ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE
I’m cold and my family has Covid, but I am grateful for time in Tasmania. It’s a beautiful place. I recently saw an Instagram post that said, “when I take a walk for my mental health but then I realize I live in a shithole and walking just makes me sad.” I’m tryna avoid that for the rest of my time on Earth. I see so many ugly places on tour, it’s nice to come home to a pretty one.
PAGES IN MY INBOX
A WIP from Pramono. I’m doing a lot of highly stylized books, and it’s really a nice change of pace to also have a book with a more traditional approach. Some of Pramono’s work has a pre-80s editorial illustration feel to it. Really great for telling grounded stories.
WELCOME BACK FRANK
I’d like to take a minute to recommend to everyone THE AUTHOR IMMORTAL from Frank Barbiere and Morgan Beem.
I’ve read it, so I can advocate fully and without reservation. Frank is one of the underappreciated craftsmen of comics. A writer who can see the framework of a story in his head (as opposed to guys like Larry Hama or myself who can only see the page in front of them). Morgan works in a rare style that is highly-expressive but never abandons its obligation to storytelling. The combo makes for a fast-moving but layered first issue that I am confident will grab you.
INFLUENCES
Started watching Sinners, only to X the window. Not because it was bad. I got all of one minute in, so I can’t speak to its quality. Rather because I know I’ll be seeing it in manifest comics, and I, frankly, do not want to join that hivemind.
Comic books, particularly monthly ongoing comic books, are subject to pop-culture contamination. For example, during Game of Thrones television run, we saw a lot of GoT influence in comic books.
We live in the media Balkans in 2025. Nothing seems to hit all of us. Social media and legacy media silos create entertainment silos. How much of Sound of Freedom’s audience identified as ‘left-leaning?’ I’m guessing a rather small percentage. We’re still told what to consume, but now instead of four news media corporations telling us, it’s a half-dozen social platforms. All catering to our ideological priors.
And I can safely assume everyone in comic books watched Sinners.
Weapons now as well. We’re gonna see a lotta Weapons knockoffs in the coming 1.5 years (I can even assume which creators will do it). If you know what comic people are watching in the pop-culture space, you can predict with great accuracy the tones and themes you’ll see in upcoming comics.
I get how it happens. We all take influence from somewhere. And comic books got their start by chasing larger pop-culture trends. But I think we’re past that. We should be creating those trends, or at least have our own.
During the months I travel, I consume A LOT of media. It would be impossible for it not to have some impact on what I’m writing. “I wonder what I would do with the same premise?” on the extreme end of influence, and “effective use of rain in this story. I should have more scenes take place in the rain” on the more subtle end. But you can only shit out what you eat. And if we’re all eating the same things, I think our shit becomes a bit too samey.
CAREER GUIDANCE
I’m in a blessed situation of having a small hit in GEHENNA. Sales weren’t Earth-shattering, so there’s no heavy expectations weighing on me. But we’ve had strong sales for a limited series, with good reader feedback and some notice from retailers. Solid. It doesn’t give me carte blanche in terms of projects moving forward, but I feel like I have everyone’s trust at the moment.
So planning the next 12 months actually got harder.
The smart thing to do would be go from strength-to-strength with a project that compliments GEHENNA. But what happens when you’ve got four things in production, you’re not a big enough name to overlap those projects (conventional wisdom says you’ll cannibalize yourself), and you wanna do right by all your co-creators (not ask them to wait a year to see their book on shelves)?
I don’t know. I’ve decided to do the smart thing, as it will ultimately benefit everyone (the more goodwill you generate with books readers can easily approach, the more grace they’ll give difficult books). But it’s not without some reservations.
In music, if you talk about the business of the thing, sometimes people see it as an effort to flex. Because there’s musicians at every level, so even if you are at the bottom, there’s a guy in the sub-basement who thinks you’re bragging.
Comics, in many respects, are the same way. But I’m gonna underline that I am not bragging about anything here. When I say I’ve got a ‘small hit’ I mean, a SMALL hit. Don’t misunderstand me. I just like talking about this stuff because I remember when I was new and I couldn’t get a handle on the business of comics at all. Because nobody would talk honestly about it.
STRANGERS I SPOKE TO THIS WEEK
Spoke to a child of the Blitz on a dog walk the other day. Doing the math, she’s in remarkable shape for her age. She can remember the dugout in the backyard of her parents’ Manchester home where the family would shelter when the sirens started.
Her school wasn’t rebuilt until five years after the war. Her early education memories are in a tent.
The conversation turned to politics and, eventually, America. She did what most Australians I talk to do and refused to say Trump’s name. I told her I had only met one Australian who likes Trump in my whole time here.
“Oh was his name Don?”
“I don’t know. He replaced the battery in my car.”
“My neighbor Don, God rest his soul, loved Trump. We’d have these parties where everyone would agree not to bring up politics, but then someone would have one wine too many and set him in motion.”
“How did that go?”
“You know, I can handle anyone’s politics, to a point. So long as they’re a laugh.”
MEDIA CONSUMPTION
Crazy that I’d never seen NEMESIS. It’s essentially a live-action version of a 90s OVA. The pacing, themes, and cyborg window-dressing of the whole thing were pure VHS anime. I fell asleep while guys were shooting each other and woke up and they were still shooting each other. It’s vibe + thousands of rounds of gunfire. Recommended.
Another one I’m surprised I hadn’t seen, Lady Vengeance is fantastic. Really distinct Park Chan-wook tone. Sardonic? It’s not glib. What word am I looking for? What’s the word for when heavy topics are handled with a sad small smile? Recommended.
I think Dragon Ruins is considered a ‘micro game’ as it takes 1.5hrs to beat. An ‘auto battler,’ the game isn’t in combat but exploration. And there’s not much to find, honestly. It’s a maze and your only job as a player is to know when to come up from the maze so you don’t die. Art style is great. And I was able to plot my own stories while playing, so a nice little zone out. Recommended.
Prodeus is fantastic and derivative. It’s perfectly balanced, perfectly mapped, and flawlessly executed.
But it’s just Doom. You’re a space marine, or whatever. And you’re killing demons, or whatever. There’s plenty of vibe, but it’s borrowed. It’s difficult to rate something like this. It’s perfect at being Doom 35 years after Doom. But how big a compliment is that? I don’t typically tell creative people what they ‘need’ to do. But these developers need to do their own thing. Recommended, but I want variety.
File this next one under Patrick Is Impossible To Please. The game Forgive Me Father is very much its own thing. Allowing some grace to the tired Lovecraft thing, the execution of this one isn’t like anything else I’ve played in the boomer shooter genre. But, damn, if some of that originality is misplaced.
It’s ostensibly a horror shooter, given the setting and influences. But when you shoot a villain, the damage count pops over their head, reminding you that this is, in fact, a stupid video game. I don’t know that you can ever truly be immersed in something as abstract as this game, but there’s no shot when the mechanics go so hard into “hey it’s a goddamn videogame and don’t you forget it!” Recommended, but again with reservations.
FROM THE DESIGN FOLDER
I’ve seen some really pitiful efforts at recreating this type of busy magazine-style manga cover from American publishers. And it always sucks.
But I think I can do it. Or that its at least worth trying. I’m gonna hire a photographer to take photos of Jakarta for the book Pramono and I are doing. Then I’m gonna hire artists with real swag for the overlayed illustration. And then I’m gonna hire a designer with swag to make it busy but not hack.
The We Got It Right variant series. Coming end of 2026.
THAT’S IT FOR THIS WEEK
If we’re lucky, I should have something very cool to show you next week. A lotta exciting things happening and I’m grateful for anyone who helps make that the case. Have a good week. Slowly migrate someplace with aesthetic beauty. Do for self.