Welcome to thatNewsletter!
It’s the year 2025. Podcasts, thirst trap reels, and AI slop accounts are all the rage… so I’m starting a newsletter! Bam.
Welcome to the future and thanks for checking it out.
In case you drunk-clicked your way here - and if you did I hope you had an epic night that will yield years of stories and one embarrassing tattoo - a quick primer on me. I’m Joe Kelly, a professional writer who’s been lucky enough to make my bag in comics, animation, video games, and film for over twenty-five years. I’m also an amateur photographer, Gunpla modeler, anime nerd, gamer, and occasional YouTuber, so I know a thing or three about living as a creative - pro and otherwise.
You’re quite full of yourself. Who do you think you are, Chip Zdarsky!?
Chip is amazing and I am hardly qualified to carry his Canadian bacon, but since you brought him up, shout out to Chip for inspiring me to get off my ass and get into the newsletter game and steal his style until I find my own. Read Chip’s awesome work here!
Talking with him made me realize that I want to connect with fans of my work in a meaningful way as well as inspire folks who are on a creative journey of their own. Since showing up at your house would be weird, a newsletter seems like a good option. It’s also a lot faster than making YouTube videos, which I love, but eat up a ton of time. If you want to check out what I mean, here’s the channel I started.
Bonus reason for a newsletter:
I think I hate social media now.
So will this be a bi-weekly ad selling me your degenerate comic books?
No, though I’d certainly appreciate it if you checked them out. (The Amazing Spider-Man #1 is on sale this week!)
All right, assume I believe you, what will pepper my inbox with every two weeks?
Living la Vida Creative: My goal is to pull back the curtain on my process and share what I’ve learned with folks who are interested. Sometimes it’ll be tactical writing tips and tricks, other times creative living stuff like, “How to stay married while pursuing a thing that throws off no money”. (Hypnosis is the key.) Ask Questions and I will try to answer - especially if people are all asking about the same thing… and that thing is not “Will Peter and MJ get together?”
Amazing Behind-The-Spider-Scenes: If you don’t already know, my first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, drawn by superstars Pepe Larraz & John Romita jr., with inks by Scott Hanna, colored by Marte Gracia and Marcio Menyz, lettered by Joe Caramagna, hits stands on Wednesday, April 9th. Once the book is out in the world, I ‘m going to dedicate some space in here talking about each issue and share bits of the scripts to show how we got from my brain to the book.
And when there are other projects, like Fang with Niko Henrichon, or my next book with Ken Niimura, I’ll do the same with those!
General Positive Geekery: This is a chance to geek out about the weird stuff that I love. I can’t see myself deep diving those things any more on Twitter or Instagram, so I’ll do it here. Hopefully the Venn diagram of our interests will overlap and you’ll also dig the things in life I’m enjoying, which include in no particular order: manga, anime, video games, motorcycles, cameras, movies and gunpla among other things.
Are you doing any shows so I can show my love and or disdain in person?
Glad you asked! I think that there will be some shows on the horizon, but right now the one on deck is Phillipsburg Comic-con. This is a special show - student run, built for charity, and powered by the tireless efforts of Ms. Faith Roncoroni. This is the 10th anniversary of the event, and it’s gonna be great. Info here.
That’s it?
For now! Please subscribe if this stuff sounds of interest and I’ll see you in the next one!
-JK
Books & Appearances:
Comics!
The Amazing Spider-Man #1 - On sale 4/9
The Amazing Spider-Man #2 - On sale 4/23
Godzilla vs. Spider-Man - On sale 4/30
The Amazing Spider-Man #3 - FOC on 4/7 - On sale 5/7
FCBD The Amazing Spider-Man - FREE on 5/3
The Amazing Spider-Man #4 - FOC on 4/21 - On sale 5/21
Immortal Sergeant - Order from your LCS!
I Kill Giants - Order from your LCS!
Appearances!
League of Comic Geeks AMA - 4/10 (Virtual, obvs!)
Grasshopper’s Comics - 4/12 from 12p-3p
Phillipsburg Comic-Con - 5/10
I applaud you for attempting this! Sounds like you’ll have a lot on your plate. Extremely eager to keep up with your run on ASM, and excited to learn even more fun tidbits here.
Hey Carlos!
Thanks for checking it out! I'm psyched to give it a go. Hope you find some good tidbits along the way!
-JK
Can't wait for your run, I loved your Justice League and Spider-Man/Deadpool.
I'm curious, any chance we might see the return of some characters from Peter's civilian life return? Not talking of the Bugle but instead about characters from Horizon, or Ana Maria Marconi (loved how you used her), Sajani Jaffrey or others?
Hey Jonathan!
Thanks for the kind words! These are great characters that you've mentioned. I'm definitely pulling from different eras as far as blasts from Peter's past, so stay tuned!
-JK