Newsletter #92: Just Keep Moving Forward

Hey guys, it's Scott.

It is Tuesday and Yankees beat the Mets yesterday, so I'm super happy. No, in all seriousness, I'm really excited for this week. We've got a bunch of stuff going on at Best Jackett. First, Canary #2 is out today from Comixology.

This is one of our second wave books. Our first wave books were We Have Demons, Clear, and Night of the Ghoul, all three of which I'm deeply, deeply proud of. And now our second wave is underway. So we have Canary, which is co-created with Dan Panosian and it's a horror/western. Then Barnstormers: A Ballad of Love and Murder is second, which is co-created with Tula Lotay and is a historical-adventure/crime-drama. And then thirdly, we have Dudley Datson and the Forever Machine, co-created with the great Jamal Igle, which is an all-ages cosmic adventure. So they come out one week after the next. You get all of the books we've done so far, plus these books, for the price of one comic a month if you sign up for Comixology Unlimited. If you have Prime, you get all of them. If you have Kindle Unlimited, you get all of them.

So we're just over here making stuff we really love, kind of quietly, and you get all of it for the price of basically one comic every month. So I hope you'll check it out because I'm really as proud of these books as anything I've ever done in my whole life. I really feel creatively invigorated and liberated to just try new things with incredible partners, so I hope you'll give that a look.

Also, Founder’s Tier members, remember that now is your time to send in ten of your books to Comic Sketch Art for absolutely no cost except shipping. Whatever you want, trades, comics, anything, and I will have them signed and back to you. But you only have until September 12th, so you've got another couple of weeks, but please, please get your books out so I can sign them for you.

Also, tomorrow night is class! I'm so excited about this. Live at 9:30pm ET, we're going to do it, it's going to be about endings. So I'm testing out a new theory that I have about what makes a great ending—the relationship between emotional arc and plot arc all coming together in a very particular kind of way. So I'm really excited to hear what you think. Also, I'm going to give you a chance to read Night of the Ghoul if you're a paid subscriber, the entire digital trade (attached at the bottom of this post) so that you can see what I'm talking about with some aspects of constructing an ending, and we'll look at Court of Owls as well. They're two different kinds of endings, but the goal is to at least have you have access to two things that I can discuss textually. And then what I'd love is to also talk about things that you suggest, movies that we all likely have seen, other comics that we've maybe all read. Just put some suggestions here in the comments and we'll see what we can use. But overall, those are the books that I'll be discussing in detail and then I'll use very familiar cultural references for other things as well. But it'll be a really hands on class, it'll just be me and you guys. I'm very excited for it.

And then in September, we're gonna start using your work in addition to looking at published stuff for a really enhanced version of the class, which we're going to call Comic Writing 102. So if you are a free subscriber, right now is the best time, I mean it, to sign up for the paid subscription. You can get an entire year for just $75 or you can go monthly in $7 installments. And all the classes we've done so far are archived in there for you. So I hope you guys will check all of that out and come join in the fun, because it's honestly been an incredible time for me, I just love it.

Also, I was just in Pennsylvania with my family for kind of a last hurrah before school starts next week, which the kids are in the house moping about as I talk about this with you guys. But my parents have had this lake house since I was about five years old. It's kind of like a cabin on a lake that has no motor boats or anything. It's really really quiet and just removed, and a bunch of my friends had been there at different times from James Tynion IV to Capullo and other people, but it's been a part of my life since I was a kid and I think just getting away to this place really allows me to just step away from the pressures and the obligations of the day to day work.

I have a ton on my plate right now. We're getting in the final materials for Wytches which, by the way, I keep getting asked about. We're doing a short that previews the second arc that's going to be in the Image! anthology coming out. That's why you'll see a little bit of Wytches teased by Jock and me. But overall, we've finished compiling everything we need to submit for the TV show and we find out if we get greenlit in the fall, like at the end of October/early November, and we're just fingers crossed because we love what we've been able to produce. We're incredibly happy with everybody in the room and as soon as we find out about that we'll make a schedule to bring Wytches back. Everything is designed for the second arc and has been for a while, so we just want to find out what what's going to happen with the future of it as a larger property, so please send good thoughts and wish us luck because that would be a game changer for us. But I have that, and then I have the second wave books, and I have Dark Spaces: Wildfire. We're finishing up in Nocterra, we're bringing back into winter, in a big way for a huge third arc, me and Tony. And then you know, I've got a couple of new things coming to that I'll announce soon. So it's just nuts.

So getting away to this place where you just walk down the steps, you're at the water. It's the same place you've been since you were a little kid. The water is cold, never warm, but the kids love it. They're old enough now that they've come full circle from loving it as little kids then kind of when they were at an awkward stage and wanted to hang out with their friends and never wanting to go, they've come back to loving going. So it's, it's great to see my 15 year-old jump in the lake and splashing with the 11 year-old Emmett and Quinn fishing off the dock with his fake fishing pole and all that stuff. It's really heartwarming, but it also gives me a chance to read.

So one of the things I wanted to do was sort of mentioned a few books that I picked up recently and really, really liked. A couple are from Vault—Dennis Hopeless, who has done great stuff over the years, and Víctor Ibáñez, who I love as well, the two of them have a new book called Heart Eyes.

It's like a post-apocalyptic story, but it's really character-driven, about this young woman named Lupe who lives in this kind of strange, disaffected post-apocalyptic monster world. It's definitely worth picking up, both for story and art.

And then my friend Cullen Bunn also has a new book with Vault that I love called Door to Door, Night by Night, by him and Sally Cantirino, who's new to me but whose art is fantastic.

It's literally like a horror book but it's about door to door salesman, and it's just, it's really good. A brand new take on the road and what's scary about traveling and being transient out there and the American highways and byways and you should totally check it out.

Also Starhenge by Liam Sharp, who's a pal and just an incredible creator on all fronts—great storyteller, incredible artist.

Starhenge is like a retelling of the Arthurian myth with Stonehenge and all kinds of cosmic lore and myth involved. So it's a brand new universe from the ground up and it's 100% worth checking out that sort of image. Check those out.

I've also been reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.

I had picked up a Gentleman in Moscow, another book by him and I liked it. And then this one just hits all the bases. For me. It takes place in 1954. And it's about a boy Emmett, who's just released from a juvie detention center comes home to find that his family home has just been sold out from under him. And so he goes on a road trip in his one possession at old Studebaker with his younger brother, Billy. And they encounter two kids that he knew in juvie that make the trip more and more harrowing as they go. And it was a lot to bucklebury, Fenn and other American mythic adventures along the rivers and roads, but it really up ends expectations. If you're interested in writing, or interested in the craft of storytelling, it's one of these books that clearly sets out in such a way that you expect it to have this very linear path, both literally and figuratively, from one side of the country to the other, and to have very clear goals. And a lot of the book is about how life and storytelling is about finding those moments along the way that redefine us constantly. And that define and redefine us both in terms of who we are, who we want to be how we get over trauma of the past, as opposed to sort of getting to a destination as a way of accomplishing or remaking ourselves. So it's a really fascinating book on all levels. It's an incredibly compelling story. And at the same time, the structure and the writing of it itself, the narrative. Acrobatics are really inspiring. So check that out as well. And yeah, last I said that I would take questions from the discord here now and then and so I'd love to do that. The question that Ty sent me, thank you very much. Ty…

Lucien Desar asks, “How do you know when your writing is done and no longer needs revision?”

Well, the truth is you it's a great question. Sorry, it's pouring here. I don't know if you can hear the thunder and rain but it's kind of pleasant. You never know. It never feels done. You'll always revise it till the end of time. You have to just drop it at a certain point. Work is never finished. It's just abandoned is kind of the way it goes. So for me I look at quarter valves I look at those things and I constantly see things I wish I could go back and change. But ultimately, you grow and you'll always have things you want to add or subtract from work because it represents a certain point in your life when you felt a certain way about things, and you were at a particular point in your growth and your journey as a writer, so it stands as it is and needs to be sort of left at that point and not revisited. In terms of big changes.

I'm not a big believer in going back and changing things beyond the year in which you make that thing. So I certainly go back and edit things when they go to trade. But I don't go back and edit past that. Even though I would love to believe me, there are plenty of lines and things I wish I could change from stuff back. But you know, that's where I was at that point in my life. And my point is a writer and you're always trying to grow and get better. And as you do, it's fun to look back and see those things for what they are is just points along the journey. So anyway, that's the best advice I can give you will never feel good about being completely done with something. So that's good news and bad news, but it's just the truth.

S

P.S. Here’s a great track I’m recommending for all you to give a listen: