A sketchbook is everything, man.

Mine carries comic ideas, character sketches, teaching schedules, reminders, scraps of paper, and things I write down because I know damn well I’ll forget them otherwise. Somewhere in there, a vampire cheerleader might show up. That’s how it goes.

In this video, I walk you through how I prep a new pocket sketchbook, from fixing up the cover to laying out the month ahead. You’ll also get a look inside some older books and see how this little system helps me keep making things while life keeps happening.

Watch the video and get your own sketchbook out. You can set yours up while I work on mine.

I like these small, simple books because they fit in my pocket. When an idea hits, I have somewhere to put it. A scene for FUGLY, something for VIGIL, a note for Dragonbreath, or a drawing that doesn’t belong anywhere yet—it all gets a home.

Share

The pages are full of experiments. Sometimes I’m figuring out a pose. Sometimes I’m writing a few words that might become a story. Sometimes I’m just messing around long enough to discover something worth keeping.

Here’s how I get a fresh one ready:

• Fix up the cover. I cover the cardboard with adhesive labels to give myself a smoother drawing surface, then add my own artwork. Clear packing tape helps protect it from the abuse of being carried around all month.

• Make room for loose stuff. A pocket in the back holds business cards, receipts, tickets, and whatever else needs to come along.

• Keep useful notes handy. Schedules and sticky notes move over from the previous book when I still need them.

• Draw out the weeks. I make a simple grid with seven days and a space for notes. A ruler, a marker, and a little patience get it done.

• Add some color. Green is for money-related things, orange is for FWACATA and creative work, and pink is for school. It helps me see what’s happening at a glance.

Then comes the part that keeps the work moving: PAD—Panel a Day.

Getting to the drawing board for twenty minutes and finishing a panel adds up. Some days, that little check mark represents a sketch, a scene written, or progress on another project. I want a record that I showed up and did something.

Crossing things off helps, too. There’s a small satisfaction in looking at a page and seeing evidence that you got your shit done.

Lately, I’ve been working with one month, one book. When I flip back through it, I can see what I was making, what needed my attention, and where my head was. I keep the old ones because there are still ideas in those pages waiting for another chance.

Some of those drawings also find their way into ART TO THE FACE, my monthly sketchbook zine. This video lets you see where that material starts.

And sorry about the abrupt ending! The camera got hot and cut off while I was working on the cover. Apparently, it had reached its creative limit before I had.

If you enjoy seeing how the comics, drawings, and odd little ideas come together, subscribe to FWACATA here on Substack. Follow along for comics, art, writing, videos, and more time at the drawing table. A paid subscription helps support the work and keeps me making more of it.

Subscribe now

Tell me in the comments: what goes into your sketchbook—and would you like more live drawing sessions?

Leave a comment

Now grab a little book and put something in it.

ART TO THE FACE #33: Toys, Ninjas, and Other Excellent Bad Decisions

September’s sketchbook zine is here. Come for the art. Stay for the tiny plastic bastards and questionable ambition.

This month I did a whole lot and somehow felt like I had very little to show for it. Then I started putting together ART TO THE FACE #33 and realized where the time went: sketches, figures, painting, story notes, and approximately twelve different arguments with myself about what comes next.

Apparently, making art also involves making decisions. Nobody mentioned that shit in the brochure.

September has been packed with studying for my master’s, hopefully wrapping up in December, and training toward a new job teaching graphic design. I’ve been crossing fingers, toes, and huevos. At this point, getting out of a chair requires strategy.

Through all of that, though, the work keeps happening. And this month’s zine lets you get close enough to see it taking shape.

ART TO THE FACE is my monthly sketchbook zine: drawings, experiments, works in progress, and whatever else crawls across the desk demanding attention. Some things are finished. Some are finding their legs. Some need me to stop fiddling with them and let them live.

If you like seeing how a sketch becomes a character, or how a ridiculous idea starts becoming an actual thing, this issue has plenty to dig into.

There’s toy-making, including bases for my own figures and one for my buddy @BARRIOBOBA on Instagram. These little bastards deserve to stand up and stand out. A good base gives a figure presence, attitude, a little stage to inhabit. Also, fewer faceplants off the shelf. Dignity matters, even when you’re made of plastic.

There’s also CALCINATION No. 1, the painting I finished for an upcoming show. It feels good to get something across the finish line while everything else is still waving its arms and asking for another revision. Sometimes you need that finished piece sitting there to remind you: yes, you can actually do this. Now wash your brushes, you animal.

Then we get into NEENJAZ.

I still love what I made during that first year, but it didn’t hit the way I wanted. Looking through it again, I can see ideas worth pushing, designs worth sharpening, and places where I need to give the story more room. These notes are me working toward a stronger foundation before bringing it back for year two.

That’s exciting. You can return to something you love with better tools and a clearer idea of what you want it to do. The ninjas can handle a little constructive ass-kicking.

And then there’s H00D, where I apparently decided comics weren’t already enough work.

The idea is a stop-motion comic book: build figures, build sets, pose them, photograph them, and turn those images into a story on paper. Tiny actors. Handmade worlds. Me making punching noises alone in a room.

I want to discover what happens when I can physically move a light, turn a face, or put a character into a world I built with my hands. Will it work? I’ll find out by making it. That possibility has me itching to get started.

You’ll also find sketches and notes for Kuriouser and Kuriouser, and there’s a new comic waiting on the website. Meanwhile, Inktober is approaching with its usual innocent expression, pretending it won’t eat my entire October. I’m planning a separate zine for that madness, too.

Share

Want to follow where all this goes? Subscribe to FWACATA.

A free subscription keeps you connected to the comics, art, stories, and updates I share here. If you enjoy the work and can support it financially, consider becoming a paid subscriber. That support helps me keep making independent comics, putting these zines together, and giving strange ideas the time and materials they need to grow.

Read ART TO THE FACE #33, tell me what catches your eye, and share this post with somebody who loves comics, toys, or getting their hands dirty.

Subscribe at FWACATA.com and come see what happens next.

Subscribe now

I’ve got shit to make. Glad you’re here.

Laters.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL ZINE HERE FREE

Debuting some comics here before they go to print. This is a short for issue 4 of FWACATA. Not final; I may tweak it, but I wanted to share! let me know what you think!

Leave a comment

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE

CALCINATION No. 1 takes its name from the alchemical process of using intense heat to reduce matter to its essential form. Historically, calcination was both a physical process and a metaphor for transformation: what must be burned away for something new to emerge?

The painting considers that question on both a personal and collective scale. Human growth is rarely clean. As individuals, societies, and a species, we build ourselves from accumulated experience—our tools, failures, memories, technologies, beliefs, and discarded things. The found objects embedded throughout the work become artifacts of that accumulation, forming an almost archaeological landscape of human endeavor.

At the bottom of the painting, actual leaves are entombed beneath layers of acrylic. They represent the organic root beneath everything we construct: nature, mortality, and the living world from which human invention ultimately emerges. From them rises an intense white-and-pink light—fire as destruction, purification, knowledge, ambition, and the internal force that compels us to create.

Above it hangs a dense mass of objects and forms. It can resemble machinery, architecture, debris, a technological altar, or even a hazard sign. Yet I do not necessarily see this darkness as something descending upon the light. It may instead be the shadow cast by that light—the complicated consequences of our own desire to progress.

Artificial intelligence has made that question increasingly immediate. Are we opening another frontier of human creativity and knowledge, or constructing something that ultimately narrows the very horizons we hope to expand?

Visually, the work draws from the monumental social storytelling of the Mexican Muralists while filtering those impulses through the psychologically charged forms of Philip Guston and the raw, graphic energy I find in artists such as Ashley Wood and Sam Kieth. Painting, drawing, collage, assemblage, and found material are allowed to collide rather than resolve neatly.

CALCINATION No. 1 does not attempt to answer whether the fire of human progress saves or consumes us. It asks what remains after the burning—and whether we recognize ourselves in what survives.

Hopefully, CALCINATION No. 1 will make its public debut at the 77th Annual Sun Bowl Art Exhibit at El Paso’s International Museum of Art. What began in 1949 as the Sun Carnival Art Exhibit has become one of the longest-running juried art exhibitions in the American Southwest and a showcase for the incredible range of artists working in our region.

The exhibition has no prescribed theme—artists are simply asked to submit work that best expresses their practice, creativity, and vision. For me, CALCINATION No. 1 feels like exactly that: a culmination of the painting, drawing, assemblage, comics, found-object work, and general creative chaos that have followed me throughout my career.

So, into the fire it goes.

We’ll see what survives.

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE

Maybe—but consider what has appeared since The Walking Dead premiered in 2010:

Z Nation, iZombie, Fear the Walking Dead, Ash vs Evil Dead, Train to Busan, World War Z, Warm Bodies, The Girl with All the Gifts, Kingdom, Black Summer, Santa Clarita Diet, One Cut of the Dead, Cargo, Blood Quantum, The Dead Don’t Die, Zombieland: Double Tap, #Alive, Army of the Dead, All of Us Are Dead, The Last of Us, Zom 100, 28 Years Later—and literally hundreds more.

Depending on how broadly you define “zombie-related,” more than 250 zombie and zombie-adjacent movies and television series have appeared since 2010.

That sounds like evidence that the genre has been beaten to death.

I think it proves the opposite.

We haven’t reached the end of the zombie genre. We may not have even reached the tip of the undead iceberg.

ZOMBIES AREN’T THE STORY

Zombies are a framework.

They are the storm, the war, the plague, the collapsing building around the characters. The real story is what people do after the world that made sense to them stops making sense.

George Romero used zombies to talk about racism, consumerism, militarism, class, and the ways human beings eagerly construct their own destruction. Other creators have used them for comedy, romance, family drama, political satire, religious horror, and stories about grief.

A genre doesn’t become useless because it becomes popular. Westerns didn’t become useless because thousands of them were made. Neither did superheroes, crime stories, fantasy, or science fiction.

These things ebb and flow. The market—and our eyeballs—can only handle so much at once. But exhaustion with a genre isn't the same as exhausting its possibilities.

The real question isn’t, “Do we need another zombie story?”

It is, “What does this zombie story have to say?”

That is the question sitting at the heart of my own series, ZOMBIE YEARS.

THE END OF THE WORLD—MIAMI STYLE

Zombie Years was never intended to be just another story about people shooting corpses in the head.

It is a post-apocalyptic story rooted in Miami: hot, loud, overcrowded, multicultural, beautiful, ridiculous, and tragic. It follows Frank Núñez and the people around him as they attempt to survive not only the dead, but the collapse of their neighborhoods, relationships, identities, and faith in one another.

The gore is there. The guns, desperate escapes, abandoned streets, and ruined buildings are all there.

But underneath them are stories about family, community, loneliness, memory, faith, and what parts of our humanity survive when almost everything else has been stripped away.

Miami is not simply scenery pasted behind a familiar zombie story. Its Cuban and Latin culture, Haitian and Jewish culture, its voices, its heat, its humor, its neighborhoods, and its contradictions are part of the story’s bloodstream.

That is where a genre stays alive.

Not by inventing a zombie with an extra set of teeth or finding a slightly faster way for it to run, but by allowing different people, cultures, and places to face the end of the world in their own way.

“THANKS GRANDPA”

Some years ago, while working with Creature Entertainment, we decided to carry Zombie Years beyond the comic page.

We produced a short film called “Thanks Grandpa,” based on the comic, as part of an anthology of work we wanted people to experience.

Calling it an “independent production” almost makes it sound too organized.

We filmed it inside my family’s paint and body shop and used whatever locations, materials, people, favors, practical effects, and questionable ideas we could pull together. It was filmmaking in the truest “rebel without a crew” sense.

It was exhausting, messy, absurd, and an experiment-and-a-half. I am still amazed we pulled off as much as we did.

I miss the fun of grabbing a camera and going out to make a movie with people who believe in the same weird idea you do. At the same time, my asshole aches whenever I remember everything it took to finish the damn thing.

Both things can be true.

That experience was also part of what Zombie Years has always been: a comic, a webcomic, a print project, a film experiment, a visual world, and an excuse to see how far a small group of determined lunatics can carry an idea.

“Thanks Grandpa” Credits

Karla Solarte as Del
Chuchi as the adorable—and apparently tasty—puppy. Rest in peace.
Richard Haylor as Grandpa
Norbert Velez as the Zombie

Director of Photography: Anthony Dones
Directed by Julio Alvarez and Juan Navarro
Special Effects: Rene and Al Quesada
Written by Juan Navarro and John Ulloa

Based on the comic series Zombie Years by Juan Navarro
Originally published by Creature Entertainment, LLC

THE DEAD ARE COMING BACK

Zombie Years has never completely stayed buried.

It has existed as a webcomic, in print, in digital editions, through Creature Entertainment, and now within the larger FWACATA universe. It recently crawled back into the light with “Apocalypse Knight,” a new short set in the same world, featuring a battered knight trying to bring some kind of order back to undead Miami.

Now I’m returning to the original material to revise, redesign, and rebuild it for a new updated edition planned for 2027.

This isn’t about pretending the past never happened. The roughness, ambition, mistakes, and DIY energy are part of its bones. The goal is to take what worked, repair what didn’t, and present the story with everything I have learned since I first created it.

So, do we need another zombie comic?

Probably not.

But stories have never existed because somebody decided we had reached the correct number of them.

The zombie genre isn’t dead because too many zombie stories exist. It dies only when creators stop bringing anything of themselves to it.

Miami still has stories to tell.

Frank Núñez still has miles to travel.

And Zombie Years is getting back up.

The first rule of sailing Dragonmaw Bay was simple.

Do not.

The second rule, if hunger, debt, pride, or foolishness had already broken the first, was to arrive before dusk, leave before dawn, and never stare too long at the black water between the islands. Sailors claimed the bay had teeth. Not rocks or reefs, not any normal danger a sailor could curse and avoid, but teeth. Huge crooked fangs of stone rose under the waves, shifting with the tide and disappearing just when you needed to see them. Whirlpools opened like mouths. Fogbanks whispered in the voices of dead mothers. Pale shapes followed ships just below the surface, too big to be fish and too smart to be whales.

Captain Thureles had heard all of this before and had delivered cargo to Seablood seventeen times.

Which meant he was either the bravest merchant captain in the eastern seas or the slowest learner the gods ever spat out.

“Hands tight!” he shouted from the quarterdeck. “If the wind turns mean, don’t argue with it! Trim, curse, pray, and pull!”

The crew of the Mournful Gull moved quickly, not wanting to end up as a warning in a sailor’s song. Ropes snapped. Sailcloth cracked. Rain hammered the deck in cold, sharp drops, making everyone wish for a different job. The ship rocked as the black cliffs of Dragonmaw rose ahead, jagged and slick, like the spine of something ancient forcing its way out of the sea.

Hames stood by the mainmast, clutching a coil of rope, his stomach churning. He was thirteen, skinny as a nail, and had gotten his father’s skill with numbers, sense for profit, and a face that always looked a bit guilty. He hadn’t inherited Thureles’s steady footing at sea. His legs were his own, and right now, they wanted nothing to do with the ship or the rolling waves.

“Father!” Hames shouted over the storm. “That rock wasn’t there a moment ago!”

“Then thank it for moving where we can see it!” Thureles shouted back.

“That isn’t comforting!”

“It wasn’t meant to be!”

The Mournful Gull lurched between two reefs as the waves rose up on either side like the walls of a prison cell. The sea stank of salt, iron, and something sour and old beneath, like blood left too long in a priest’s reliquary. Ahead, through the rain, Hames glimpsed the bay’s true maw: two cliffs curving inward, black stone shot through with veins of green fire. At their peaks squatted ancient gnome towers, stepped and angular, carved with the faces of birds, cats, serpents, and things that should never have been given faces in the first place. Copper pipes snaked down their sides. Brass arms spun in the storm. Great green glass eyes stared out at the sea, unblinking.

Then the cliffs spoke.

Not with words. With bells.

The sound rolled across the bay, deep enough to rattle Hames’s teeth. On the tower to port, a ring of symbols ignited one by one, each rune flaring bright blue-white before dimming. On the tower to starboard, a wheel of polished stone began to turn, slow at first, then faster, shedding sparks into the rain.

The sea answered.

The water ahead split.

Hames forgot to vomit.

A channel opened through the foam, narrow and impossible, its edges held apart by shimmering walls of force. The reefs did not move. The water did. It rose and held, trembling like glass, while the Mournful Gull shot forward into the throat of Dragonmaw Bay.

Every sailor aboard went silent. Even old Pock, who had once insulted a priest during his own wedding, crossed himself in five religions and apologized to three gods he did not believe in.

Hames stared at the glowing runes along the cliffs.

“What are they doing?” he whispered.

Thureles, who had come down from the quarterdeck with rain streaming from his beard, grinned despite the storm. “They’re keeping us alive.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer that matters.”

The ship sped through the rune-held passage. Green fire crawled along the cliff walls. Gnome figures moved high above on balconies and platforms, small silhouettes in bright cloaks, pulling levers, shouting commands, striking chimes with hammers. One wore a mask shaped like a jaguar. Another rode a hanging basket along a cable strung between towers, waving a yellow flag with both hands.

A sailor near Hames muttered, “Mad little bastards.”

Thureles heard him and laughed. “Aye. Peaceful as monks, clever as thieves, and twice as dangerous as either when offended.”

At last, the channel opened into calmer water.

Seablood lay before them.

It wasn’t a great city, not compared to Oceanforge, Borel, or even the big river ports where merchants wore perfume and pretended otherwise. Seablood was a tough harbor, made of red stone and black timber, built where the Green Spears met the ocean in uneven steps. The town climbed the cliffs in layers: docks at the bottom, warehouses above, then homes and shrines, and beyond that, green hills rising into misty mountains, their tops hidden like old kings avoiding their debts.

The harbor smelled of fish, coal smoke, wet rope, citrus, and hot metal.

Ships huddled at the docks: Grass Spears sparrows with hulls so narrow they looked like they’d snap if you sneezed, rune-kissed sails fluttering like nervous flags; broad-bellied merchant cogs from Borel; a dwarven ironbarge that looked less sailed than dragged kicking and screaming through the water; and a slender elven vessel sitting apart, white and gold and so smug it practically begged for someone to throw a boot at it.

But it was the people that stole Hames’s breath.

Humans shouted over crates. Dwarves argued beside a broken crane. Halflings hauled bundles larger than themselves with cheerful obscenities. Orc porters carried timber beams on their shoulders while gnome clerks walked beside them, checking tablets of black slate with glowing styluses. A tall woman with pale blue skin and silver hair sold roasted shellfish from a cart, singing prices in three languages. Two goblins in matching aprons inspected barrels of engine grease as seriously as priests examining relics.

No one stared.

No one recoiled.

No one spat at another’s shadow or clutched a charm just because an unfamiliar face passed too near.

Hames had been to Oceanforge, where people from everywhere came to trade, drink, and make deals, but even there, everyone kept their distance. Elves kept to themselves. Dwarves stuck with their own. Humans acted friendly but always watched the doors. In Seablood, those barriers felt thinner. Not gone, but less important. People were still people. Someone was always getting into trouble, but here, being different didn’t feel painful. It just felt normal, like the weather.

A gnome dockmaster awaited them when the gangplank dropped.

He wore a sleeveless coat of turquoise leather stitched with copper thread, wide trousers tucked into black boots, and a collar of carved jade plates. His hair rose from his head in a proud white fan, stiffened with some kind of resin. Across his brow sat a band of bronze set with three green stones that blinked like sleepy eyes.

“Captain Thureles!” the gnome cried, spreading his arms. “You are late, soaked, and still offensively alive.”

Thureles bowed. “Dockmaster Pelit. You remain short, rude, and dressed like a festival had a child with a toolbox.”

Pelit beamed. “Ah. Friendship survives another season.”

They embraced, which looked to Hames like a bear hugging a complicated hat.

“This is my son,” Thureles said. “Hames.”

Pelit turned his blinking headband toward the boy. “First crossing?”

“Yes, sir,” Hames said.

“You vomited?”

“Almost constantly.”

“Excellent. A truthful boy. We can use those, in theory.” Pelit snapped his fingers, and two gnome workers rushed forward with a cargo slate. “You have the copper bearings? The whale-oil seals? The glass needles? The springsteel ribs?”

“All marked and bundled,” Thureles said. “Also three crates of Borel salt, six of Violet dye, and one sealed chest from a dwarf who threatened to haunt me if I opened it.”

“Was he dead?”

“No.”

“Then lazy threats. We accept.”

Hames looked from Pelit to his father. “What are springsteel ribs for?”

Pelit’s smile widened slightly. “Depends who asks.”

“I’m asking.”

“Then the answer is education.” Pelit’s grin sharpened slightly. “Nothing teaches you faster than seeing what happens when you put the ribs in the wrong place. Or the right place, for that matter. It is one lesson you only need to learn once.”

Before Hames could decide whether that was useful or infuriating, a sound like thunder rolled from behind Seablood. Not sky thunder. Earth thunder. A great rhythmic booming, steady and enormous, like a giant heartbeat beneath the hills.

The dockmaster noticed Hames listening.

“Ah,” Pelit said. “The city is awake.”

“The city?” Hames asked.

Pelit pointed inland.

At first, Hames saw only the hills of the Green Spears, rounded and green, rising in folds from the coast. Then the mist shifted. Between the slopes, half-hidden by terraces of maize, blue flowers, and stone shrines, an enormous doorway opened in the mountain.

No, not a doorway.

A mouth.

A stepped arch of black basalt and brass, taller than any temple Hames had ever seen, carved into the hillside with geometric beasts and spiraling runes. Blue fire burned in channels along the stone. Water poured down either side in controlled sheets, turning copper wheels that spun, clicked, and hummed. Above the arch, great painted masks watched the valley: serpent, hawk, frog, sun, skull. Their eyes glowed with captive lightning.

People moved in and out beneath it like ants entering a hive.

“That,” Pelit said, “is Tzik-Tzal, first undercity of the Green Spears, jewel of the gnome nation, shame of all architects too timid to dig downward, and the reason your father is rich enough to own boots with stitching.”

Thureles looked down at his boots. “These are very good boots.”

“They are ugly boots,” Pelit said. “But loyal.”

Hames could not stop staring.

He had expected tunnels. Perhaps a mine. A few clever machines underground, some gnome nonsense with whistles and wheels.

He had not expected a civilization to open its jaws and invite him in.

They entered Tzik-Tzal before noon.

The road from Seablood to the undercity climbed through terraces where crops grew in such impossible abundance it looked like the gods had spilled a basket and forgotten to clean up. Channels of clear water ran beside the path, split by little gates etched with runes. Gnome farmers in bright woven mantles poked at roots suspended in flowing trays. The plants grew without soil, their pale roots dangling in mineral-rich streams that shimmered gold, as if the earth itself was trying to show off.

Hames slowed beside one of the trays. “They grow in water?”

A gnome woman looked up from trimming a vine with silver shears. “They grow in what water carries.”

“That sounds like poetry.”

“It is plumbing,” she said.

Pelit clapped Hames on the shoulder. “You will find, boy, that poetry and plumbing are cousins. One moves the soul. The other prevents everyone from dying in their own filth. Sensible cultures honor both.”

Inside the great arch, the air changed.

It was cooler, but not cold. Damp, but not foul. The tunnel walls were polished black stone veined with copper and glowing sigils. The floor sloped gently downward, wide enough for wagons. Overhead, brass tracks carried small hanging carts that zipped back and forth with bells ringing. Gnomes rode them standing upright, arguing over diagrams or eating fruit from paper cones.

Then the tunnel opened.

Hames stopped so suddenly a porter nearly knocked him into a basket of glass tubes.

Tzik-Tzal descended into the earth in vast rings.

It was a hive, yes, but not the kind any self-respecting bee would build. Bees were practical. This was what you got if practicality swallowed a temple, a forge, a jungle, and a madman’s fever dream. Bridges leaped across open air. Stairways spiraled down the walls like the intestines of some enormous stone beast. Buildings jutted from the cavern sides in stepped pyramids of stone and brass, painted in emerald, red, gold, and blue. Vines dangled from balconies. Waterfalls poured through channels into glowing reservoirs. Steam rose from vents shaped like gods with their mouths open in surprise. Far below, molten orange light pulsed from the forge levels.

And everywhere, runes.

On doors. On pipes. On tools. On streetlamps. On the little wheeled carts that rolled along without horses. On the wristbands of workers. On the collars of stone golems carrying crates. On the great central column that rose from the depths to the ceiling, covered in thousands of sigils that flickered in sequence like thoughts passing through a gigantic mind.

Hames whispered, “Magic.”

Pelit snorted. “Yes. Also engineering.”

“I thought magic was… spells.”

“That is what wizards say when they want to be paid more.”

Thureles laughed.

Pelit waved them along a suspended walkway. “A spell is an argument with the world. A rune is an agreement written down so the world remembers. Engineering is making sure the agreement does not collapse and kill your grandmother.”

They passed a forge chamber where no one worked the bellows by hand. Instead, a ring of red sigils held a fire elemental inside a transparent furnace of glass and black iron. It was a living flame, shaped vaguely like a fox, pacing in circles. Each time it passed a marked point, the furnace roared hotter. Gnome smiths fed bars of steel through rollers while a dwarf checked the metal’s color.

Hames felt uneasy. “Is it trapped?”

Pelit’s cheerful expression sharpened. “Bound. Contracted. Paid in heat, fed in coal, released every seventh moon to burn whatever deadwood we give it. The old kingdoms enslaved elementals. We do not. A forced flame burns crooked. And a broken bargain burns everything. If the contract fails or is ignored, the elemental is released untamed—sometimes raging, sometimes vengeful. We have lost whole forges and families to carelessness. Here, we keep every mark and write every promise. It is not only custom. It is survival.”

The fire fox turned as if it heard him, its coal-like eyes narrowing.

Pelit bowed to it.

The fox seemed satisfied and resumed its pacing.

In another chamber, blue-white frost curled from a basin where a water elemental spun within a wheel, cooling blades as they emerged from heat. Nearby, steam pressure drove piston hammers up and down with perfect rhythm. In a kitchen hall, small clay tablets heated stone ovens. In a clinic, a healer adjusted a bracelet of sigils around a sleeping man’s arm while a machine beside him clicked and slowly pumped green fluid through glass veins.

Hames’s fear gave way to something far more dangerous.

Curiosity.

It grabbed him by the throat.

“How do the marks know what to do?” he asked.

Pelit stopped. “They don’t.”

“But—”

“Does a sail know the wind? Does a cup know thirst? Does your father know when to shut up?”

“No,” Hames said before thinking.

Thureles gave him a proud look.

Pelit grinned. “A rune doesn’t know anything. It just holds a shape. Energy moves through that shape and becomes useful. Fire wants to spread, but we make it turn a wheel. Water wants to fall, but we make it lift. Lightning wants to destroy everything nearby, but we convince it to behave and give light to the hivecity”

They reached a balcony overlooking the lower forge.

There, Hames saw something that silenced even his questions.

A team of gnomes and dwarves stood around a long skeletal frame of curved metal ribs. Not a ship hull, though it had the grace of one. Not a bridge, though it arched like it wanted to span impossible distances. Its bones were springsteel, thin and strong. Blackstone rune-covered pillars ran along its spine, inlaid with copper and bright glass needles. Folded panels of treated canvas and feather-light wood rested at its sides.

Above it hung a vast ring of sigils suspended from chains.

The air around the frame shimmered.

Hames stepped closer to the railing. “What is that?”

Pelit looked at Thureles.

Thureles looked very carefully at nothing.

The dockmaster’s voice grew soft. “A question.”

“That is not an answer either.”

“No,” Pelit said. “But it may become one.”

Below, one of the engineers struck a rune with a tuning hammer.

The frame lifted.

Only an inch.

Only for a breath.

Every worker in the chamber froze.

Then the frame dropped back onto its supports with a metallic groan, and the room erupted in shouting, cheering, arguing, and one gnome fainting directly into a toolbox.

Hames gripped the railing, heart hammering.

Pelit leaned beside him, eyes bright as green stars.

“You came to deliver supplies,” the gnome said. “But perhaps you arrived in time to witness a birth.”

“Of what?”

Pelit smiled.

From far above, beyond the mountain, thunder rolled over Dragonmaw Bay.

This time, Hames wondered if it was thunder at all.

“Of skyfire,” Pelit said. “And all the trouble that follows when clever people decide the heavens are too empty.”

_{NOTE: Hey, another Dragonbreath story!
I’ve been working on the novel daily, but lately nothing has been hitting quite right. These short stories are the bits and pieces that fall out of the monster’s mouth while I’m writing—ideas, places, characters, and pieces of history that don’t quite fit in the main story.
Instead of throwing them away, I’ve been letting them stand on their own. They bring this strange world to life—not only for you, but for me, too. Every time I write one, I discover a little more of what Dragonbreath actually is.}

READ OTHER DRAGONBREATH SHORTS HERE

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE

FWACATA Shirts Are Back From the Dead

New designs are hitting the MerchYeah shop almost every day, including the newest bad-idea classic: “If COMICS Were EASY, It Would Be Called Your MOM.”

If you’ve been keeping up with FWACATA lately, you may have noticed the T-shirts crawling back out of the grave.

That’s right. The shirts are returning.

Thanks to MerchYeah, I’ve been slowly bringing back old designs, rebuilding the store, and posting new pieces so you can once again wear FWACATA nonsense on your actual human body like nature intended.

And the newest resurrection is a dumb little beauty:

“If COMICS Were EASY, It Would Be Called Your MOM.”

Yes. It’s rude. Yes. It’s stupid. Yes. It has the energy of an old fishing shirt that got bitten by a comic book convention and now won’t stop yelling in the parking lot.

But also?

It’s true.

Making comics is hard. Writing is hard. Drawing is hard. Lettering is hard. Printing is hard. Promoting is hard. Explaining to normal people why you’re still doing this after all these years is somehow even harder.

So we put it on a shirt.

Because sometimes the only honest response to the beautiful, brutal, back-breaking madness of comics is a joke that sounds like it was found on a bait shop wall next to a faded poster for monster trucks.

You can grab the shirt here:
https://www.merchyeah.com/product/ifcomicswereeasy

And that’s not all. The FWACATA MerchYeah store is filling back up with more shirts: comic art, weird jokes, loud graphics, old-school attitude, skulls, thunder, monsters, and the kind of designs that say, “Yes, I read comics, and no, I will not be normal about it.”

Check out the full store here:
https://www.merchyeah.com/fwacata

The plan is simple: keep adding designs, keep bringing back the good stuff, and keep making shirts that feel like indie comics, garage bands, flea-market treasure, and bad decisions all got into a fistfight behind a comic shop.

So if you want to support FWACATA, this is one of the easiest ways to do it.

Buy a shirt. Wear the madness. Confuse a coworker. Start a conversation. Make your torso useful.

New shirts are going up almost every day, so keep checking back.

FWACATA is making comics, making art, and now making your laundry pile significantly weirder.

Check it out here! New shirts almost EVERY DAY!

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE

ART ZINE!

I was originally going to post this yesterday, the first, but I thought that between FUGLY and this, it’s just too much FWACATA for your little fucking brain to handle, so I gave you some breathing room. Now CRAM THIS INTO YOUR PIE HOLE!

This is one big baby this month. And that's after I cut a couple of pages for clarity and the amount of info on them, but still on sketches. More planning than making this month, to my chagrin, but still a good time!

Time mangement is the key and thats what I’m doing. Something are scheduled like FUGLY no matter what your getting a new episode on TUesdya but soon I’d like to revise and redesign VIGIL and ZOMBIE YEARS and have them running here so like that you cna have a one stop shop of comics in a sense here on substack.

As always I’m working on the next thing, while doing commissions. I’m also thinking about doing live on Wednesday nights as a sort of New Comic Book Day sort of celebration but I don’t want to commit without being sure that I can do that. We’ll see.

so Yeah another month another sketchbook with this month being busy with some work for the Sun Bowl coming up and possibly Chalk The Block. I think. Maybe. Oy.

until then, YA TU SABES. -J

DOWNLOADS OF THIS ZINE and ALL THE OTHER CAN BE FOUND HERE

or read it on GLOBAL COMIX!

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE

I love comics.

Not in the “everything is magical and perfect and smells like fresh roses” way. No. Comics will break your heart, eat your wallet, confuse your friends, and make you explain panel gutters to normal people at parties.

But when they hit?

When a story lands. When a page rumbles. When a comic crawls into your chest and starts moving the furniture around?

That’s the dragon I’m chasing every time I open a book.

When I owned a comic shop, we didn’t have a giant statue garden or some museum-quality cathedral of collectibles. What we had was a bar, walls full of art, and six studios in the back where comic artists were working, talking shit, showing pages, making things, and living inside the madness. We praised comics like a religion and rolled around in the dirt with them like maniacs.

That’s still how I approach this.

Which means, yeah, I get disappointed. A lot. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I want comics to punch harder than they want to. Maybe one day I’ll write the memoir of all of it, just to show how insane this whole thing gets when you love hard and keep coming back anyway.

Because when you love comics, well…

You’re doomed.

And blessed.

Usually in the same panel.

LOVE HARD FUCK HARDER

1. Back to the Page, Back to the Work

This week I realized I need to get much more serious about assigning priorities. Not ideas. I have ideas. Ideas are everywhere. Ideas are the cockroaches of the creative mind. You turn on the light and seventeen of them run under the fridge.

The problem is getting them on paper.

So the sketchbook has been on fire. Notes are stacking up. Calendars are being stared at like ancient maps. I’m trying to look at everything honestly and ask: What needs to be done first? What actually moves the work forward?

FWACATA #4 is almost done. It’s mostly spit, polish, and final assembly now. FWACATA #3 is done and out.. After that, the big question becomes: do I launch the Kickstarter for #4 in September, or wait until October?

September gets complicated because I’ll be working and jsut getting back from Spain with my wife while she performs over there. And as much as I love Kickstarter, I do not love the idea of being in another country checking my phone every five minutes like a raccoon addicted to analytics.

So maybe October.

Maybe.

Also: putting the phone down.

That one keeps coming up. Time to stare at walls. Time to stare at paper. Time to stare at the work instead of the glowing rectangle that keeps eating everybody’s soul.

2. FUGLY, Zombie Years, Banner Exchanges, and Fighting the Algorithm with a Stick

First up: Zombie Years.

I’m working on the reissue redesign of the first five issues into regular comic book format. I’m on page 4 of issue 1, and it’s moving, but there’s a lot of editing, rebuilding, formatting, and making sure it reads the way I want it to now.

The goal is to bang out issue 1 this month, issue 2 next month, and keep rolling from there. Maybe an October release. Maybe a Kickstarter for issue 1. I’m still figuring it out.

But I keep coming back to one thought:

To defeat the future, you may have to go old school.

FUGLY issue 1 is done, and I need to see about putting that together. This’ll be a doozy as it’s the first issue and you really do want it to shine, so I gotta get my desktop publishing cap on and really put something awesome together. Kickstarter? Presale? Hmmmm

I did an old-school banner exchange with Ganzeer recently, and between that and seeing what some YouTubers like Dan Does are doing in the toy-making/crafting world, it got me thinking: maybe we need something like that again for Substack, webcomics, and indie creators.

Because let’s be honest: the algorithm is not our friend. It is a weird casino machine wearing a skin suit.

Substack has tools to recommend other Substackers, sure. But what about outside of that? What about building a small webcomic network? What about creators pointing to each other without waiting for platforms to bless us?

Remember webrings?

Can we bring those back?

Can we build a weird little underground highway for comics again?

I think we might have to.

Comics as a solo creator is a rough field. It’s you and the page. You and the screen. You and the work. You are the writer, artist, editor, marketing department, shipping department, caterer, janitor, and unpaid motivational speaker yelling at yourself in the mirror.

If anything happens, it’s because you made it happen.

And that’s exhausting.

But it’s also the deal.

Right now FWACATA is hovering around 1,800 subscribers across the old WordPress site, Instagram, Substack, Patreon, and other places. Thank you. Seriously. Every single one of you helps keep this thing alive.

And yeah, I’ve had bumps. Big ones. Since 2015, I’ve felt like I got knocked off whatever little comics pedestal I thought I was standing on. Comics changed. The world changed. I changed.

And yet here I am, crawling back like comics are a bad lover with great taste in boots.

3. Am I Too Old for This? Probably. Am I Stopping? No.

Here’s the ugly little thought that shows up sometimes:

Am I too old for comics?

Not too old to read them. Never that. I mean too old as a creator. Too old in my art. Too old in my approach. Too old to get the kind of attention younger, slicker, cleaner, more algorithm-friendly artists get.

Sometimes I feel like I’m getting polite nods.

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“Good for you.”

“Still doing comics, huh?”

And then nothing.

No engagement. No spark. No real conversation.

So, as I’ve asked before: Am I the asshole?

Maybe. Very possible. The evidence is not great.

But I also watched this, and it hit a nerve:

I wish I could have a studio again at least a space to fully do and leave my work being done! Soon, hopefully, I have to get out of this lava pit I’m in now to make it.

Then, while writing all this, I read something from Warren Ellis’ Orbital Operations newsletter about Picasso:

Fucking Amen.

4. Computer Daemons, Actual Demons, and Other Totally Normal Thoughts

I’ve been trying to reconcile this idea of daemons in computers—those background programs running while you’re not looking—with actual demons.

Print queues. System tasks. Invisible little processes doing their jobs in the dark.

Now imagine that idea pushed into horror.

What if all this AI panic isn’t just about machines getting smarter? What if it’s about something older using the machine as a foothold? What if the “denizens of hell” don’t need a pentagram anymore because they have server farms, APIs, and venture capital?

Yes, yes. Let me adjust my foil hat for a second.

But before you call it a conspiracy theory, relax.

It’s probably just a plot point for REZ as I work through issue 3.

Probably.

This article got the gears turning:

And then sometimes I read stuff like this and feel a tiny bit less insane about how hard it is to get anything seen online:

Magnetic North: One Journalist's Quest to Make Sense of the Universe

The Real Reason that Substack is Collapsing

A few years ago Substack transformed away from being a niche newsletter-delivery system and into the main refuge for tens of thousands of journalists who were fleeing (or been kicked out) of the mainstream media. The value proposition was simple: writers could come here to build an audience that would actually pay directly for their writing. The platfor…

Read more

2 months ago · 5315 likes · 1662 comments · Scott Carney

The systems are weird.

The platforms are weird.

The future is weird.

Only the sun can save us.

5. Gardens, Love, and Chewing with Your Mouth Closed

My wife’s garden is getting huge.

We’ve got tomatoes coming in, jalapeños and beans starting to give, apricots showing up, some kind of desert kiwi fruit planted, and plans for watercress. All from this little 6x6 patch she started this year.

It’s ridiculous.

It’s also beautiful.

My wife is amazing. And yeah, everyone says that about their person. Fine. But mine is a juggernaut of fun, ideas, strength, and necessary bullshit detection. She makes me better. She stops my nonsense in its tracks. She keeps me from being a total asshat.

She can kick your ass, move a couch, and give the best kisses.

Find someone like that if you can.

Someone who makes the work better. Someone who makes you better. Someone who tells you when you’re being full of it, but still believes in the version of you that can get the thing done.

That’s love.

That’s gardening.

That’s comics too, weirdly enough.

You plant things. You water them. You curse at them. You wait. Some things grow. Some things die. Some things surprise you.

Then you get back to work.

Also: close your mouth when you chew.

I cannot stress this enough.

I will scissor-kick you in the face if I have to.

I cants stands its.

And that’s the thing I keep coming back to: the work is never just the work. It’s the proof that we were here, that we cared, that we kept reaching for something even when the world got loud, dumb, expensive, and mean. Every page, every sketch, every weird idea scribbled on a Post-it is a little flag planted in the dirt saying, I’m still here. I still believe in this. I still have something to make. Maybe that’s all comics are in the end: a stubborn little garden of ink and paper, growing against the odds, fed by love, frustration, bad coffee, and the refusal to quit. So here’s to the next page. Here’s to the next panel. Here’s to all of us still making something out of the mess.

#FWACATA #FiveFridays #IndieComics #Comics #Webcomics #ComicArt #SubstackComics #ZombieYears #REZ #FUGLY #CreatorOwned #SmallPressComics #ArtLife #MakeComics #SupportIndieComics

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE

FUGLY #2 BEGINS — AND THINGS ARE ABOUT TO GET LOUD

So… we made it to Issue #2 of FUGLY!

Considering Issue #1 ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, now we get to start pulling on some of those threads—and making the world considerably bigger and weirder.

The crazy part? FUGLY is already mapped out through Issue #5.

At the current weekly pace, that’s roughly two years of story sitting ahead of us.

Not bad!

…assuming I don’t collapse into a pile of ink, coffee, and unresolved deadlines before then.

WHY A WEEKLY COMIC?

The experiment behind FUGLY has always been pretty simple: Can I make a weekly comic economically, consistently, and still make the damn thing look and feel like a COMIC?

I’ve been screwing around with webcomics in one form or another for more than 20 years. I’ve always loved the basic idea of having comics right there in your hand, ready to read anywhere.

And phones finally make that possible in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re trying to read a comic through a keyhole.

But I’ve also wanted to find my own space within webcomics.

There’s a ton of manga-influenced work out there, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with manga—but I don’t want everything to look, read, or move the same way. Meanwhile, traditional American comics still seem weirdly reluctant to really embrace the vertical, phone-first webcomic format.

So FUGLY is my attempt to crash those two worlds into each other.

I want the immediacy and accessibility of a modern webcomic, but with the visual language, pacing, big sound effects, ugly faces, heavy blacks, weird characters, and sequential storytelling I love about American comics.

I’m still figuring it out.

That’s half the fun.

Every episode teaches me something about what works on the phone, what doesn’t, how much information I can cram into a panel, when to let something breathe, and when to just have somebody get punched through some shit.

AND NOW… LOCURA.

Issue #2 also introduces a new Anomaly:

LOCURA.

Coming out of Miami, Florida, Locura has the ability to absorb sound and convert it into physical power.

The louder her surroundings become, the stronger, faster, and more agile she gets.

Think about that for a second.

Now think about putting her in a room full of superheroes.

Now think about how much superheroes TALK.

Yeah.

We’re going to have some fun with this.

You’ll start seeing the sound effects themselves become part of how the action works visually as Issue #2 unfolds, while we dive into this weird, swinging social circle of superheroes, Anomalies, assholes, professionals, and people talking mad shit about each other.

Because even when people can fly, lift cars, and absorb sound…

people are still people.

And people LOVE gossip.

AND THERE’S MORE COMING

I’m also working on a bonus pages for FUGLY #1, which I’m hoping to have finished by the end of September.

And that’s happening alongside the pile of other comics currently crawling across my drawing table, including MEATHOOK #1, REZ #2, and more FWACATA madness I want to get into your hands.

So stick around.

Read FUGLY.

Share it with somebody who likes strange superhero comics.

And if you’ve been following since Episode #1, thank you. Seriously.

Issue #1 was proving I could do this.

Issue #2 is where we start finding out what FUGLY can really become.

YOU OWE.

YOU PAY.

LET’S GET UGLY.

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE

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!

PREVIOUS EPISODE

READ FROM THE BEGINNING

NEXT EPISODE