Hey my lovelies! This weekend I’ll be appearing at the artist alley of Nan Desu Kan at the DTC Marriott in Englewood Colorado. NDK is sort of my home con, it was where I did my first artist alley and it’ll be my third year running. If you want to meet me or just say hi, just stop by the center of the atrium. Most likely I’ll be right by the entrance like I was last year. I’ll be selling art prints as well as copies of Sorcerer’s Apprentice and the special edition Midnight Menagerie issues I originally did for Denver Comic Con. These guys are the leftovers, so once they are sold out, that’ll be it! Like I mentioned last week the only way to guarantee physical copies in the future is if digital sales increase. So if you can’t make it to NDK, remember you can always buy the individual chapters on Comixology.

Also, because the con is this weekend there won’t be a new page next Tuesday. The week after we’ll go back to regular updates and we’ll get to bask in Shawn’s ability to wound himself sitting still.

Like I said last week, Issue 3 of Midnight Menagerie is now available on Comixology for everyone who wants to read the chapters in big chunks instead of page my page.

For those of you who want to support the comics but can’t afford to buy issues there is a super easy way to do that. On the left column of the updates is a link for Top Web Comics. Please vote for Midnight Menagerie, all you have to do is click the button and vote. I know a lot of you guys reread the comic when there aren’t new updates, so if each time you did that you’d vote, it’ll increase the rank if Midnight Menagerie. The top 100 comics on the site get the most exposure and thus the most ad revenue. If we can get MM into the top 100 by the end of the year, that would be super awesome.

On a different but not unrelated note, a few people have asked me about the possibility of physical issues. Here’s the thing, so far there simply hasn’t been the demand. Not only is getting printed material more expensive than digital, it’s also a far bigger hassle. Coordinating printers, getting proofs and actually storing the books. I would have to sell at *least* one hundred digital copies before I’d consider physical. The only physical editions I have are the special edition books I had for Denver Comic Con. I still have plenty of those left over, so if you want one, just email me.

Hey my little monsters. Good news to be had for all my fans. Midnight Menagerie issue#2 is finally available on Comixology starting tomorrow. Enjoy full screen, high-end art right on your tablet or smartphone, anywhere, anytime. Also, every issue you buy helps to support the series by actually giving me the funds to work on it. And at only $3.99 an issue, it’s a great bargain! Issue goes live July 30th, so don’t forget to buy it tomorrow!

So for anyone who was under the impression what I was somehow going to neuter Romero by not having him attack humans, I hope those concerns have been lifted. Only a couple of pages left in the chapter now, and then the cover. That week when I post the cover I imagine lots of people are going to be angsting over what happens next. So I’m apologizing in advance.

When I was in the library last week I found a couple of really cool books in the discard pile which I imagine for future story lines will be super useful. First is a horror anthology that lists some of the best horror films, short stories and novels and what makes them so great. It’s from the late 80s so it’s missing a lot of more modern titles and doesn’t cover horror comics (a rather significant omission by my account, but in the 80s comics were still a largely disrespected medium, so I’ll forgive it) but it definitely has a lot of stuff I hadn’t heard of before and will want to track down for research.

The other extremely cool thing I found was a book called The Headless Haunt, which is a collection of African American ghost stories. This is super cool because a lot of times folk lore from minority ethnicities is overlooked in western pop culture, which a real shame because I don’t think there’s a culture on earth that doesn’t have at least have a few interesting myths. While right now Midnight Menagerie is focusing more on traditional horror fare, in future story lines I plan to feature less well known monsters, myths and legends that Shawn and his buddies will encounter.

It’s the middle of summer now and things are really hot now. It isn’t always easy to motivate yourself to draw when you’re cooking in your own juices, especially as hot as my house gets. I don’t know what it is about the heat that makes you so sleepy, but I’ve been fighting the fatigue to keep updates on time. I sorta wish there was a real Midnight Collectables where I live so I could cool off by watching movies at night. At this point I’d even be okay with vampire management as long as they offered sodas.

There’s just three more pages left in Chapter 3, and then the cover, before I submit the chapter to Comixology. If you haven’t bought issue 1 yet, what are you waiting for? Digital copies are only $3.99 and work on almost any smart phone or tablet. The chapter looks really snazzy onscreen.

Also I’ve talked to a couple of people about guest art for the series. For the regular pages that won’t be feasible, but I am thinking of letting people do guest covers. If you run a web comic and want to do a guest cover for Midnight Menagerie, get in touch with me at webmaster @ bwillettcomics.com so we can set it up.

So far chapter 3 has been a bit slow on action but big on atmosphere, get ready because that’s going to change in the next couple of weeks. Chapter 3 will be wrapping in by end of July and Chapter 4 will really start getting exciting.

And I’ve started reading the Morganville Vampire books by Rachel Caine and I have to say they’ve been pretty intriguing. The series is a bit of a mix of Vampire Knight and Buffy in terms of the problems of mixing humans and vampires together and forcing humans to be the mediators. I’m almost done with Book 6, which I believe is the end of the first major arc. The books are very episodic and not very long so you can probably read one in a couple of days. I’ve really liked how she’s made the vampires decidedly predatory, but at the same time still fairly interesting and sympathetic.

That’s a problem I’ve noticed in a lot of modern fantasy and fantasy horror series is that the authors have been trying too hard to make vampires not as evil as they originally were portrayed. That they’re more like misunderstood superheroes rather than undead creatures of the night. This won’t be the case with Midnight Menagerie. While it’s fairly unlikely that our ginger hero is in any danger around Romero, Mystery Stranger is right: Romero is still a monster.

I’m very excited about the next couple of pages because I’m finally introducing the next of the main characters of the series. For the moment I’m keeping his biography a secret, since it’s pretty vital to the plot. I just hope you guys will enjoy this new character as much as you’ve liked Shawn, Romero and Ronny.

It’s now less than a couple of weeks until Denver Comic Con and I’m really excited to see the print copies of the book. I still haven’t gotten them, but the printer guaranteed that the books will get here before June 9^th. It’s cutting it a liiiiittle closer to the con than I’d like. But if you get into this business you’ve gotta learn to roll with the punches.