Unisex (Patreon)

Hey, I finished my first comic page in...years? Yeah, I think it's years. Sheesh.

Unisex is a one-page, twelve-panel autobio comic, it will be part of a minicomic done by a bunch of friends and associate called Pretty Dirty. Other contributors include Stephen DeStefano, Robbie Busch, Mark Badger, Greg Benton, R. Sikoryak, Kriota Willberg, Hilary Barta, Paula Karasik and Tom Daly (who handled all the production grunt work and is dealing with the printer). There's 4/5 of Instant Piano represented (me, Robbie, Stephen and Mark), along with an honorary Instant Pianist/contributor (Greg).

Old-timers here might recognize this is a page I started ages ago for the Patreon. I dusted off the second version (the first having been ripped up) and started working on the unfinished art and lettering and the patches needed to complete the page. it up. Had to draw three new panels/panel sections, some dialogue paste-downs and a paste-down figure to go on a pasted-down panel (the second panel above. barbareal is pasted tp theart in the panel which covers a previous attempt that went kablooie. I then spent a lot of time cleaning everything up digitally, because there were years of dirt and artifacts and some shitty lettering that I tried my best to unshittify. Also, a lot of correction ink picked up dirt while I fumbled all over the page. The panels above are a raw scan, not cleaned up, btw.

The comic will be available at MOCCA in NYC at the end of the month. R. Sikoryak/Kriota Willberg and Greg Benton have tables and I assume they'll be selling copies. Other folks involved will likely be around but not exhibiting. I might get up early (9-10 a.m. for me is 3-4 a.m for humans) and head in myself to pick up my copies and see if I know anyone there (looking at the exhibitors list, I'll only know several veteran cartoonists and a few Fantagraphics people). I haven't gone to MOCCA since doing a signing for I-don't-remember-what at least ten years ago. I don't remember anything from that day except seeing Tom Spurgeon there. The decades pile up.

I don't know how many copies to have printed up for myself, I've never really taken part in this kind of thing before. 20? 25? 10? I can sell them at the high school cons I'm doing but I dunno how they'd go over with a younger, more mainstream crowd. I can sell a few through the Patreon? I have no experience with this, the only real mini I ever worked on that I sold was the M&C SPecial Edition, and SLG handled everything on that. Anyway, the mini is a thing that's happening and I'll have some copies at some point.

Next up, going over some paperwork, packing up two card art orders, signing 50 bookplates, starting two pages of Milk & Cheese (I think I settled on an idea for it). Adding lines to commissions and a new Fun Strip for the Patreon. Finishing a few more card drawings for operating costs, I currently have no paying gigs (pushed them off to work on commissions).