July 2024 - Intro & Overture
Introduction - SDCC - Rose City Comic Con - Awards! - Sugarsticks - Roethke - Bunyan
Oliver Bly here, writer and illustrator of The Mushroom Knight. If you discovered this letter, you likely signed up for my mailing list at a comic convention over the past couple of years. Yes– years, it has taken me quite some time to finally cobble this together. So many mountains to climb and only so much time to climb them, and I have the unfortunate habit of putting promotion on the back-burner while I, well, do just about anything that is not that.
Things change, and if you no longer wish to receive these letters, please unsubscribe here (if that doesn’t work, scroll to the bottom of this eMail.)
Otherwise, here is what to expect. Each month I will write you a letter and place it into the Small Blue Mailbox that sits at the heart of my creative habitat.
There will be updates on my current comic and art projects, including some behind the scenes drawings and process videos, as well as information about signings, appearances, and other ways to connect with my work. I’m particularly uncomfortable with social media, so this forum will be the primary way I open up to those that wish to be opened up to.
I’ll also include a bit of nature, a bit of magic, and a bit of music that, together, are seeding my ecosystem with Ekreon that month, with the hopes that they will sing to you as well, and generate good things.
If you’re new to Substack—there’s not much to it. This will arrive in your eMail box monthly. You can read it in your eMail client or use the breakout link to read it in a browser. If you make a Substack account, you can choose to skip the eMail box, so that you only see a new letter when you login via the web or the app. Additionally, all posts are free, nothing is hidden behind a paywall. I have monetized turned on only to offer a payment donation option for those that wish to support my art practice. In the future, I may create content exclusively for paid subscribers, but this monthly newsletter will be free forever. If you signed up with “paid” by mistake, please contact myself or Substack to resolve the issue and receive a refund.
It’s been an exciting time for myself and The Mushroom Knight. Volume 1 debuted in March from Mad Cave Studios, and is available for purchase online and in stores. It went on to earn a star review from Kirkus, and a positive review from Publishers Weekly. It won the Next Generation Indie Book Award, and netted me a Russ Manning Award nomination. I am deeply grateful for the kind words and support my work has received. This is my first time making a graphic novel, and the first time I made a comic longer than ten pages! I am still learning the medium, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the process, and I’m glad to see that many have enjoyed it as well.
Volume 2 is at the press right now and will hit shops on November 5th. And I’m currently working on what-comes-after-that. This week, Stephanie and I will hop a plane to San Diego for a little known underground comic convention that happens around this time of year. Maybe I’ll see you there? Either way–I’ll write you again in August.
As always—it goes on,
Oliver Bly
Calendar:
July 25th-28th - San Diego Comic Con
Thursday the 25th 6:30-6:30: In-store Signing at Now or Never Comics - No comic-con badge needed! This will be off site.
Saturday the 27th, 5:30-6pm: Signing at the Mad Cave Booth #2806
September 6th-8th - Rose City Comic Con
Look for me in Artist Alley all weekend long.
November 5th - THE MUSHROOM KNIGHT, VOL. 2 release date!
Pre-order now!
The above panel, from TMK Volume 2, depicts a Tridipid Magus named Muuvae Bu’Bacca investigating the spell-slain squirrel seen briefly in Volume 1. I made this triptych so you could see the road to the finished work. I draw digitally, and sometimes I skip refining my pencils before inking… since erasing ink is simple, when the “ink” is made of pixels. So, I keep things loose, to allow the inks to be as improvisational and spontaneous as I can make them.
Steph, Ori and I were wandering through Gifford Pinchot National Forest earlier in the month when we encountered these odd alien asparaguses poking out from the ground. Turns out, they are Allotrapa virgata, commonly called Sugarsticks. According to Wikipedia, they get that name from “the distinct white and red or maroon stripes along its [don’t laugh] erect peduncle.”
It is worth googling pictures of this fascinating plant just to see how incredible they look all grown up. Apparently they feed exclusively on matsutake mushroom mycelium. Wow! Unfortunately, we didn’t discover any matsutakes on the hike, but I’ll be on the lookout when next we go.
This month’s magic comes from Theodore Roethke, in a poem that reads the quiet part of our current moment out loud.
“In a Dark Time”
By Theodore RoethkeIn a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
How do you balance Roethke? With Vashti Bunyan, maybe. Is it a Dark Time? Or is it just another Diamond Day? The pendulum always swings, that can’t be stopped. But at our healthiest, we may be able to change the value assignment on each pole, and the severity of the swing. Good luck this month, friend of the Great Green Woods, I will write soon.