SR 1 PAGE ONE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE

Well, here it is: The final page of Serenity Rose Vol. 1: Working Through the Negativity. After 60+ weeks of fairly long-winded page commentary we’ve finally come to the end of our glorious collective word-journey. (With pictures.)

And what a nice page to end on (ignoring the bonus bit below). After five issues of gothic-tinged angst, confusion, and terror, we end with Sera blissfully floating through a self-conjured cloud of friendly little butterflies, secure in the knowledge that her life is about to veer off in a hopeful new direction. 

Her happy pose is literally traced from the one that ended the first issue. If you recall, that was right after a stranger named Cricket told Sera she liked the comics Sera had been pseudonymously creating for Kelton’s zine. It’s maybe the only other time in the first book we see Sera genuinely happy. (How tragic!)

What links these two moments of happiness? In both cases, these are moments when Sera’s felt truly seen. With Cricket and now with Vicious, she’s made a connection with another human being not based on her celebrity or infamy, but through basic understanding of one another. Building connection through understanding is what we all want out of life, but this kind of emotional stuff doesn’t come easily for Sera. Or me, honestly.

SO… 131 pages in, did we create a connection? Do you think you understand me a little? Do you think I might be able to understand you a little? I hope so. To me, that feeling of connection is the most exciting thing about art, both making it and absorbing it. The sense that “Oh, this person gets it! This person might get me.”

“I might not be alone.”

It’s such a beautiful feeling. And one that, incidentally, can’t ever be replicated by A.I. A machine programmed to pretend to understand you can only make you feel more alone in the world. You need real connections, ideally with real human beings, but when that’s too tricky, art can come to the rescue. Real art by real human beings, tossing messages in bottles out into the sea.

Hope you got something out of my little bottle messages!

What do you think, should I continue this into Serenity Rose Vol. 2? I worry that this commentary might start getting kind of repetitive, but who knows? Definitely need to take a break, at least. 

But please stay subscribed to the newsletter! I’ll definitely keep posting from time to time to let you know what I’m working on, what’s coming out soon, where I’ll be signing, etc. Y’know, newsletter stuff. I’ve been thinking I should be doing more recommendations of all the cool horror monstery books, movies, music, and assorted esoterica I absorb on a regular basis, too. But wherever the newsletter goes from here, thank you so much for sticking with it this far! And for supporting so much of my other stuff over the years. Truly, you are heroes to the cause of spooky weirdness. I salute you, in a dark, eerie, not particularly “salute”-like way. You rock!

SR 1 BONUS

Way back in 2004, I did these two pages for SLG’s Free Comic Book Day offering. For those who don’t know, Free Comic Book Day (FCBD) is an annual event where comic shops give away – get this – free comic books specially printed by participating publishers. That year, SLG did kind of a grab bag of original stories meant to promote some of their most recent series, including Serenity Rose.

I basically used it as an opportunity to write some Cryptkeeper puns. And to explicitly spell out the details about how witchcraft works in my universe. Which in retrospect might have been nice to put in the actual first issue of the series? Eh, whatever, people like picking things up as they go along, right?

I had forgotten the detail about ectoplasm being formed from existing nearby molecules. Which means Sera must be devouring all the oxygen in the surrounding area whenever she, like, whips up a pony or whatever. Could’ve had more fun with that idea along the way.

MAYBE I STILL CAN.

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

What a week.

I’m writing this not from my own home, but from my in-laws’ place in Tucson, AZ, where I’ve fled from the Eaton Fire just north of my apartment in Pasadena. Luckily, our home is several blocks south of the evacuation zone, so it should be fine, but the smoke is just unbearable. We couldn’t stand it even with the air filters going 24/7.

We’re extremely lucky. Not everyone has been. Thousands of homes and businesses have been lost, not just to the Eaton Fire, but to wildfires all over the LA area, especially the truly horrific Palisades Fire near the coast. A lot of people need help right now, and if you’d like to chip in, this is a pretty good roundup: https://www.kqed.org/news/12021150/where-to-donate-help-los-angeles-wildfire-eaton-fire-palisades-pasadena

I can definitely vouch for the good folks at Pasadena Humane. I think I’ve done an original ZIM production art auction for them in the past. Probably do more auctions for them and other charities very soon, too, so if there’s a particular ZIM character you’re interested in, please let me know. This area is going to need a tons of assistance… People think Los Angeles is a town entirely composed of fabulously wealthy movie stars, but man, it just is not so.

Kind of a bummer of a way to send this newsletter into temporary hiatus, but that’s how time works, I guess. I will say that in times like this, I always take hope from seeing people come together for each other. People show their best and worst sides in a crisis, and I find best wins out more often than you’d think, if you just keep your eyes open. Cynicism and realism aren’t the same thing, and the next few days, weeks, months, and decades are going to require a lot more hope and kindness.

Let’s stick together, cool people of the world.