BUT WHAT IF I DOUBLED IT?
Hello! So if you can believe it, we’re about one month away from the one-year anniversary of this 1979 SEMI-FINALIST Substack Launch! And wow…the time has seriously flown. I feel great about what we’ve done and also disappointed (not enough stuff, not fast enough, blah blah blah, you all know how self-reflection goes! Good times!)
I am still figuring out exactly what I’d like “Year Two” to look like for us on Substack (and if you have something you’d love to see, feel free to shout it out in the comments!)
We have built a really wonderful community here and I want to keep it going, but once we get through our “Year 1” books (BLACK CLOAK, THE CULL, and UNANNOUNCED BOOK X!), without the grant money to help sustain us, this Substack is not currently a robust enough financialy that I can just launch into another round of new creator-owned comic books (or Volume 2s for our first round of books, etc).
HOWEVER there’s plenty here we can still build that’s a bit less ambitious/expensive and I’m just trying to figure out what that content should be (in addition to the regular newsletter stuff). I’m thinking a lot about what makes the most sense for Substack and also what I’m most excited about. It might be prose? Or comics? Or mini-comics? Or something totally new? It’s wide open territory in a lot of ways.
The first thing that all of YOU should know is that next month, prior to anyone’s paid subscriptions expiring, I intend to COMP all Founder and Yearly backers for three months. That means any Founder or Yearly subscription, no matter when you subscribed in 2022, will get extended for THREE MONTHS for FREE.
The reason to do this is mostly because I greatly appreciate all of you, and especially those that committed to a full year with me early on and helped make this all possible — it was a real leap of faith and it meant a lot that you guys came along. I feel like we have delivered really great content, but a bit more slowly than I’d have liked. So comping Founder and Yearly backers for three months feels like a good way to say thanks and acknowledge that we haven’t been as efficient as I’d have liked.
Since I’m still deciding what 2023 is going to look like on here (other than finishing out our first round of books), I can’t confirm what the new subscription tiers will be, except that I expect all tiers to go DOWN in price — I suspect we’ll land at something like $5/month; $50/year; and Founder Tier will either go down and the deliverables will change slightly or that tier may disappear completely. The Free Newsletter will remain largely the same.
So, as we wrap up Year 1 on here there are some long overdue fun things that you guys have been super patient about (which I really appreciate!) — including our GIVEAWAYS FOR AWESOME FREE SHIT — like signed comics from my own personal stock and ultra rare Kelly Thompson sketched comic covers!
This weekend, all backers that are eligible for the first two Contest Giveaways, were notified by email and made aware of what Giveaways they are automatically entered into.
If you did NOT get an email, it means you are not within the first 150 Yearly or Founding Tier Backers — and the entry for the two Giveaways is now CLOSED.
Subscribing now to one of those two paid tiers will leave you eligible only for the 3rd Giveaway (a signed and numbered illustrated edition of my novel THE GIRL WHO WOULD BE KING) but Founders Tier subscribers will still get all those print extras that the tier promises — that doesn’t change.
If you think this is a mistake and that you should have received an email telling you you’re in the first 150 Founding or Yearly backers, please first check all your spam filters/email accounts — and then, if you really don’t have an email from me, feel free to send me an email and we’ll figure it out together.
Originally Giveaway 1 was supposed to be for 1 of 6 ultra rare Kelly Thompson Sketch Variants on either a Deadpool #1 or Hawkeye #1 sketch cover. But I found a couple extra Hawkeye and Deadpool sketch covers PLUS one Uncanny X-Men #1 Sketch Cover — so, unless I REALLY mess up one of the 4 I haven’t drawn yet — we’ll be giving away 10 ultra rare sketch covers intead of 6. Yay!
Here are the first six covers I’ve done. I’ll post the last four soon! And not long after that we’ll do the actual drawings for these babies.
Okay, so those are the first six. I’m not sure how good they are, but they are definitely FUN.
Originally, for Giveaway #2 — Signed Covers from Kelly’s Personal Stock — we were going to give away 10 reasonably rare variants of mine signed by yours truly. But I added 7 more issues and three cool trades —so instead of giving away 10 comics, we’ll giveaway 20. (Yup, I doubled it! Yay!)
The trades are basically valued at cover price, plus whatever my signature is worth (2 bits? Boy…that is a very old person joke. I be old, guys):
The books are: THE SILVER COIN VOLUME 1 (Softcover); BLACK HAMMER: VISIONS (Hardcover); HEART IN A BOX (New 2021 Edition)
And here’s Group 1 of the rare variants — these books are valued somewhere between $20 and $50 plus that signature value add! ;D
They are L-R, clockwise: CAPTAIN MARVEL #11 (Tan Variant); CAPTAIN MARVEL #1 (Brooks Variant); CAPTAIN MARVEL #1 (Hughes Variant); STAR #1 (Jeehyung Lee Clean Dress Variant); UNCANNY X-MEN #1 (Jen Bartel Variant); CAPTAIN MARVEL #1 (Nakayama Variant); JEM & THE HOLOGRAMS #1 (Lau Comics & Ponies Variant - color); and MR. & MRS. X #3 (Campbell Variant).
Group 2 are valued between about $50 and $200 (!!!) so far as I can tell…but most are closer to $50. ;D
They are L-R, clockwise: CAPTAIN MARVEL #1 (Brooks Unmasked Color Clean Dress Variant); CAPTAIN MARVEL #2 (Brooks Spot Color Clean Dress Variant) — there are two of these; CAPTAIN MARVEL #2 (Bachalo Variant); JEM & THE HOLOGRAMS #1 (Lau Comics and Ponies Variant - B&W); POWER RANGERS: PINK #1 (Sauvage Variant); CAPTAIN MARVEL #1 (Lau Variant); STAR #1 (Campbell Clean Dress Variant); and DEADPOOL #1 (Finch B&W Variant).
So we’ll be doing both of those giveaways coming up in the next week or so. Keep your eyes peeled — and may the odds be ever in your favor!
Okay, I gotta get back to work. Turned in a pitch and a bunch of script stuff this week, but still have a to-do list that looks just…absolutely insane. I will never crawl out of this hole! Gahhhhhh!
Oh, let’s do a question today…inspired by my boy Jeff. OTHER than Jeffrey The Land Shark, first of his name — who is your favorite non-human character in fiction?
I may have linked this before but…I have a type?
What about you?
Be good and take care of each other. Also… if you’re not registered to vote, DO THAT.
~Kelly
Ein the data dog from Cowboy Bebop!!!
For what it's worth, Kelly, I feel like I've gotten a lot of quality content here. Out of the handful of Substack thingamajigs I've signed up for, yours, along with Chip Zdarsky's and Saladin Ahmed's, have been the most "worth it" to me. I'll definitely be sticking around, and I really, really hope the projects we've seen so far find a way to continue into Vol. 2 and beyond, even if it's not through this same method/platform. I guess what I'm saying is, don't be -too- hard on yourself!