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- KC Newsletter! September 2024
KC Newsletter! September 2024
Finally some good fucking news!
This issue: Volume 4 is finished and up for preorder!! Things improving in general!
This month’s finances and what all got done!
I finished volume 4 of Kidd Commander! I wrote fifteen thousand words of various KC prose! And my paycheck this month is sitting at around 809$! We’re less than a hundred away from the goal I set when we started the year, which we’ve only reached because all of y’all have been making the effort to help out. Seriously, that’s the only reason we’ve accomplished any of this; I’m doing just what I’ve always done, but this year KC’s audience really showed up to support it and the effect has been kind of overwhelming to watch. Every little action to share the comic around, all your goofy tumblr posts and fanworks are a huge deal when the project is as small as this one, and I hope you’ll keep at it while we build up enough momentum to keep it healthy.
So here’s some really good news!
We’re not QUITE pulling in rent money just through steady monthly income, but things have leveled out significantly. Between my paycheck, my shop, Lee’s shop, and our convention earnings, we’ve come out in the green for a few months in a row. Things like shop sales are usually pretty temperamental and conventions are a total gamble every time, so these aren’t super reliable and it would only take one or two bad months for things to get spooky again; I’d still feel a lot more comfortable if I was sure I could cover our rent if those things hit a lull. But! Things are looking a LOT less bleak than they were earlier in the year, and I’m not ever going to pretend things are Bad when they aren’t just to like. Put pressure on people to spend money or whatever, so I’m officially saying (if nothing changes between now and December) that we’ve stabilized enough that operations will continue as normal beyond the end of 2024.
The ship isn’t as watertight as it ought to be, and there’s still a long way to go before I can afford the assistance I need to get more comic work done faster, but it’s a damn sight better than it was in June. I’m gonna get rid of all the doomsday wording but I’ll leave our funding meter up so we can, hopefully, keep ticking along towards hiring some help by the time it becomes critically necessary.
I really, honestly did not think we’d get even this far. I can’t thank y’all enough for getting us here. I will keep doing my very best to make things that are worth all your support.
Out of the studio!
Very much against my will I will be traveling back to Tennessee next week for some business. It should only be the mundane sort of agonizing rather than anything nightmare inducing, for once, but it does mean I’ll be away from my desk until at least the 8th. I’m leaving the shop open for preorder stuff, but please keep in mind nothing will ship until I get back!
Book stuff!
Volume 4 is FINISHED it’s DONE it is OFF to the printer. You can preorder it here in my shop, all the details are there on the page for you!
As I’ve mentioned before, my new printer doesn’t do any runs smaller than 20 for books as big as mine (so, no proofs, ouch) BUT I am absolutely not having the giant preorder run be the first time we print. I’ve ordered 20 books and hopefully we’ll get them around October 15th. The ideal outcome is I’ve done my job perfectly, so I have 20 good books and did not in fact tank the cost of an entire print run, but if that doesn’t happen maybe I can sell them as misprints at a discount. Fingers crossed!
I’ll say it again on the next page update (which should be in the next couple days) but thank y’all so so much for your patience and support while I got this thing to print. I am one person doing literally every part of getting this comic out there, and while I love it to pieces it’s often exhausting and overwhelming, but y’all have never come at me when things have gotten slow or I’ve had to prioritize some other aspect of running this thing that wasn’t regular pages. I am trying hard to find some help Somewhere but that’s not happening any time soon, so it’s a relief to not have to worry about people getting angry when I have trouble staying above water. I’m doing my best! But I’m only able to do that because y’all let me do it. Thank ya <3
Shop news!
Aside from the obvious news being Volume 4, I’ve dumped all the stock I currently have left of all my books into the store, and the mangas are even a little discounted! Now is probably the best time to catch up on your collection if you’re missing a few, or want to get started. I am really low on the Specials and it’s likely I won’t have the cash to reprint them until after Christmas at least, so if you want one of those now’s the time for that too.
I also added the Suffering Toulouse Poster, but the ACTUAL cool poster news is I’ve figured out how to ship them without using poster tubes, so they’re no longer prohibitively expensive to ship. If that put you off before, it’s better now! Yay!
Thinking about posters again reminded me that we still don’t have an Agatha poster, and we really need something fun like the miniprints in a bigger size. I sketched out five new pinups for the main cast (including Lucky Noon!) which I absolutely won’t have time to work on until January probably, but I am aware we’re lacking in this department and I aim to get it fixed when I can. Well, I dunno if anyone else thinks we’re lacking, but I do lmao.
Novel stuff!
This month was not great for getting comic work done for obvious reasons, but I wrote around 15k words of KC prose and plan to get more of that done while I’m traveling! I do most of my writing on my phone between other things, so even if I’m having a chronic pain flare-up or I’m out of the house I can usually find time to get a little bit done.
I’m still not ready to announce the other project a lot of this is going into (aside from it being Kidd Commander related, obviously), but hopefully by next month I’ll have things more nailed down and be ready to commit to this thing out loud. I’d originally planned to have it drop in October alongside Volume 4 but uh. I’m tired and I didn’t want to hurt myself lmao. Soon though hopefully!
I did go through and do another straight read of the novel as it stands, I hadn’t done that in a minute and you know! I think it’s pretty good. I’ve never enjoyed something I’ve written myself enough to like, want to reread it just to hang out in the space, but I’ve found myself going in and reading some of the passages when I’m Feeling a character and want to visit them a little. Probably a good sign! I hope y’all like it too.
State of the Artist
The Aurora show was a rough one. The staff was great and it certainly wasn’t EVERYBODY I met but the crowds were, very pointedly, NOT there for comics; I spent most of the time reconstructing my booth after it was damaged by unattended children, and dealing with grown adults acting like children about either the existence or the price of indie comic books. FanExpo Knoxville remains easily the worst convention I’ve ever worked, but even there the crowds weren’t this rude, it was really something lmao.
It’s part of the job so normally I feel like I bounce back okay from Random Attendee Abuse, especially since it tends to be the exception rather than the rule, but these sorts of shows where the ratio is more severe always leave me feeling like I spent the afternoon getting punched in the face haha. It’s nice that it was the last one for a little bit, I think Lee and I both need the break. Going back into Tennessee is probably going to have about the same effect as a bad show, but once we get through that I’m really looking forward to getting back to drawing my fucking comic. I’m feeling a bit wrung-out just this second but man it’s nice to have Volume 4 finished. I can’t wait for y’all to get your hands on it.
Thank y’all! Take care this month!
-Aria
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