Running your own comic publishing house is a strange kind of freedom. Nobody hands you a release calendar, a print run, or a distribution plan — you build all of it yourself, one decision - one delusion - at a time. That’s the part I love most. This week is a perfect snapshot of it: a fifteen-year saga finally crossing the finish line, a hardcover getting one more round of hands-on quality control before it ships, and a brand-new ongoing series about to find its home on a page-by-page publishing schedule I get to invent from scratch.
That’s the real engine behind self-publishing — not just making the comics, but constantly testing new ways to get them into readers’ hands. Ordering a single prototype copy before a full print run goes out. Committing to a weekly cadence on Substack instead of waiting for “someday.” Building a subscription tier around exclusivity instead of just volume. Every one of those is a small bet on getting more of this work in front of more people who’ll actually love it. Here’s what’s moving.
In production since 2011. Finally finished.
Cager Dobbin is a hired gun in the town of Promise — and Promise is under siege. One by one, out of nowhere, four apocalyptic Horsemen emerge to tear it apart. Why they’ve targeted this town, why they’re hunting Cager and his circle to the edge of annihilation, what unseen master unleashed them, and what arcane power fuels their destruction — those are the questions Cager has to answer to survive. Along the way he has to get through his old frenemy Wilbur Fairless, who keeps coming back in increasingly lethal forms, all in service of a vengeance plot against the celestial forces that ignited this Steampunk Apocalypse.
The Complete Saga collects all three volumes — available as a deluxe oversized hardcover or softcover, plus an autographed softcover edition (perfect bound, 6.625” x 10.25”, 288 pages). Fifteen years of world-building, closing the loop on a story that’s been waiting a long time to be told in full.
CLICK to Follow Last Ride on Kickstarter
Kickstarter runs one week only: 9/1 – 9/8. Follow the prelaunch page now so you don’t miss the window.
Collected Edition Kickstarter results are in: $6,214 from 73 backers — a strong show of support for a project at a higher price point, and proof there’s real appetite for premium collected editions of this world.
Prototype review turned up two small fixes before the full run goes out: one large interior image is being swapped for a higher-resolution version, and the hardcover’s bookmark ribbon is shifting to a darker green. This is exactly why ordering that single prototype copy first matters — catch it before it’s locked into hundreds of finished books, not after.
Late Pledge for Deep Space Lovecraft
Page files head to the printer today. Digital fulfillment lands Wednesday, August 19, and late pledges stay open until physical fulfillment wraps. Looking ahead, a Volume 2 collected edition is planned for February — another roughly 200-page volume, with at least 24 pages of brand-new story.
The next Deep Space Lovecraft single-story adaptation, projected at 48+ pages.
Lovecraft’s original 1922 serial follows an unnamed narrator recounting his years assisting Herbert West, a brilliant and increasingly unhinged Miskatonic medical student obsessed with reanimating the dead through a chemical reagent. Each experiment goes further and grows darker — from stolen corpses to battlefield casualties in the war to a final reckoning when West’s past failures, still walking, come back for him all at once.
Horror fans mostly know this story through Stuart Gordon’s 1985 film Re-Animator, and it’s worth knowing going in how far the movie strays from the source. Lovecraft’s story is grim, episodic, and free of romance or comedy. The film invents a love interest, a rival professor, and a pitch-black comedic streak that turns the same premise into splatter-horror spectacle. Adapting this one means choosing how much of Lovecraft’s original bleak tone to restore versus how much of the pop-culture version readers are expecting to lean into — that tension alone makes it a fun one to build.
Kickstarter launch projected for September 29.
The next chapter after 2025’s Frankenstein and Cthulhu Gothic Horror Team-Up — this time following Frankenstein’s Monster as he faces supernatural threats to both his new father figure in Cthulhu and to the cosmos at large. Cthulhu, in turn, gives him something he’s never had: purpose and belonging.
The rollout plan is built entirely around rewarding the people already following the journey. A 10-page pre-intro comic goes out first, exclusively to subscribers of this Substack, free or otherwise. From there, the ongoing series updates three pages a week for $5 basic subscribers, with a higher physical-subscription tier in the works that covers printing and shipping and comes with a Substack-exclusive cover you can’t get anywhere else. Paid subscribers will also get the full script as a PDF once it’s complete.
Target launch on Substack: September 1.
Fulfillment on the current run wrapped last week — every copy is out the door. Script work is now underway on issue 4, including the new cast of characters teaming up this time around. More details soon.
Pushed to mid-to-late October. A more specific update is coming next week.
Every project in this update grew out of the same entrepreneurial instinct: try the new thing, and build in a check before you commit at scale. Last Ride of the 4 Horsemen finally exists as a complete, deluxe-format saga because the patience to finish it right was matched with the will to actually launch it — one focused, one-week Kickstarter window.
Deep Space Lovecraft’s Collected Edition proved that a single prototype copy, ordered before the full print run, catches the kind of small flaws that would otherwise ship to 73 backers at once — and that same instinct is what’s already shaping how Herbert West gets built next. And Frankenstein’s Monster-Sized Cthulhu Horror Stories is a bet on cadence itself: a page-by-page Substack schedule and a tiered subscription model designed to put new work directly into the hands of readers who want it first.
None of this happens without readers willing to follow a book from prelaunch page to final print. Thanks for being part of it — more soon.
Thanks for making comics with me!
Kevin LaPorte
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.