Sumerian and Hard Times team up for print editions, animated sketches, and comic book collabs

Hard Times celebrated 10 years of existence a couple days ago (We think, Bill and I aren't 100% sure on the date). But without you, the people who decided to chip in when we most needed it, we probably wouldn't have made it. You saved us! When you chose to support our work it was a make or break moment for us, and we'll never forget it.

Here's some more good news about the site’s continued existence: Hard Times and Hard Drive have found a new home under the ownership of Sumerian Entertainment, who put out records, comic books, tv shows, and movies. Our creative team is staying in place but will now begin work with Sumerian to grow Hard Times and Hard Drive into animated series, comic books collabs with bands and video games, and print versions of our magazines (!). 

Sumerian is stepping up to fund this work because they are longtime fans of the site and think we can make some of these new projects work. So the team will stay in place, and the money from this Patreon will keep flowing to the team as they attempt these new projects. Sumerian has some real experience in film and television production (including a recent project with Walton Goggins), so I think we may actually pull something off. They also own a comic book company and are interested in creating comic books for bands or video games (recent examples of comics they created were a Gorilla Biscuits comic book and a Hotline Miami comic). This could even lead to us doing a small Hard Times records imprint.

We've always wanted to do stuff like this but just never had the funding, bandwidth, or business team. I think now we'll have the best chance we've ever had to do these things.

So what does this mean for our Patreon?

First thing: We wanted to come up with a way to say thank you because you are the people who supported us when we really needed it. So, by Monday we will have a code called THANKYOU to take 70% off all inventory we have in the store, which includes some great records. I hope if you pick up a t-shirt with this code you can think about how you helped save this ragtag group of punk kids and video game nerds from prematurely turning off the lights of their business. Note: This code will be turned on in the next 48 hours. Go ahead and grab stuff and put it in your cart though at hardshoppes.com. I'll ping again when the code is live and you can check out with your discount.

Second: We are imagining that this Patreon can now serve as a place where supporters get first look at scripts for the animated series, exclusive access to comic book sketches, maybe vote on which bands or games we should try to collab with, and continued newsletter and podcasts, etc. Your support is going to go toward the creative team working on all these new projects, with Sumerian being like a super patron who contributes alongside you for the attempted expansion.

10 years of a comedy website is a long time. One of the best days in the site's history was the day we found out there were people out there who felt like we should live to see another day. Thank you for that warm embrace. It meant a lot. If we get to the point where we have an animated show we will have only got there because you helped us stay alive. We'll keep you up to date as things play out and we get a handle on new stuff we'll be working on soon.

• Matt Saincome (Hard Times/Hard Drive co-founder)