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ARGH! I had this done on the 29th, and it’s been such a shitburg since then that I have not been able to post it until now.

…what? What is a SHITBERG? Well it’s like an iceberg…but of shit. Imagine bad enough you hit an iceberg….but it;s made of shit. Thats abd. That really freaking bad.

But yeah it’s not really that bad but its been busy here at the FWACATA HQ to say the least. New Job, new artwork and new challenges, it’s was a bitch, plus I came back from Madrid and everything hit at once. Most of this cna be chalked up to finanancial woes but that’s per for the course right now, especially when you choose ot be an artist.

Speaking of which:

I’ve decided to jsut make the zines for free! If you’d like to download and read all 32 issues you find them here! Plus this one! It’s a whole other experience when you sit back and flip through them as a book!

Get this issue here

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

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FWACATA - the book!

So if you don’t know, I do a small print run anthology of my own story called FWACATA, of course! The first issue has been out for a bit, and you can read it FO’FREE YO! Here are the links:

READ ON BINDINGS:

FWACATA #1

And I haven’t released this in its entirety before, so here it is, issue 2 for freeeeeeeeee!

FWACATA #2

If you use GLOBALCOMIX (if not WTF?), you can read all 3 issues on there here:

FWACATA issue 1-3 on GLOBALCOMIX

You can also go to this link and read EVERYTHING else on there!

WEBCOMICS

NEENJAZ

New Episode of NEENJAZ every MONDAY!
Ancient Art of Whooping ass across the multiverse, here just for you!

ZOMBIE YEARS

Read the complete ZOMBIE YEARS series here on Webtoons! Over a hundred pages of SUN, FUN, AND BLEEDING JUGULARS!

VIGIL

VIGIL is about superheroes in the MAGIC CITY: MIAMI! And what that hot take means! It’s all about life, love, redemption, croquettes, and INVULNERABILITY! If you want to see a lot more of the world of FUGLY, this is it!
VAMONOS!

I WILL UPDATE THIS PAGE AS I GO, BUT hit it up and let me know what you think!

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Twenty pages of monsters, comic-book chaos, unfinished ideas, finished damage, and the kind of artwork that happens when summer gives me too much time to think.

The newest issue of ART TO THE FACE is finished, loaded, and ready to invade your device.

This is Issue #30, which means I have somehow made thirty of these things without being stopped by the authorities, common sense, or the rising cost of ink.

Inside, you get twenty pages of drawings, comic art, sketchbook experiments, cover work, character designs, old ideas dragged back into the light, and new ideas that probably should have stayed buried. It is part art book, part sketchbook, part studio archive, and part evidence that I have never learned how to work on only one project at a time.

This month’s issue includes everything from a full-color fantasy massacre on the cover to monsters, armored women, robots, zombies, sketchbook notes, rough concepts, finished commissions, and pages that show how the sausage gets made—assuming the sausage was made out of brush pens, bad decisions, and too much caffeine.

You will find work connected to Zombie Years, fantasy and horror pieces, comic-cover art, painted character studies, original designs, and behind-the-scenes pages full of names, maps, notes, and half-formed universes trying to kick their way out of my skull. There are polished pieces, loose drawings, experiments, and the occasional visual accident that turned out better than the original plan.

That is the point of ART TO THE FACE.

It is not a fancy corporate art magazine designed by a committee. It is direct access to the workbench. It is the stuff I am drawing, developing, revisiting, testing, and occasionally wrestling to the ground.

And subscribers get to download the whole thing.

When you join the FWACATA Substack, you are not just helping me post more often. You are helping fund the actual making of comics, original art, zines, stories, podcasts, livestreams, and all the weird projects currently fighting for space on my desk.

You get comics, artwork, process posts, sketchbook material, downloadable zines, livestreams, and access to the growing FWACATA archive. You get to see the work before it disappears into a box, becomes part of another project, or gets sold to somebody with better wall space than you.

Most importantly, your support gives me more time to do the work instead of spending it trying to convince an algorithm that I exist.

So join up, download ART TO THE FACE #30, flip through the madness, and see what has been happening behind the scenes.

Twenty pages. Thirty issues. No filler. No corporate polish.

Just art.

Straight to the face.

Read more

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So…

I did a comic a while ago called VIGIL for one of the first webcomic publishers, GRAPHICSMASH, back in the day. This was my earliest gig, my first time out there, and, of course, it’s a Superhero book… but set in MIAMI! HAH

See a theme there?

Anywho… It’s near and dear to me, and if you read MEATHOOK or FUGLY, you’ll see that they all stem from this Universe. It’s near and dear to me. But of course, like the mutant child that it is, it has many a wart and fuck up in it, and was locked away in the basement and fed fishheads all these years, only to emerge for walkies on Webtoons and some other places.

Read more

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I pulled out the comics, showed where the name came from, talked about the strange road from Miami to El Paso, and opened up the sketchbooks where all the ideas, bad notes, good accidents, and future disasters are currently hiding. There are glimpses of Meathook, REZ, Zombie Years, Fierro, and a few other things I’m probably not supposed to be working on simultaneously—but here we are.

Then I settled in and worked on a new FUGLY page live, using toy cars for reference, ink washes for motion, and the sort of crooked lines that would make a ruler file a restraining order. Along the way, I talked about why restrictions can make comics easier, why speed matters, how I loosely script pages, and why you shouldn’t wait for anyone’s permission to make the stories living in your head.

There’s also a little philosophy buried under the ink: anybody can make comics, perfection is overrated, and eventually we all go into the ground—so you might as well draw the damn thing now.

Watch the replay, see the page come together, and hang out in the studio while I try to explain what the hell I’m doing.

Subscribe to FWACATA for free comics, artwork, process posts, livestreams, podcasts, and the ongoing construction of this ridiculous universe. Paid subscribers get access to deeper archives, digital comics, and more original art goodness.

Get more from FWACATA in the Substack app

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Some weeks, motivation isn’t about crushing goals, optimizing your schedule, or becoming a productivity machine.

Sometimes motivation is simply figuring out how to stay human.

After years of podcasts, hundreds of conversations, and more headlines than any sane person should consume, I’ve noticed something: it’s easy to become another voice screaming into the noise. Another person pointing at everything that’s broken. Another reminder that the world is on fire.

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The problem is that most of us already know the fire is there.

We’re drowning in information. Every day brings a new outrage, a new scandal, a new reason to be angry, exhausted, or cynical. At some point, constantly describing the disaster stops being useful. It becomes background noise.

So this week’s Monday Motivation isn’t really about politics, economics, technology, or any particular crisis. It’s about something underneath all of that.

It’s about your soul.

Not in a religious sense necessarily. Not in a mystical sense. Just that core part of you that decides what kind of person you’re going to be when everything around you is trying to pull you in another direction.

Why is it that we’re often so protective of the things we love, the things that make us vulnerable, the things that matter to us... yet we’re completely comfortable embracing our anger, our resentment, and our hatred?

Why do we examine our hopes so carefully but rarely stop to examine what we’re furious about?

This episode dives into that question.

It also wrestles with something many of us are feeling right now: the sense that the systems we’re told to trust aren’t functioning the way they should. Whether it’s politics, corporations, technology, or public institutions, there seems to be a growing gap between what people need and what they’re getting.

The question becomes: What do you do when you feel powerless?

What do you do when showing up doesn’t seem to change anything?

What do you do when you’re scared about the future but still trying to remain hopeful?

I don’t pretend to have the answers.

Leave a comment

What I do know is that giving up your humanity isn’t one of them.

If things are going to get difficult—and I suspect they might—then we’re going to need people who can think clearly, act with purpose, support one another, and refuse to become monsters just because they’re surrounded by them.

Maybe that’s where motivation starts.

Not with changing the world overnight.

But with deciding what kind of person you’re going to be while the world changes around you.

Listen to this week’s episode and let me know what you think.

And whatever comes next, try to remember one thing:

Be good.

A copper for your thoughts, or would I get change coming?

The old man claimed the sea remembered everything, and he said it with the bitter conviction of someone who’d tried to outshout the tide and ended up coughing up saltwater and pride.

Not the way sailors get poetic after their third bottle and a lifetime of bad decisions. He meant it with the kind of seriousness that makes you check your pockets for knives. The sea, he said, carried memory the way blood carries plague—always lurking, always ready to ruin your day. If you listened to the hulls groaning in Oceanforge harbor, or the black water north of Karabek, you could hear the world itself trying to drown out the memory of Narrisia, and failing.

Most ignored him. That was tradition at the Vomiting Dragon, right alongside watered ale, sticky floors, and the kind of decisions that make you wish you’d been born a fish.

The tavern squatted by the lower piers, where steam tangled with salt and the gutters ran red every time the slaughter barges limped in from the eastern fisheries. The place leaned left, like a drunk who’d lost a bet with gravity. Pipes hissed overhead. Blue condensation dripped from copper veins and splashed into mugs that hadn’t seen coin since the last king died. Upstairs, a woman laughed as if she were losing a knife fight. Below the floorboards, something scratched with the patience of a debtor waiting for the gods to forget his name.

The old man had staked out a corner beneath a mural of a dragon vomiting fire onto a parade of tax collectors. He looked like he’d been carved out of stubbornness, bad luck, and the kind of spite that keeps you alive through three wars and a marriage.

One of his eyes was clouded, blind from age or maybe just from seeing too much. His fingers were crooked from old breaks, his beard stained yellow by pipe smoke and years of salt wind. He wore a wool coat big enough to hide a goat, or a small crime. He smelled of salt, mildew, and an oil that clung like a curse. One boot clanked from iron plates hammered into the sole, and his accent hacked through the Common Tongue as it owed him money.

“Narrisia,” he rasped, staring into his cup, “was not born wrong.”

Nobody answered.

A few patrons glanced over, then went back to their cards or drinks. In Oceanforge, you learned quickly that listening too closely to old sailors usually ended in religion, stabbing, or both if you were unlucky.

The sailor continued anyway.

“We were proud once. Cold people, yes. Hard people. But proud.” He scratched at his beard. “The valleys of Narrisia were dead to magic long before the Horrors came. That is truth. Ask any scholar stupid enough to walk there.”

The merchant nearby barked, “Why would magic steer clear of your land, old man?”

The sailor slowly looked at him.

“Because something already lived there.”

That earned him a few more glances, the kind you give a man who might be about to start a fire or a sermon.

Not many. But enough.

Outside, thunder rolled over Oceanforge harbor. Rain tapped at the warped glass like a beggar with cold fingers. Somewhere deeper in the tavern, someone started up a fiddle tune that sounded like a funeral trying to remember how to dance.

The sailor drank.

“You know Bleed Stone?” he asked.

A dockworker nodded cautiously. “Warp stone. Weirdstone. Heard the names.”

The old sailor spat onto the floorboards.

“No. Those are wrong names given by southern fools. Warp stone bends magic. Bleed Stone kills it.”

He tapped the table with one thick finger.

“In Narrisia, magic dies.”

He spoke the words quietly, but something about them made the nearby lantern flicker.

Not everywhere. But enough. Whole valleys where spells unravel in your mouth. Places where druids become blind. Places where enchanted blades rust in their sheaths. The mountains themselves are threaded with the stone, veins thicker than rivers. Some say they were placed there by the gods to cage something beneath the world. Others whisper the Bleed Stone is older than the land itself— a wound from when the sky broke, and the world bled. The oldest scholars argue it is the remains of a dead star that fell in ancient ages. It poisoned the earth and sapped magic wherever its shadow reached.

He smiled the way a man does when he’s run out of better options and is about to try his luck with the worst one.

“Others say they are the bones of that thing.”

The dockworker swallowed.

The sailor leaned back slowly.

“You foreigners think Narrisia hates magic because we are cruel. Because we are frightened peasants wrapped in iron and snow.” He coughed wetly into his fist. “No. We hate magic because we remember what it does when left alone.”

A serving girl passed by carrying drinks. She slowed slightly to listen.

The sailor noticed.

Old men lived on stories the way drunks lived on cheap ale and the kind of bad decisions that get you banned from three ports.

“The Autarch understood this better than anyone.”

Now the room shifted.

Even drunks knew that title.

The God-Autarch of Narrisia. The immortal ruler in the north. Divine tyrant. Prophet. Monster. Depending on who told the story.

The sailor lowered his voice.

“The Last Emperor.”

A silence settled over the nearby tables.

He smiled like a man chewing on a mouthful of nails and pretending it was steak.

“Though perhaps ‘last’ is the wrong word.”

Rain hammered harder outside.

“I was born in Kharov Vale,” he said. “Before the purges reached the coast. Before the smoke towers. Before the machine legions marched west.”

His eyes wandered off to some place only ghosts, old regrets, and tax collectors could find.

“My father built anchors. My mother stitched winter sails. We prayed to the old saints then. Sea saints. Storm saints. Tiny gods with tiny powers.” He chuckled softly. “Narrisians distrust large gods. They ask too much.”

A man near the bar muttered, “Except your emperor.”

The sailor nodded slowly.

“Yes. Except him.”

He worked his scarred hands together like he was trying to coax a fire from old bones and older grudges.

“The old stories say the Autarch was not born. He arrived.”

Nobody interrupted now.

They say he walked out of the northern ice during the Years of Ash, when the Horrors still roamed openly, and the world burned itself alive every season. Some claimed he was a prophet sent by Balo. Others claimed he was a king from before history. Some said he was a Horror wearing human skin. He paused, eyes narrowing. There are older tales too. Strange things seen in his shadow. Wolves howled in daylight whenever he passed. Snow fell black for three nights after his arrival in Voromir. Once, a priestess swore she looked into his eyes and saw stars moving beneath ice. No one who served him ever agreed on the sound of his voice.

The fiddler upstairs stopped playing.

The silence deepened.

The sailor’s cloudy eye drifted toward the ceiling as though remembering something he wished he could forget.

“He united Narrisia in thirteen winters. Do you understand what that means?”

Nobody answered.

“Thirteen winters,” he repeated. “Our clans once killed each other over sheep paths and fishing rights. We buried knives with our children so they would be armed in the afterlife. Yet this man walked into the valleys and made us kneel.”

His voice became softer.

And the frightening thing was, people wanted to. Like sheep lining up for the butcher, smiling all the way.

The serving girl now remained frozen beside the table.

“He spoke little,” the sailor continued. “Never shouted. Never threatened. He simply looked at men, and they felt ashamed for disappointing him.”

A laugh slipped out, low and sharp as a broken bottle in a back alley brawl.

“My grandfather saw him once in the city of Voromir. Said he walked through snowfall without leaving footprints.”

A drunk at the bar scoffed nervously. “Old nonsense.”

The sailor ignored him.

“He began the Purity Wars shortly after. Claimed the Horrors were not dead. Claimed they hid inside magic itself. Claimed every sorcerer was a doorway waiting to open.”

He drank again.

“And perhaps he was right.”

The room shifted uneasily.

“In the north,” the sailor said, “there are ruins older than memory. Black towers buried beneath mountains. Places where even wolves refuse to howl.” His voice cracked slightly. “The Autarch found one beneath the city of Dresk.”

Now even the tavern keeper had stopped wiping mugs.

The sailor leaned forward.

“They uncovered a chamber made of stone that bled when struck.”

Nobody moved.

“At its center,” he whispered, “was something alive.”

Lightning flashed outside.

For a heartbeat, the old man’s face looked like it was trying to remember how to be a skull, and almost succeeding.

“They called it a bound Horror.”

Someone laughed nervously.

The sailor did not.

It had no shape. That was the problem. One man saw a mountain of mouths. Another saw his dead wife. Another saw a field of screaming horses stitched together by human hands. The men who survived the sight did not stay themselves for long. Some could not sleep without waking to screams. Others spoke nonsense and clawed at their own faces until blood ran. Wherever its chamber lay open, nothing grew for miles. Water turned brackish. The air thickened, as if weighed down by invisible hands. It was as if the land itself tried to forget what it witnessed, but could not.

The serving girl quietly set the drinks down and sat beside the dockworker without realizing she had done so.

“The emperor ordered it contained,” the sailor said. “Not killed. Bound.”

He stared into his cup.

“That was the beginning of Narrisia as you know it.”

The dockworker frowned. “Bound how?”

The sailor smiled faintly.

“With men.”

A coldness passed through the room.

The Bleed Stone beneath Narrisia suppressed magic. The Autarch believed he could use it as chains. Massive engines were built beneath the mountains—vast iron constructs with spines of copper and wheels that crushed bone into dust. They fed on blood and sorrow, belching steam through pipes that throbbed like the veins of some buried giant. Entire cities were hollowed into laboratories and prisons. His voice became distant again. Priests fed themselves into the machines willingly. Sorcerers were cut apart while still breathing so their deaths could strengthen the bindings.

The merchant near the fire muttered, “Gods preserve us.”

The sailor laughed harshly.

“No gods entered those valleys.”

Rain battered the windows now.

“They say the emperor descended beneath Dresk himself during the final binding. Three thousand soldiers marched with him.” His voice grew quieter with every sentence. “Only he returned.”

Someone whispered, “What did he see?”

The sailor looked up slowly.

“Himself.”

Nobody spoke.

“He emerged changed. Taller. Stronger. Colder.” The sailor rubbed at his bad eye. “After that, he no longer aged. Priests began calling him divine. Whole armies worshipped him as a living god.”

He leaned back.

“And perhaps he was.”

A long silence followed.

The old sailor stared into the dark tavern while thunder rolled over Oceanforge.

“Then came the purges.”

His voice had gone flat now.

“Magic outlawed. Elves butchered. Witches burned alive inside iron bells. Entire villages marched into mines to dig Bleed Stone until their teeth fell out.”

The dockworker asked quietly, “And you?”

The sailor took a long breath.

“I served the navy.”

His lips twisted like he’d bitten into something rotten and realized it was his own words.

“We hunted refugees. Smugglers. Mages fleeing west.” He stared at his hands again. “I told myself we protected the world.”

Another pause.

“Then I saw the emperor.”

The room leaned closer without meaning to.

“It was during the Siege of Korvath Port. Rebels had seized a fortress on the cliffs. Mages among them. We expected artillery.”

His breathing slowed.

“The Autarch arrived alone.”

The sailor’s remaining eye had gone distant again.

“He walked through cannon fire.”

Nobody laughed now.

“The rebel sorcerers unleashed everything they had. Firestorms. Bone curses. Lightning. The sky itself split open.” His voice shook slightly. “And none of it touched him.”

The dockworker whispered, “Bleed Stone?”

The sailor nodded once.

“No magic survived near him.”

He swallowed hard.

“Then he raised his hand.”

The tavern had gone utterly silent.

“And the mages...” The sailor’s jaw tightened. “They forgot how to cast.”

Even the thunder outside seemed quieter.

“One woman screamed because she could no longer remember her own name.” He rubbed his forehead slowly. “Another clawed her eyes out trying to find her spells.”

The merchant crossed himself instinctively.

The sailor continued.

“The rebels surrendered within the hour. The emperor ordered every one of them sealed alive inside the fortress walls.”

He finished his drink.

“That was the day I deserted.”

The dockworker whispered, “You fled Narrisia?”

The sailor nodded.

Took a fishing boat west through storm waters. Lost two fingers to ice, my son to fever before we limped into Oceanforge. Lost my wife somewhere before that, but that’s another story and a worse one.

Nobody had the right words, or the wrong ones.

The old man sagged, as if the years had finally caught up, handed him the bill, and waited for a tip.

“The Autarch still rules,” he murmured. He hesitated, eyes flickering as though chasing old rumors through the smoke. “They say he has not aged in fifty years. Some claim he is a shadow behind his own eyes. Or something wearing him does.”

A voice came from the darkness nearby.

“You believe he bound the Horror?”

The sailor looked up.

A man sat alone at a nearby table that had been empty moments before.

Wide-brimmed hat.

Dark coat damp from rain.

A pipe smoldered quietly between gloved fingers.

Nobody had seen him enter.

The sailor stared.

The man’s face remained mostly hidden beneath the hat brim.

“What I believe,” the sailor said carefully, “does not matter.”

The stranger smoked silently.

“Yet you told the story anyway.”

The sailor’s hands tightened around the mug.

“I am old.”

“That has never stopped fear before.”

Something about the man’s voice made the air feel smaller.

The sailor studied him carefully now.

Not drunk.

Not sailor.

Not dockworker.

Too still.

Too calm.

“Are you asking if the stories are true?” the sailor asked.

The stranger nodded once.

The old sailor took a long breath.

“I think the emperor tried to chain a Horror.” He swallowed. “And I think the Horror chained him back.”

The pipe ember glowed brighter.

Around them the tavern noise slowly returned, though quieter now. Dice rolled. Someone laughed upstairs. A drunk collapsed against the bar.

Life, as always, pretending the abyss was just another neighbor who borrowed your tools and never gave them back.

The stranger reached into his coat and placed a copper coin onto the table.

Heavy.

Narrisian.

The old imperial seal gleamed in the lanternlight.

The sailor froze.

He had not seen one in decades.

“You know what they say in Narrisia?” the stranger asked softly.

The sailor said nothing.

“The dead should remain useful.”

The man stood.

For a brief moment, the sailor noticed how tall he was.

Not giant tall.

Wrong tall.

Like his proportions had been remembered imperfectly.

The stranger stepped beside the table casually, as though preparing to leave.

Then he moved.

Fast.

One gloved hand covered the sailor’s mouth while the other drove a thin black blade upward beneath the ribs.

Precise.

Practiced.

The sailor jerked once.

No scream escaped him.

The blade slid perfectly between organs. A killing strike designed not for pain, but silence.

The old man’s remaining eye widened.

The stranger leaned close enough for only him to hear.

“Some things,” he said quietly in Narrisian, “are better as myth than truth.”

The sailor tried to breathe.

Couldn’t.

The blade twisted once.

Gently.

Then the stranger lowered him back into the chair like a sleeping drunk.

Nobody noticed.

Or if they did, they preferred not to.

That too was Oceanforge: a city where the dead kept their seats warm, and the living pretended not to notice.

The man removed the blade, wiped it clean with a cloth, and placed the pipe back between his teeth.

The copper coin remained on the table beside the sailor’s stiffening hand.

Outside, rain swallowed the streets.

The stranger paused briefly at the tavern door.

For just an instant, lightning illuminated his face beneath the brim.

Pale.

Ancient.

And his eyes—

Not human.

Then he stepped into the storm and vanished into Oceanforge night, leaving the dead sailor alone with his story and the terrible possibility that every word of it had been true.

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