TINY UPDATE 1/24: Is It The End Of January, Yet?

“Tiny Update” is a weekly free newsletter that keeps you up to date on the latest news, comic book projects and merchandise offerings from James Tynion IV and Tiny Onion Studios

So, last week, I had a pretty big announcement.

In case you missed it, I talked about it in detail in this post. In case you don’t want to go read about it in detail, I’ll get to the point right here. I just announced the only work-for-hire book I’m going to be working on for the next year. It’s called NIGHTMARE COUNTRY, and I am very very excited about it.

Beyond the project itself, how excited I am to play in the sandbox that Neil Gaiman created in the original Sandman series, how excited I am to work with Lisandro Estherren, and how excited I am to get to a few terrifying story beats that came to me fully formed in a brainstorm late last summer, Part of the reason I’m excited is that it’s nice to have it all out in the open.

Next week, I’m going to have a few pretty big announcements. I’ve been getting ready for the onslaught of announcements at the end of January for a few months now and I’ll be perfectly honest that I’m a little sick of having to talk about all of it in vague terms. The last few Tiny Updates feel a little bit like I’m vamping for time, rather than being able to talk about how I was figuring out a problem pertaining to project X, or project Y, or what have you. It’s easier when it’s all out on the table. These Tiny Updates are written in a kind of free style stream of consciousness, and it sucks to hit roadblocks of what you can and can’t discuss when you’re riffing like that.

For instance, if I could really freestyle, I would connect the fact that I’m writing a book about Nightmares to the story of one of the most common recurring nightmares of my youth. And how, after thinking about that nightmare for the better part of twenty five years, referencing it obliquely and directly in a number of my comics, I figured out how to turn it into what I’m calling a Horror Novella. But it’d be better to wait to write that up until you can read the first act of that Horror Novella in full. So… You’ll find out about that, next week.

In any case. By the start of February, you’ll all know everything on my plate until Q4 of this year. Which is good, because I need to be expending a lot more energy making these books than strategizing about the best way to make them. So far, my plan to work on each of my projects 5 pages at a time has mostly worked, but it’s been collapsing a bit on the weekends, pushing me to do a bit more work on Sunday nights to “catch back up.” Which tells me that I need to get to a point where I don’t have anything on my plate on the weekends. But practically, that’s probably a few months away from being possible.

The important thing is still just getting into a steady rhythm of incremental progress on each of my books. I’m trying to burn a habit into my brain so it stays there forever and ever and ever. We’ll see how well I do. There’s also still a bit too much EXTRA work on top of the rest of everything. I have a few important documents to write in the next couple of weeks that I need to give some dedicated brain space. The benefit is that even though those three important documents serve three very different purposes, they are all connected to the same property. I just need to not lose the week to unplanned phone calls! Fingers crossed.

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Next week is going to be a big week. Onion Club members, you should expect a message in your inbox on Monday. Everyone, Onion Club and otherwise, should expect some new merch products available starting next week. I’m going to get into my plan for Tiny Onion exclusive variant covers (both via the Onion Club, and outside of it). And that’s nothing next to the news about the comic projects that we’ve got cooking here on Substack.

To that end - I am going to be closing my current Shopify Store (the one you visit at TinyOnionStudios.com), and my Threadless Store at the end of this week. Some of the items in both (particularly some of the more random print-on-demand options on Threadless) won’t be made available again for a long while, if ever. If you want a little notebook stamped with the DOT or Razorblades logo… This is your last chance to pull that trigger. On a similar line - The pay-what-you-want digital editions of Razorblades: The Horror Magazine might not be available for a couple of weeks while we determine the best online home for those product for the long haul, but our intent are to keep those available. But if you’ve been hemming and hawing, just know they might be unavailable for a few weeks to a month.

So, you should snag ‘em while you can!

HOUSE OF SLAUGHTER #4

W: James Tynion IV & Tate Brombal / A: Werther Dell‘Edera & Chris Shehan / C: Miquel Muerto / L: AndWorld Design / E: Eric Harburn and Ramiro Portnoy

* Jace embarks on the life or death trial that all White Masks must undergo... the Ritual Hunt.
                                                          
* Meanwhile, Aaron is torn between his burgeoning feelings for Jace and his duty to the House, but not for long if Jessica Slaughter has anything to say about it.

DC VS. VAMPIRES #4

Writers: James Tynion IV and Matthew Rosenberg / Art and Cover A: Otto Schmidt / Cover B: Francesco Mattina / AE: David Wielgosz / E: Ben Abernathy

Batman has confirmed who in the Justice League has been turned into a vampire… but can he make his move before the Justice League is turned against him? It’s hero versus hero in this blood-drenched chapter…with clues to who the new Vampire King might be!

• WYND got nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book for the second year in a row! This is the fourth nom for me and Mike as a creative duo, and the one we won for THE WOODS is still the best bludgeoning weapon in my apartment. It’s so heavy and powerful. The DC Pride anthology, in which I had a Batwoman story with the incredible Trung Le Nguyen, also got nominated! Congrats to the other nominees! Incredible talent in all of the categories this year.

• To get me back on the right track, I decided to go back to the playwright who got me started this year and read Martin McDonagh’s THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN, which was incredible. It’s an interesting pair with THE PILLOWMAN. Both of the plays deal with the stories people tell, why they tell them, and how they spread. The relationship between fiction and the truth. Obviously, these are themes I think about a lot, particularly in a book like The Department of Truth. I said I was going to read two plays last week, but I am a mean liar and you shouldn’t trust me.

• Sam is on a Brett Gelman kick, which had us going back to rewatch all three of his Adult Swim “Dinner” specials. They are the perfect blend of cringe comedy, and genuine horror . Start with “Dinner With Friends” but “Dinner With Family” takes it to a whole other level. After this rewatch, we started working through sitcoms that Gelman has appeared in. Sam spend an afternoon just fast forwarding to all of the Brett Gelman scenes in the Paul Rust/Gillian Jacobs show LOVE, and then we jumped over to the FX series MARRIED. If you have more good Brett Gelman content for us, let us know.

• David Harper from SKTCHD pulled together a must-read breakdown on how retailers fared in 2021. As always, if you’re not reading or subscribed to SKTCHD, you should be. It continues to be a very strange time in the comic book business, but it’s been a time marked with strange opportunities.

So… On Friday, we had a BLUE BOOK locked and ready to go, and I just forgot to schedule the damn thing to get it out the door. WHOOPS!

This week you get TWO doses of True Weird. A Blue Book chapter will drop this afternoon around 2:30PM, and then you’ll get a great new Department of Truth: Wild Fiction on Friday. Otherwise, I need to finish getting ready for next week. Very excited to unveil some really neat things for you all.

James Tynion IV
Brooklyn, NY
1.24.22