Iron Dragon plays the name game with Thea.
After years of reading comics, I just realized something… In math, the mean is the central value in a group of numbers. So when a narration box says meanwhile, it’s a point in the story between the previous scene and some point in the future! Does that mean there’s a “Modewhile” and a “Medianwhile”? The mind boggles…
Meanwhile, on Patreon…
Just a quick thank-you to everyone who joined us on Patreon — and those who’ve been part of the group for a while. August was our best month ever! We hit new highs in membership, and I’m really proud of the exclusives that I posted there. Plus, content-tagging has made accessing the 500+ posts easier than ever!
If you’re interested in NSFW comics, I think you’re gonna love what you get for a monthly pledge. And if you’re not, you get lots of great stuff at the $1/month and $5/month levels.
End of the summer
As I type this, my two sons are trying to get to sleep at 9 o’clock for the first time in three months. Summer vacation officially came to an end half-an-hour ago, and tomorrow (well, today, when this blog updates) is the first day of school.
We took the ferry to visit Mackinac Island, and we biked the entire perimeter — 8.2 miles of Wow.
It was a tremendous summer. We made two trips to Michigan to see my family — once for my niece’s high-school graduation and once for a weeklong vacation in Michigan’s upper peninsula. The boys made a number of trips with their grandparents on their mom’s side of the family, too — not to mention the countless overnight stays where getting spoiled rotten is the order of the day.
And I would be a real dummy if I didn’t thank you. This was the first summer since I left my day job to become a cartoonist full-time that I really enjoyed a summer with my family without the 2 a.m. panic attacks. You supported my Kickstarter… you pledged on my Patreon… you asked your local comics shops to stock my books… you subscribed to Webcomics.com…
After ad-blockers changed the way that I do business, I had to makes things like Kickstarter and Patreon a priority. You may have noticed that I talk about that stuff an awful lot down here. But what’s awesome is that you’ve responded in a big way — and that has enabled me to keep making the kinds of comics you like to read.
So thank you for an awesome summer.
Now, if you’ll excuse me… I need to walk into the boys’ room and tell them to settle down and go to bed. Again.
Update: The boys stayed up talking until about 11, but we made it to school…
Tales from the Con
Tales from the Con is a comic that I write (it’s illustrated by Scoot McMahon). It runs every week at the Emerald City Comicon website. If you’re not reading it, you’re missing some fun stuff.
Convention update
Speaking of Emerald City Comicon, I think it’s safe to announce that I’ll be appearing at that show again next year (after taking a break this year). It’s March 2-5 in Seattle, and it’s going to be one of two convention appearances I’ll be doing in 2017 (the other being Philadelphia Comic Con). My days of running to 8-12 conventions a year are over. I’ve seen a steadily decreasing income from conventions, and — even more significantly — attending conventions makes it really hard to continue the update schedule I’ve established for my Patreon backers. Heck, I didn’t even do Baltimore last weekend — and it’s only two hours away.
Like I said earlier, crowdfunding like Kickstarter and Patreon are what’s making my business run right now. So anything that interferes with their success has got to be weighed carefully.
If you’re one of the many people who I looked forward to seeing year after year, I want you to know that I appreciated every chat, discussion and guffaw. You bought books, sketches, T-shirts and posters — and a few of you brought food or offered to go on lunch runs. You’re my friends, and I’ll miss you.