The end is nigh (so I'm making comics)
No time for me today? Here are the highlights:
Hang in there, babies. — a message from papa rent
Exclusive look at a short comic
New episode of Event Fatigue Podcast
Hey, hola. Been a minute. How you been?
I've been busy. Normie stuff. Plus, some mental health stuff which was... new to me.
I gotta say, if you're someone who wrestles with that kind of thing on the reg, you're my hero.
God bless you for getting out of bed this morning, you precious angel. I mean that sincerely. You matter. Thanks also for subscribing to rent*space. (I guess that one is for everyone.)
Anyway, I hope everyone is holding up. Things are wild out there. I've got some good friends who let me kvetch messy trying to work out my soul about it. Get yourself some good friends.
Despite the general state of things, I do have a bit of an inkling that some of the walls that typically divide us are coming down more than we realize. It seems like caring people are finding ways to talk to each other again.
Maybe absence has made the heart grow fonder.
After 9/11, there was a very obvious unity, for a time. Now, I think the unity that is happening is more subtle.
It's definitely not something you'll see on Twitter. It's not anything many of our cultural stakeholders have noticed, or talk about on their cable news shows.
But I think it's there. I think it's deeper. I think it will endure.
Or I'm wrong, in which case we're fucked.
Either way, make comics until someone comes to kill you.
(Or, you know, whatever your thing is. It doesn't have to be comics.)
On to business.
You'll notice a new look in the newsletter. There's some other cool new stuff coming here as well, but I'll show when the time comes, not waste your time telling.
Anyway, what's new:
A shadow appeared under the door of my dark and dusty office. "Rent Investigations" on the paint-chipped window. He let in a gust of air. Cold for August.
Dressed in high heels and poured neatly into a red dress, Milton Lawson entered and sauntered up to my wounded, creaky desk to drop ash into a heavy glass brick of an ashtray. With smoke, he asked this old gumshoe a favor:
"Hey, can you do that Heller short by the end of August?"
And that's what pulled ya boi out of his non-creative funk and got him back into comics.
Thompson Heller: Detective Interstellar is a space noir in 3 issues coming this fall from Source Point/Comics Experience. (PREORDER).
Written by Milton, my compadre on Event Fatigue Podcast, and illustrated by the mega-talented Dave Chisholm, it tells the story of an epic cunt with a heart of gold (one sympathizes) named Thompson Heller who roams the galaxy solving cases with a moral or political dimension.
It's a great piece of work and years in the making. In one of those years, pal Rick Quinn and I each wrote a short comic in the world of Heller.
I can't remember if it was a specific challenge or we just wanted to cheer Milton up. But we did it, and fun was had.
Recently, Milton asked me if I'd want to actually draw it for him. So that's what I did this month.
Not sure what he's up to with it, but he's going to send it to the main book's colorist to bring it across the finish line and then re-letter it himself so I don't get put into timeout by Letterer Twitter.
He said I could share what I had so far, so here it is. Hope you enjoy:
Also, here is a new episode of Event Fatigue Podcast.
Click on the cover below to be taken to it:
These will continue to be released intermittently when Milton and I need palate cleansers for our various projects.
Lastly, I should have a Ronin Digital Express update next issue. Subscribe here/share with friends.
My recommendation is just the HBO Max subscription service. And not because of the Snyder Cut.
Frankly, that has been so overhyped that, like Rise of Skywalker, there's no way it will offer anything but a fleeting satisfaction that wears off shortly after the credits roll, if any relief at all.
I digress.
HBO Max just has a deep bench of great content. I was a subscriber of Go and that was fine, but it really seems like the Max catalog is comparable to Hulu, meaning, there's a solid combination of new releases and old classics, as well as deep cuts and surprises from the TCM vault, including a good number of Kurosawa films. Oh, and all the Studio Ghibli films.
My specific recommendation is the Toshiro Mifune Samurai trilogy, which is just really the most damned stunning little collection of films I've seen in a long time.
They hold up EXTREMELY well. You don't even need to like samurai shit.
Anyway, the recommendation, again, is HBO Max.
That's all for now.
Thank you for your support. It really means a lot.
Be good.
*rent