Well, it’s hard to get conclusive proof for anything that causes IBS – irritable bowel syndrome – I mean it’s by definition unknown what’s causing it (it’s the fall back condition when everything else has been ruled out)
But through diet changes it was obvious that wheat was a big trigger for me, and now, I think, I can also add chocolate to that list.
And I know that because.. well, a few weeks ago after my last attack I went off chocolate and I’ve been symptom free then day before yesterday had a twirl (a lovely lovely twirl) and immediately rushed to the loo, then Yesterday had some more chocolate and last night was pain. Lots of pain.
So that’s it, me and chocolate are no more. Slowly. Little by little, every pleasure becomes a pain point.
Anyway, that’s why the blog is late today!
PJ’s Progress
Pretty good day yesterday work wise, for F&McB ep 3 pages 3,4 and 5 finished in inks. That’s a good day. Three invoicable pages! (I mean I think page 5 needs some more background so will get to it. This is a 10 pager (I only send an invoice when a page is complete), and if I hadn’t been knocked on my ass by IBS I was hoping to get another three pages inked today. With a plan to finishing it all for Monday. But we’ll see.
Oh I need to do about 18 invoicable pages of work per month to earn a living. Not a massive living, just enough to cover bills and things. No luxury dining for me. And this month I’ve done … 13. Ok. It looks bad. Not all pages are created equal and I did four pages of Terran Omega this month too, which doesn’t count because I earn nothing from that. But still. Need more.
Oh, yesterday I realised I needed a new nib and I haven’t been very good at tracking my nib usage, so I ordered 20 nibs – £25 on ebay. G Pens. Never order one thing of a thing you use in physical tools. Always order as many as you can afford.
On Comic Artists maintaining Newsletters and Social Media
Was chatting with John McCrea today about the merits and difficulties and purposes of things like newsletters, and patreon and social media.
Sometimes talking to someone helps me coalesce my own thoughts around these things.
For artists, I think you need some sort of motivator to get a newsletter and patreon up and going. The barrier to starting talking on social media is far lower. You can quickly find the people who want to find you on bluesky (and previously twitter, and facebook and instagram) and that becomes a motivator, plus it’s so frictionless – you can just pop in whatever random thought you have. No need to worry about marshalling your thoughts into a paragraph or two – you can’t.
But, as we’ve all seen social media come and go, I’m not entirely sure it’s the right answer.
There’s a philosophy of post once publish everywhere – and tools that can help, but it’s not the same, it just feels like now you’ve got to do more work.
And really, most artists just want to post their silly fun pictures and get on with things.
Patreon
For me, I think what really helped with patreon was having a project to do – a one year long graphic novel allowed me to post properly to patreon three times a week – once the b&w, second the colour and third the artists edition (and colour and artists edition are for paid members). So far, that’s helped me build up 360+ patreon followers in a decent amount of time.
And so, if I want to keep patreon I’m going to have to come up with the next project and the next, etc. Which is good, because I’ve no hit a reasonable feedback loop of doing something and having the readers to justify it.
Newsletters
I think there’s probably a sweet point of readers on a newsletter to justify its existence, but talking to John I feel like the problem with a newsletter for an artist is … what do you put in it to make it worth reading? Especially if you’re already posting this stuff all over. That said, I think a newsletter (and a blog) may be the only independent ways to connect to your audience. In the “post once publish everywhere” your starting point should he the blog or the newsletter. And I suspect the newsletter needs something unique in it to guarantee it’s worth looking at over and above the blog/patreon.
So that’s something I’m going to work on figuring out. Maybe exclusive monthly sketches? That might be the thing to help. Maybe allowing the readers to suggest the sketches? Yes. That might do it. That at least will make it worth while looking at the newsletter… hmm.. ok. That might be the plan for me…
Anyway you can subscribe to the newsletter at pjholden.kit.com and if you get in touch and ask me for a sketch, I don’t care what it is, I’ll pick one at random and you’ll see it in the NEXT newsletter. (These sketches won’t be for sale, I mean, unless you want to buy one… but if I pick your suggestion it doesn’t mean you’re getting a free sketch – only that I’ll draw it, I’m not made of money, or sketches)
Social Media
You know, I’m really coming to think of social media as the least important part of a comic artists outreach. Once upon a time it had the biggest audience, the widest reach but now … well… algorithms throttle the outreach favouring posts that encourage activity – and the posts that encourage most activity (a fact I think we’ve all known since the very early days of the internet) is outrage. A nice picture of Judge Dredd? Not much traction, the president who shall not be named ai altered into a Dredd outfit, shooting someone in the face? Boy I’d expect that will travel pretty far and wide. But for what?
And the thing is, the answer to non-nazified-algorithems isn’t no algoritehsm because now the reach is much more like standing in a crowd and shouting – sure the people who hear you at that moment will react but also there’s thousands of people (and often your followers) who might hear it faintly as background noise. You need large numbers of followers to get that to have any traction.
And any that sits in between that … along will come Zuckerberg, or Musk to buy it up before it becomes too popular (that’s how instagram went and how whatsapp fell)
So I have a very different attitude to social media. It’s my thought collection bucket and I’ll gather them up and post them here.
Which neatly brings us to …
Yesterday In Social Media
So I’m tired and don’t have time to do the screen grabs I’d normally do so instead I’m going to embed some stuff, with the caveat that that makes these things brittle. If bluesky stops working, if their profiles become hidden, if the delete their profiles, then these embeds stop working.
Way back at the very early dawn of what I laughinly call my career, I’d done some work on a small press fanzine called the Class of 79 – created by much missed super dredd fan (and my mate) Stewart Crofts-Perkins, Stu went under the nom-de-plume of Logan, anyway, on the fanzine I first met Rufus Dayglo who would go on to do great work for 2000ad, among other things, and Jake Lynch – who cocreated the Co79 fanzine with Logan. Jake was, for my money the best artist in those early issues (no mean feat, Rufus was incredible and Henry Flint – at the time working for Tharg’s mighty organ – also made an appearance) but Jake’s art held so much promise. Somehow I broke in to 2000ad before Jake, who had real life stuff to do before he could really return to comics. But he did return, and for my money one of the best on Dredd, a unique voice too – which is damn hard to pull off on Dredd.
ASnyway, Jake posted this
Look at that sexy Lawmaster design. God Jake knows how to draw vehicles.
I spotted this and thought “I WOULD READ THIS COMIC – assuming all the nazi’s get their comeuppance in the end”
And I guess that’s all the news fit for print (on my blog, which isn’t print). See you on the flip side! (tomorrow I might even tell you why I keep saying that phrase, maybe you can guess!)
