July Newsletter

Goodness, I wonder if this year is flying by for everyone else as quickly as it is for me. It's hard to believe it's actually July... But it is so it's time for this month's newsletter! I've been thinking about these newsletters a lot over the last week and really thinking about what I actually want to use them for. I've been mainly using them to let everyone here know what my plans are for the month in terms of what art I'm making but I think it would be nice to get a bit more personal and have a bit of a chat.

★  ★  ★   PERSONAL STUFF  ★ ★ ★ 

Realising that we're half-way through 2020 and that Summer has begun has been making me feel kinda melancholy. This time last year I was well into con season; I did my first big show in London and I was slowly making a small name for myself within the UK indie comics scene. Things were looking up in terms of my career, the weather was good and I was spending a lot of time going on walks and just kind of enjoying life. All of that feels like a whole other world now. Lockdown persists, and although things are getting more relaxed here, I don't think I'm going to be venturing out as normal probably until there is a vaccine. I'm still staying with my partner and I don't know when I'll get to see home again. In a lot of ways I feel I'm wasting away but I'm hardly alone in that feeling. 

This month has been very hard. It feels like every day we've learned about a new abuser within the comics industry or wider media industry and I'm so... worn out I guess. It's just been very triggering All the time and I feel like every time I speak out or try to spread information or raise awareness about the issue, there's a really supportive response from other survivors and marginalised people who are also keen to make a difference, but cis men - the people we're trying to appeal to - are largely staying silent and I'm so disappointed. We need cis men on our side if anything is ever going to change and to hear people tell me personally 'damn, that sucks. Wish things weren't like this' without any indication that they're going to take further action feels like a kick in the teeth.

The #comicspledge that was circulating Twitter has kind of cemented a lot of things which I knew all along. Men in comics care about whether women feel safe around them but ultimately do not care about making a larger difference. Having to do the work is Hard and constant and most of them would rather pay lipservice to the idea of not being an abuer themselves than make any effort to tackle the systemic problems which led us to this point. 

I decided that I'd had enough of the 'pledge' they were all taking and worked with some of the people in a comics discord server I'm a part of to make this as a response: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kV96axkb5LaMXTjdkDpLrnRC-02H3GgLL9cwKbMO-wQ/edit 

 In other news, as is probably evident from my comics, I've been really struggling to maintain my online relationships lately. I think I'm just so done in a lot of ways that I don't have the energy to stay upbeat and check in on people. Most people who know me know that this is something I've always dealt with but it seems that lockdown and just the general stress of everything has made it worse. 

I made a comic last month about struggling to enjoy anything that doesn't feel 'productive' and I finally found an antidote to that problem in a surprising place. A couple of my friends have been playing Minecraft for weeks and despite my protesting of 'I do not want to get sucked back into Minecraft!!', exactly that has happened. It's actually been really good for me to just chill out and play a relaxing game with friends or on my own. I even made myself a character skin of my comic-sona!

 ★ ★ ★   COMICS  ★ ★ ★  

I've been wanting to kickstart a collection of my comics in book form for a while now. My plan was to have something printed and ready for con season but since all the conventions are cancelled, I don't know whether or not I should go through with it now or put it off until next year.

On the one hand, it would be good to have a bit of incomce from a Kickstarter and subsequent book sales right now; on the other hand, selling books online is a lot harder and if I wait until next year, I will have way more pages and I'd be able to print bigger books...

I've also been wanting to pin down my focus with these autobio comics I've been doing. Originally, they started off being kind of self deprecating but ultimately lighthearted but I feel that this year I've wandered deep into angst territory and I don't really know what to do with this.

Honestly, I'm an angsty bitch and I am completely fine with that but I sometimes like to make happy stuff too. I guess I'm just worried about what kind of message I'm putting out there. I think my goal with these comics is to make something that people see a truth in that they can connect with. The best feedback I ever receive is when people tell me they've been struggling to communicate an issue/feeling they're having to someone, but then they use my comics as a vehicle to get those ideas across and the other person finally manages to understand. I really think there is value in that, maybe even more than making sure the message has a positive spin at the end. I think that no-matter what I do, if I can stay true to my goal of making work that is as emotionally honest as possible, I'll be OK. 

Something I've been thinking about for a while is putting an autobio book together that's specifically about dealing with trauma and recovering from it... It's something that's very close to my heart and I guess I want to document it somehow. I still haven't figured out what I want to do though - whether I want to make a kind of diary comic about my specific experience in chronological order as a separate project or just keep doing what I am doing and sprinkle in trauma comics when I feel like it... 

In any case, I think this should be something that I focus on after I finally get started on Violapse. I was working on it so much in March - May but lately I've found myself battling burnout and having to prioritise other things like commissions so I'm behind schedule. It was my intention fo have a working script ready by the end of May but I'm going to try to have that done by the end of this month instead. 

 ★ ★ ★   PATREON STUFF  ★ ★ ★  

I'm going to keep posting three new comic strips per week as I have been doing for a while. In truth, I've been struggling to find extra time to work on Violapse and a couple of other projects so I think I might take a break from comic strips on the last week of every month. 

$7+ Patrons, I will be in touch very soon about your sketch commissions! I'll be sending a mass message out probably later this evening. 

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I think that's about all the updates I have for now! Thank you all so much for supporting me this month! You guys are the absolute best and I appreciate Every Single One of you so much. I hope you're all doing OK and staying as safe as you can. Things are really just a lot right now in almost every way and I just really hope you're taking time to fulfil your own needs amidst everything else that's going on.

Chat to you again soon!

Your artist,
Bex