally, I wouldn’t consider myself an artist, so I’m excited to pick the brain of someone whose work I enjoy and admire.
LH: Hey Jack! Thanks for typing words into this here Google Doc. My first question is what is a Jack Van Thomme? Where did it come from? Can you eat it?
JVT: Hey Luke! What really is an anything? Can you really eat an anything? These are the kinds of philosophical questions I try to answer with my wild scribblings. And if for some reason people don’t see that, that’s really their fault for not reading very very deeply when I draw a caveguy or some weird little medieval dude.
But really, I’m just me. I was born and raised in the Minneapolis area and try really hard to follow a few simple rules: be kind, try to understand other people, and do interesting things. So if that’s drawing comics, cooking, painting, playing sports, parenting, whatever -- I hope I’m doing it with those rules in mind.
LH: Love it! So, as I mentioned, I brought you here because you have a wide range of artistic interests and you’ve mentioned before that practicing these different things helps you with the others. Which medium did you start with and how did it expand from there?
JVT: In reality, sculpture was what really got me into art in the first place. Like a lot of kids, I think toys and action figures were just a natural companion to learning about the world and telling stories in our own miniature versions of that world. I always liked figuring out how toys got put together and once I realized that you could make your own sculptures and build your own little guys out of whatever, I really started to develop my interest.
For me, function and role dictate medium more than the other way around. I don’t really see art in terms of what media I can and can’t use, instead I see media as means to an end. So if there’s something intriguing about clay or I really feel like a certain story calls for the softness of watercolor, I’ll give it a shot, even if it’s not in my existing skillset.
That’s what’s ended up with me trying such a wide variety of media. Failure is not really a thing, because perfect isn’t either. What matters more than anything is that trying something for the first time means that the next time you do it, you’re just a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more familiar.
LH: I feel similarly. I’ve always been fascinated by multiple things and finding what things can be done better with, let’s say, comics vs. short stories, or poems vs. a stageplay etc. I also focus on what the larger goal is of a story (is it about dissecting one specific type of person, or is it to explore a feeling as thoroughly as possible etc.) and then decide how I want to create it.
But, since this is primarily a comics newsletter, let’s talk more about your comics work. How did you make the move from sculpture and other forms of visual art to sequential art? What from those other things helped you in your comics craft?
JVT: A lot of that comes from the space and material constraints of sculpture. I still love sculpture and the tangible side of any artistic medium (which is why I opt for physical comics over digital for crowdfunded projects and things like that), but the portability of drawing and painting over sculpture makes it so much more accessible on a regular basis.
At my core, though, I still think about the importance of a subtractive process when I'm drawing. In sculpture, you often start with a big, bulky rock or bit of clay, and you start carving away chunks here and there until a form emerges. From there, you refine the figure or object with details and along the way you add information to tell the viewer and audience what they're looking at and where to focus.
So much of my process is about finding that right aperture, the right balance of detail and overarching form, to engage an audience. If that comes through for even a handful of people that see my stuff, I'm really happy.
LH: That’s incredibly interesting. As my mom said, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”. Thanks for exchanging Google Doc typing with me this month!
You can find Jack Van Thomme on Instagram and BlueSky. Jack is also running a Kickstarter for his book with writer Doug Wood called In the Pale Moonlight, a strange superhero murder mystery that I am incredibly excited to read (and that should say something as I famously don’t read superhero books).
GUTTER BUDS
Shout out to these works by friends, colleagues, or things I think are neat!
A 24-page comic zine by a black queer creator that takes a road trip through my “bad” taste in music over the years. But who decides what’s bad anyway?
As someone who felt weird for their musical tastes (having a dad born in the 50s made mine kind of dated) this sounds delightful and I love the collage-style art.
Made in Delco - A Comic Anthology
Made in Delco is a 60 page comic anthology of 10 stories I've written sparked by my imagination that was cultivated by experiences growing up in Delco, PA.
For years, Jimmy and I have been colleagues at Comic Book Yeti and I’m incredibly excited for his anthology of comics. They’re guaranteed to be relatable and heartfelt. Launching April 1!
In the year 2144, the shadow organization, Bemis Limited, controls past, present, and future, by way of its Temporal Editors, until a paradox discrepancy is located, and Editor Frank Flores delves into the past to uncover long forgotten secrets, and a conspiracy so tucked away in the annals of time, it may pre-date time itself.
I love a good time travel story and the black and white art looks amazing; incredibly textured and moody. This one also launches April 1st, so don’t miss out!
