Author: Matty Boy

Whatever happens, I want everyone to know that I’m sincerely grateful for the support I’ve received, and that I am intensely proud of the work I’ve created with Bands I Useta Like and Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding, as well as my past animated endeavors. I feel that I have created a body of work that is more than admirable for any artist. Whether or not my work endures after I am gone is not up to me. 

Thank you sincerely, and I hope you and yours had a wonderful Thanksgiving, will have a Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year. 

I made this update public because I wanna thank all my fans and supporters for sticking with me. Now that I’ve passed the 50-year mark, I’ve come to accept that certain things about my personality aren’t going to change. It’s just the way I am. There’s no “becoming someone else” now, it’s all a matter of managing depression and pain to maintain consistent productivity. 

Look folks, show me a functioning artist who isn’t depressive and I’ll show you either a successful one or a total naif. It’s par for the course, and frankly, fretting about it only makes me feel lousier. Since this is the life I’ve chosen, there won’t be a point where I can take a breather or any kind of personal break, without a lethal gap in income. Most of the time I accept this, sometimes it gets my goat. 

All this month I’ve been planning a new issue of Patron Saints, spotlighting an upcoming project I’m getting pretty excited about. If you’ve visited the Bands I Useta Like site lately, you know how poorly September kicked off for me overall. Even allowing for that, and some personal issues I won’t mention, in the last four weeks I’ve created 4 CFB pages and written 2 BIUL posts. I’m pointing that out more for myself than anyone else. The root of my depression is when I can’t make enough money to get by doing what I do. 

Because of my constant need for validation, as I begin early production on this new project I’ve mentioned, I keep wanting to show tidbits to the audience to prove that I’m not just huffing my own farts. If I do this, a voice in my mind tells me I’ve jumped the gun and I’m advertising another false start that will come to nothing. This happened recently with the aborted comic book Bad Shape, and the animations (One Hundred Percent American, Bone Wars) I haven’t had the time to finish. 

And yet, if I keep mum like a good content creator and wait until a project is finished to talk about it, the voice in my mind tells me that people have forgotten about me and I’ve lost my audience. Please note, I typically work alone, so I have to be both creator and promoter simultaneously. To do either properly is to take energy and time away from the other. 

If I had a wife or a family, all this would be impossible without neglecting them. Again; I accept this. This is the life I chose. 

I read about the lives of cartoonists and animators I admired as a youngster, lives filled with evictions, poverty, rejection, social ostracism and self-harm, and still decided to take that path. I chose to join a counterculture that no longer exists. The point of no return has well passed for me. 

At the same time, the sphere of modern entertainment has degraded to such a pathetic nadir, there still burns a fire inside me to do better. I know I can create something good enough for Netflix, or Hulu. It just takes money and time.

More than I have of either, to be precise. 

(Wait- that sounded too grim. I mean that I need the time that goes toward making enough money to get by, not that I’m staring down some kind of solid death-date. I’m fine folks, so far as I know.)

Thanks to a weekly regimen I established back in 2009, I am currently finishing the 460th page of Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding. That’s 460 pages of material that I can repackage and sell as comic books. My goal with CFB was to establish a fantasy-adventure franchise that constantly and consistently pleases readers, for years and years. To create something that readers can return to, over the course of their lives, just like the classic Sunday comics of yesteryear. Something dependable. I believe 460 weekly pages, with another 260 planned for the future, is pretty damned dependable. Once there are 720 pages, then I’ll decide whether or not to do a “third solstera” of another 360. By that time, I intend to have grown the strip’s audience several times its current size. 

Because among the projects I do, CFB is the “least popular”. That’s why I call it a “genuine labor of love”; it requires the audience to sit and absorb it by reading, rather than delivering the immediate punch of a YouTube video. I’ve built a whole world for readers in CFB, one more fleshed out than any world I’ve conceived before. CFB is my Tolkien, or Dune. In my opinion, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ll probably be dead by the time it is truly appreciated for what it is. 

That’s okay. I’ve never done CFB for monetary compensation. 

Now, Bands I Useta Like is technically concluded (after over 20 years!) as a comic strip, but I have almost enough material for a 6th issue of the magazine. BIUL is, on the surface, the thing I’m most known for. I know that I can keep it going as a website and an inconsistently-released magazine. There will still be thousands of people around the world who are interested in the overall concept. 

But you see, there’s something I’m known for by even more people, something I did from 2005 to 2008. A concept I’ve been known for since as far back as 2002. Something that caught the attention of the Sci-Fi Network (as it was then called), Comedy Central, and Adult Swim, who later rejected it (I wasn’t ready at all anyway, plus the rejection letter, which I wish I could find, was from Mike Lazzo). 

Something I’m daunted by the prospect of doing again. However, I know even more now than I did a decade ago about the business of production, and it’s clear that now’s the time to get started. 

The image attached to this post is the first image of proof of concept. It’s not much, but again, that voice in my mind is relentless in its taunting of failure. I have treatments, but not a script yet, except for some scenes that I have literally been working out for years at this point. I need a budget because I work with a qualified sound editor, and because I want to hire some voice actors I have in mind. Plus I’d like to farm out some of the animation and backgrounds so the production doesn’t take me three years and destroy my personal life again, such as it is. I want to step up from what I’ve produced before. I can do that now. I just need a budget, and my living expenses covered. 

After considerable research (for me anyway), I have found that the best way to finance this new production is Indiegogo. Then I’ll have 60 days to raise the necessary amount. That’s the part that scares me. I don’t want my own obscurity to hamstring another production, particularly one as professionally constructed as I can manage. 

The real ones among you know what I’m talking about now. Also I’ve already recruited and briefed a couple of cronies from the last go-around. The wheels are in motion. I just have to pay myself and everyone else involved, for the time required. This, at a time when I don’t even know where next month’s rent is going to come from. 

Because that is the time to do this kind of thing. When you’re hungry, and up against the wall. When it’s all or nothing. Do or die. 

Thanks again sincerely for your support. The best is yet to come. 

Stay tuned.