Hey there again, friends. I know it’s been a while, too long, but I wanted to fill everyone in on what’s going on with Peace, Love, and Comics.
We’re already over a month into 2022, and while we may think a new year allows us to start fresh and forge ahead with our lives and tackle new challenges, we still have plenty of other things we carry with us from years past that we have to handle.
I don’t really know how I’d describe 2022 just yet. At the beginnning of the year, I went to Alaska (for the second time in six months) and I tried to see the Northern Lights. It was too cloudy though this time and I didn’t get to see them. But I still got to go to Fairbanks and visit the Chena Hot Springs and adventure 4000 miles away from home. But when I got back home to Cleveland, I came back to reality and then some. After nearly two years of close calls and other strange incidents, I finally tested positive for COVID. It felt like a bad dream that I’d kept having and avoiding, that finally happened. Luckily I’m vaccinated and didn’t get any serious symptoms or sick, but it was a shitty speedbump after getting back from Alaska and wanting to get back to work on myself. But in those few days of quarantine, I launched this Substack, PLC. It’s something that I’d been imagining and wanting to do for awhile.
A few years ago I went to school for business, but that wasn’t really what I wanted to do. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Business seemed like the safe bet, and I figured studying Business Admin would allow me to check out all the different parts of business like finance, accounting, economics, marketing, etc. and that one of those would click with me and I’d find my career. But five years later, that never happened. None of those areas of business really inspired me on their own or provided me with a clearer road map for my future. I got my bachelors degree, but I didn’t have any idea what I was going to do next. But there was one class in school that did inspire me.
During my junior year at Cleveland State I took a screenwriting class. It certainly wasn’t required for my major, but it filled a Writing Across the Curriculum requirement I needed. It was an awesome class. There were maybe a dozen or so students, and we got to learn about screenwriting, techniques, and even develop our own screenplay. Well, at least the first act to one. This course was easily my favorite, not just that semester but through all five years. I still have that first act laying around, the screenplay is titled The Wretched (after the Nine Inch Nails song from their album The Fragile). I’m sure I’ll share that with you all sometime, when I’m ready to. But that’s where the idea of being a writer came from. Maybe it was something I could do for a living. Could I do that? Would I be able to support myself with that? Is that something I would even enjoy as my career? These were all questions I had, and frankly still do, but I shelved those thoughts and ideas for something more realistic in the meantime.
I’ve been at Carol and John’s full-time for over a year now, over two years at least part-time. I created this Substack after having written the weekly newsletters for the comic shop for a few months and enjoying doing those and getting positive feedback from customers. I still don’t know if writing is going to be my future, but I’m certainly trying to make it my present.
For the future of PLC, I’ve got some more interviews coming up with comic professionals, including one with Dr. Christina Blanch. She’s the writer of comics such as The Damnation of Charlie Wormwood and Good Boy, and she introduced me to Source Point Press. They’re a small publishing company based in Saginaw, Michigan and have some great sci-fi, horror, fantasy, pulp material that I’m still digging through and reviewing now. I’ll be sharing that interview soon. And I’ve also got some contacts from Vault and BOOM Studios to get in touch with too.
I’m hoping to share some more about me too here. If you live in Cleveland, you know that this winter has been brutal with snow, and we even had to close the shop one day because none of us could make it to work. I’ll tell you guys about my snow day and how it really was just a catch up day for all the books I’ve been piling up on my coffee table. I’m working on that article now. I hope to have more things like this in the future for you.
And I want to hear from you all too. What sort of things are you reading? Or watching or listening to? What characters or writers or artists are you really digging? Whatever is inspiring you right now I want to hear about it.
Thanks for all of you who’ve subscribed in our first month. I hope to be more regular and share more with you all. This page is called Peace, Love, and Comics. Let’s all practice that.
:: RC