Comics, Cats, and Cocktails, March 2024

Risque new comics (sorry Dalton's Mom), going on vacation, and the best comic I've read in ages!

Hello Friends,

We’re building up to a massive month of new releases, fulfilling our first ever trade paperback, and somehow finding time to go on my long lost honeymoon! Brianna and I got married during lockdown and we’re finally able to celebrate properly, so we’re going to Curacao for a week! Sorry, I’m excited, just had to get that out of the way, let’s get to the comics.

What We’re Working On!

This week I announced my new series to the internet, an erotic slice of life comedy titled Smut, and the response has been really positive! Who could have guessed that sex sells on the internet? Amazing! I do think people are hungry (or thirsty! Sorry, couldn’t resist) for stories that don’t just use nudity to spice up an otherwise bog standard plot, but talk about sex and relationships as subjects in their own right and treat its characters like characters instead of fan service machines.

This first issue centers on Dakota, a personal trainer who’s looking to make a change. Lately, she’s been writing her dates off as one night stands, partly because she wants to avoid having to get close, partly because there hasn't been anyone worth getting close to. It’s time to raise her standards, exercise self control, and get through one date without jumping straight to sex! Unfortunately, her date starts raising the bar—he’s interesting, he’s actually listening to her opinions and respecting her boundaries…maybe self control is overrated after all?

We’re having a ton of fun making this book and I know you guys are going to love reading it! Here’s a first look at our “Thirst Trap” Variant Cover by Eileen Widjaja. It isn’t dressed yet, but we’re planning on making it look like an Instagram post for the cover and making the plain version available as a print!

Last month we announced Dalton’s newest project, David and the Ostrich Riders, a series of high fantasy novelettes about a teenage boy dropped in a world of Scorpion-hounds, evil sorcerers, and knights riding Ostriches. The exact plans for how we intend to publish these books are changing, but they will be coming in one platform or another sometime soon! That said, Dalton is still hard at work on polishing his prose and making some killer artwork for the books. Case and point, Heather Vaughan’s incredible cover for chapter 2, which you get to be the first ones to see!

That’s the big stuff that’s new. We’re still working on a couple of other projects, they’re just in phases of development where there’s not much we can show off, but stay tuned for more inside looks at Frankenstein the Unconquered and The Catskin and the Rose.

MechaTon successfully funded on Kickstarter and we’re about to send out the digital copies, so if you supported that campaign, first of all thank you, and second, keep your eyes peeled for your rewards! If you missed it, don’t worry, we’ll have the book available to the public just as soon as we finish shipping out the book to our backers!

What We’re Reading!

(Wells’s Pick) My friend Violet gave me Kelly Thompson and Meridith McClaren’s Black Cloak as a Christmas gift and I’m viscerally upset I didn’t know about this comic before now! A murder mystery set in a world full of mermaids, dragons, elves, and magic, this book has the kind of setup that could either be wildly creative or a giant forking mess. Black Cloak is firmly in the former camp, balancing its fantasy elements in a way that enriches the story and characters and elevates the whole form to astounding heights.

Centering around the murder of an elven prince, the story follows Phaedra Essex, an exiled royal, a black cloak (detective named for their signature attire), and the victim’s former fiance, as she discovers and unravels a deep conspiracy in tandem with her own personal history and fraying state of mind. If you’re getting notes of Chinatown and True Detective, that is definitely intentional. In some ways, it follows the murder mystery formula to a T, but that is very much a strength of the book, not a weakness.

By being such a strong genre piece, the comic allows its fantasy elements and spectacularly complex character to shine through and create something truly special. The reveals not only have an appropriate punch and impact on the plot, but reveal so much about the world and society the characters operate in. Moreover, the unique ways the characters react to these reveals, molded by the world they inhabit, make the story feel fresh and unique despite wearing its influences on its sleeve.

Add to that an art style that doesn’t quite look like anything on the market today and some truly impressive visual storytelling and you’ve got a book that’s not so much worth your time as it is demanding of it. The term “instant classic” gets thrown around a lot, but this is exactly the kind of story the term was made for. If you haven’t read Black Cloak yet, run to the nearest bookstore and pick up the trade, it’s SO worth it!

(Dalton’s Pick) I’ll be honest with you guys: I’ve been pretty depressed lately. And when I get depressed, I really just want to fall into something that occupies my mind for a bit, even if it’s the artistic equivalent of junk food. Which is how I found myself in the middle of Benjamin Percy’s current run of Ghost Rider.

Make no mistake: these are not great comics. Hell, they’re not even great Ghost Rider comics. But at the end of the day, all a Ghost Rider book has to do is have a dude with a flaming skull riding a motorcycle and killing demons with a whip made of chains and hellfire. I’m a simple man with simple pleasures, and that’s what the first arc of this run (collected in Unchained, the first volume of the new series) is more or less trying to give me.

Johnny Blaze wakes up to find himself in his own version of Mayberry, with everything he could ever want. But voices whisper from the shadows and he can feel a deep sense of dread creeping up around him. What follows is a jailbreak fueled by pure vengeance and a hell-spawned road trip across America as Johnny follows the demonic compass that is the Ghost Rider to small, forgotten towns where the shadows run deep and the darkness has grown wild in the Rider’s absence.

Each chapter is a done-in-one vignette that plays out like a horror-infused western: Johnny arrives at a new location, finds some sort of demonic activity, and the Rider must then deal with it, all brought to life by the masterclass art team of Corey Smith and Brent Peeples (lines), Roberto Poggi and Oren Junior (inks) Bryan Valenza (colors), and Travis Lanham (letters) that will turn your stomach as much as your head (not to mention the breathtaking covers by Kael Ngu).

End of the day, Percy isn’t a skilled enough wordsmith to elevate a Ghost Rider comic beyond the baseline, but if all you want are beautiful pages of skulls on cycles killing demons, you could do much worse than this collection.

Cocktail of the Month

Me and my wife are headed to Curacao for our long lost honeymoon, so I thought I should talk about a drink Curacao is famous for! Bright, refreshing, and a riff on the drink that got me into cocktails, this strikingly odd colored drink is a result of the island’s famous Blue Curacao liqeur (which comes from a distillery I will be touring!). Introducing the sublime Corpse Reviver No. Blue

Recipe:

• 3/4 oz London Dry gin

• 3/4 oz Lemon juice

• 3/4 oz Lilet Blanc

• 3/4 oz Blue Curacao

Rinse a coup glass with absinthe before shaking and double straining. Add a lemon twist as a ganish.

The Corpse Reviver No. 2 is a prohibition era cocktail/preferred hangover cure of one Ernest Miller Hemingway, and this modern variation preserves the original qualities of the drink that made it irresistible and adds a bright blue, instragramable color for a modern socialite to enjoy. If you can find a bar that knows what the hell you’re talking about, I’d definitely recommend ordering this delicious drink and turning some heads!

Adventures in Cat Ownership!

I don’t get to talk about Bug very often because he tends to be photo shy and generally peaces out whenever you get within a few steps of him. Pictured below, Bug doing his best impersonation of a bridge troll while Gilly gives us the Ol’ Razzle Dazzle:

However, we had to take the boys to the vet last week for their yearly check up and he needed some rarely asked for comfort, which provided the perfect opportunity for glamour shots! He actually got in a fight with Cornifer who was nervously attempting to shove himself inside Bug’s carrier, but he calmed down very quickly and the Vet said he was exceptionally well behaved <3

One clean bill of health, several treats, and some extra snuggle time with Gilly (his adopted mom), and he’s back to his normal self, but I do love those moments when I can get close to the little weirdo!

Look at his MLEM!

That’s all for now! I’ll be MIA all next week, but then it’s back to the grindstone :D

Wells Thompson