FRIDAY PILE: first of many?
Links and side thought in a small blog post
The idea here is just to cap off the week with something for you to read or check out for the weekend. This most likely is links, quotes, video, music, etc.
Many of the newsletters or bloggers ( is that still a thing?) I follow or dig to do the same, and I share my links and notes on the side. Please let me know what you think and what’s on my radar, taking my attention.
Let’s see how long this lasts!
Comics as a lone creator is a tough field. In the end, it’s you and page, you and the screen, you and the work, and so on. It’s just you. You are Editorial, Art, Marketing, catering, and everything else rolled into one. If anything happens, it’s because of you. Especially at this stage.
You are seeing the world through a hole in the wall and guessing what things do when they do. We have almost 1500 subscribers, some from my WordPress site, others from Instagram, and others from here on Substack and Patreon. I’ve been posting on Bluesky, IG, and Threads with Tumblr and Reddit right behind. You never know who might find it through that. I always think about how those numbers might suck virtually, but if you put them in a room, 1500 people (not counting the rest), that’s a hell of a thing. I mean, I get it, we are all bitching about the algorithm, and yeah, if you don’t have money on here, you are fucking lost, but still, it’s nice to think almost 2000 eyes see my comic every week.
Either way, thank you!
I’ve had considerable bumps on the road since 2015 and definitely felt I was pushed off the pedestal I was on in comics around then. Comics as a whole have changed, and like a bad relationship, you keep coming back to, you’d think you’d learn your lesson. But, when you love the comics, well…
1
FUGLY
While working on comics, you get ideas for comics. And Products, and other shit. That being said, you sideline and put it to the side, on a post-it, and sometimes that’s where ideas go to die. I can’t stand that. So I try to eke out something, at least from a post-it note to a sketchbook page, bang it out, and see what happens. One was to have a design turnaround on all my characters, just to have it for myself, but also in case anybody else wants to do some work to get the word out. The… well.. decided to make a how-to-draw FUGLY sheet!
Which opens up the option to submit your FUGLY drawings here, and I will post them with a link in exchange, so as to get the word out on your project and FUGLY! Good idea? Great Idea? Ridiculous? Probably. But why not?!? I fyou do hit me up here:
2
Cities with real art scenes are rarely the polished, corporate playgrounds trying to brand themselves as “creative hubs.” The strongest art cities are usually the ones clawing their way back from collapse — places with scars, cheap rent, abandoned spaces, and communities forced to invent culture out of necessity. Detroit’s resurgence shows that hunger creates experimentation. When industry leaves and bureaucracy fails, artists, musicians, and storytellers often keep a city’s soul alive. Recovery breeds urgency, and urgency breeds authentic culture. In places still fighting to survive, art stops being decoration and becomes survival, memory, and identity.
I saw Miami from the 90s into the Oughts ( is there another way to say that?), do the same when the city seemed hungry to try… everything. Now I don’t know, it’s an odd ex-girlfriend of a city now, but DETROIT might be something for real.
3
You learn to write by writing, but also… You sometimes need to learn and pick up a system to help you along the way, and maybe… not suck as bad. EDAN might do that:
4
“My dad made fake dicks and Vaginas for a living.”
Old article I found to read again: Doc Johnson’s founders built a porn empire, got targeted in the Reagan era, and still grew into a global giant—now made largely in Mexicali.
Sorry, I find that whole world hilarious and interesting at the same time. I mean, just the photo of two guys, one holding a dildo, and they are talking FACTS over it, they are serious, I don’t know that amazing.
5
The other day, somebody played the Harlem Shake song, and for like a second, I was really happy, and I wondered why. DO you remember that crap? I was annoyed by it for a bit because so many people jumped on and just lambasted it, but for like a brief second, I was hopeful. And once I looked it up, I was like, oh yeah, I see it now, it was THAAT time, when the most we had to worry about was dickhead memes and the occasion war mongering prick. Now? Fuck. And I was almost disappointed all over again when I picked up my phone to look at something, and another HORRIBLE THING Trump did came out, and like always, nothing happens.
I just wanted to start making a new repository of links and knowledge here, and might as well share it with you so you can see where all my ideas come from.
Just another bit of awesome from FWACATA. Want more? Want to support?