This week marks the second anniversary of Midnight Menagerie. Two years ago this week I posted the very first page on December 11th 2012. When I first started the series I had a serious ambition about doing a full color comic that updates weekly that would introduce some characters people would grow to love. Now here we are two years later and I have a regular following of fans who actually leave comments and stuff and that is super exciting for me. I seriously hope that people continue to enjoy and support the series as much as they can. Thanks you guys!

Happy Cyber Monday my beloved deviants! I hope all of you are filled with leftover turkey and the blood of the enemies you slew during Black Friday. There was no page last week on account of holy hell my body is trying to kill me again drawing is the last thing I want to do. AKA Anklosing Spondilitis. I’m better-ish and that means new page time.

Fun fact: Next week is the 2nd anniversary of our two favorite dorks being dorky together and I’m going to do some cool stuff to celebrate this fact. In the meantime continue to vote on Top Web Comics, and also don’t forget my big clearance sale! It is Cyber Monday, after all.

Also, this week I’m being a guest contributor for the blog, Beyond the Trope, so y’all should check it out!

Hey guys! If you vote for Midnight Menagerie this month on Top Web Comics you’ll get to see a bunch of new sketches of clothing for Romero, as well as some cute Shawn goofiness. Remember that voting for the site is a great, free for you, way to support the comic and help increase my ad revenue. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but because of all y’all reading the comic, clicking and ads and voting for the site, my traffic has gone up enough to increase my ads significantly. It’s still not enough to live on, but it’s totally noticeable. So to everyone who’s voted and bought the comic, you have my most sincere gratitude.

If you notice a slight tweak in layout it’s because I’ve added a new permanent link to the Comixology digital issues so it’ll be easier for you guys to find and I won’t have to remind you every couple of weeks. And if you haven’t seen the big announcement on the home page or on Facebook, I’m doing a huge clearance sale of merchandise from my Artist Alley stuff. If you’re looking for a cool gift to get someone for Christmas or want to take advantage of some awesome bargains, click on the banner and get what you can while you can.

Yay! Halloween is this Friday. The contest is now closed but no one entered. Booooooo. Also on Halloween I’ll be posting a special Halloween themed comic. If you want to read it before this Friday just vote for Midnight Menagerie on Top Web Comics.

Hey guys, remember that Halloween comic I was promising last week? Well, it’s up. But if you want to see it before it’s posted on Halloween you need to vote for Midnight Menagerie on Top Web Comics. It’s super easy to do. You either click this link or click the banner in the side column of the site that says ‘vote top web comics’. You do that and you’ll unlock to comic and this year’s Halloween shenanigans. You don’t need to register or anything. Just confirm you are human, or at least, not a web spider and that’s it.

Ranking higher on Top Web Comics helps a lot of with the series’ ability to get ad revenue and web traffic, hence my push for it.

Midnight Month continues not only with a new page but an AMA this week and a contest. This Friday I’ll be hosting a Midnight Menagerie themed Ask Me Anything on my Tumblr account Bwillett Sketches. If you’ve been having any questions about the series thus far or are hoping to pry some spoilers out of me I’ll be live to answer questions starting around 10:30am MST and will probably be on for about two hours. Also, I’ve decided to host a contest:

It’s October and that means Halloween. And since Halloween spookiness and Midnight Menagerie have a lot in common, October is unofficially Midnight Month. To celebrate I’m going to be hosting a fan art contest. This year’s theme is Toothache. Like what you get if you have too much Halloween candy and don’t brush your teeth. So it’s your mission to create a piece of art that incorporates at least one of the characters of Midnight Menagerie, the idea of a toothache and something to do with Halloween. It could be silly, it could be creepy, but it has to incorporate all three things! If you enter, you get the chance to win free art from me and bragging rights until next year.

TO ENTER

Post your art on either Deviant Art and/or Tumblr and send me a note linking to your entry (don’t count on simply tagging your work because I can never seem to find anything in tags). Send your Deviant Art entries to @Nasdreks and your Tumblr entries to bwillettsketches.tumblr.com. Because there isn’t any worry about shipping, this contest is open internationally.

THE RULES

1. You must be at least 13 years old to enter (them’s the rules of the interwebs, if you’re younger, get a parent to enter for you.)
2. It must be art you create. It can be any medium but has to be something you made. That means no edits or tracing of my art or anyone else’s. And no stealing someone else’s drawing, I expect better than that from you guys.
3. Keep it PG-13, please. Gore or romantic scenes are OKAY, but no porn and keep the violence fairly reasonable. Let’s not get too gooey.
4. The art must include at least one character from the series (this is a Midnight Menagerie contest after all), have to do with Halloween and use the theme ‘toothache.’
5. You can enter as many times as you want during the contest period, but you can only win one prize (IE, if you win second prize with one of your drawings you won’t be able to win 1^st or 3^rd prize with your other entries.)

THE PRIZES

1^st Prize: Single Character full-color, cel-shade digital commission

2^nd Prize: Single Character b&w inked digital commission

3^rd Prize: Single Character pencil digital commission

JUDGING

Entries will be judged from the pool of entries I get from both Deviant Art and Tumblr that get entered during the contest period. I will be the one judging the entries and I tend to judge more on content than talent. IE a drawing that has anatomy and perspective problems but I think has a lot of personality has a better shot of winning than a drawing that’s pretty but generic. I will also be judging on how well the theme was incorporated. So don’t think that you don’t have a shot just because you aren’t the most amazing artist ever.

DEADLINE

The deadline to get your art in is OCTOBER 27^th. Winners will be announced Halloween. I won’t be able to extend the deadline for anyone because I don’t currently have internet at home. Meaning if your entry isn’t in my inbox the day I do my updates I won’t see them until Halloween and it’ll be too late for me to judge them.

GOOD LUCK AND GET ARTING.