I sit at a wooden desk looking out over a beautiful golf course in the mountains of North Carolina. The sunlight is better here. It’s filtered and dispersed through large trees and bounces off the mountains to create a warm glow.
In North Texas the sunlight has nowhere to go but reflect off of the concrete strip-malls and roofs that occupy every square inch of the flat land. It creates extremely bright and hot days that invariably breed an indoor culture with a pool being the only respite.
It’s wild how much an environment impacts our moods. The mountains are calling me.
In This Issue:
House of Satisfactions Update
Eisner Award Comics
East of Eden
What to [watch] this weekend
House of Satisfactions is my alternative comic book studio that is publishing a Southern horror anthology on Kickstarter in October.
This week we finalized lettering passes on four more stories.
Eight stories complete.
Two stories in pencils.
Covers are the other item we’re working on this week. We’ll have a total of four covers from some truly talented artists. Can’t wait to show them off!
Stay tuned because promo and giveaways are coming soon on the HOS Instagram.
Sign up for the House of Satisfactions email list so you get VIP pricing for the comic.
Pre-Save "Hangwater, TX" on Kickstarter
I gave myself a reading project to read all the nominees for “Best Graphic Album—New.” And what an incredible slate of books.
Lai uses the four panel grid and a unique cartooning style to tell a personal story about a character at the edge of a breakdown. It has the kind of frenetic problems of a Safdie Bros movie. I read in one sitting. The intercutting between the characters, symbolism, and thematic elements elevate this to be great.
An absolute master of design and panel layouts. Lonergan creates a beautiful story of man, our vices, and the Gods who intercede in our lives. Lonergan’s use of the 30 panel grid is unreal. And when he uses diagonals and depth in the final chapter it truly is mind-expanding.
I was completely blown away by Juni Ba’s storytelling. The cartooning is light and playful. The story is an anthology of fables set in fictional woods where anthropomorphic animals roam. It feels like reading a whole new fairy tale.
Some of the best comic art I’ve ever seen. This is not an over-exaggeration. Sterte is a genius who has an incredible command of linework and muted colors. She builds a world where gods roam. The story is so opaque I could barely understand a thing. It has major Breath of the Wild vibes. A new civilization built on the world of our own (I think) that is both foreign and familiar. It’s the kind of the comic you read where upon finishing you immediately seek out everything the creator has ever made.
I’m halfway through this very thoroughly researched account of The Salem witch trials. It’s academic as hell while also featuring artistic and creative flourishes as other characters (Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reflect on the town’s history). This is a dense and rewarding read.
This reads as if Tim Burton had created a story in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It’s about two characters exploring their trauma in a darkly whimsical world of allegory. I really like the city and fantasy designs from Malkasian, and the watercolors were beautiful.
Injecting some downhome story and prose into my diet is a necessity. It keeps me grounded and helps remind me of the breadth of creativity in fiction. You don’t have to go to the stars or fantasy setting to build a world. World building can be in the new way someone describes a place all too familiar.
“The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.”
This epic was never on my school curriculum, and I’m excited to finally read it.
Check out this throwback heavy metal band with a gimmicky veneer of medieval fantasy. I kept seeing Castle Rat in my algorithm, but when I saw an interview where the the lead singer talked about fantasy painter Frank Frazetta as inspiration I started paying attention. I’m seeing them in the fall and I think it’s going to be an awesome show!
Band: Castle Rat
Have I watched it yet? Yes
Where to watch? YouTube
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See you next week.
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