Yo, Everyone and Everybody,
I thought I’d write a personal message to you all. It’s something I do from time to time, to fill you in on the latest going’s on, directly from the Dude himself.
Most of you know that the Nexus newspaper has been my life’s work for the last 5 years. I put this paper together with a small but smart staff, including my perpetually overworked wife, Gino Jaynelli, and it’s the pride of my life. The fact that it’s not arriving at your doorstep at this very minute is always due to one basic factor—we ran out of bread.
Everyone has unexpected emergencies in their lives, and ours recently came in the form of family medical situations over the past 11 months. Before then we were putting nearly $4,000 personal funds per month into the newspaper to keep it going. These medical expenses have forced us to discontinue the actual monthly newspaper version of the Nexus comic strip. We have also canceled our printing of the Nexus Compendium, however, Dark Horse Comics has picked it up, so it will be printed (currently scheduling).
Thus, the decision to move all the strips into a oversized, Collected Edition, which will collect all 70 individual Nexus newspaper strips into one large volume. We have a designer working on it and will run a Kickstarter to fund it when it’s ready for the printer. Before we launch that we want to close out all open Kickstarters.
To try and be fair we are offering you alternatives to what was originally purchased. We are in the process of sending out questionnaires to the different groups. We will process replies individually and mail out items ASAP.
Another factor that I’ve been aware of for some time now--no matter how devoted you are to something or wish it to be more successful, it’s important for such artists as myself to reacquaint myself with a current audience.
In the 80’s and most of the 90’s, everyone knew my name. By the 2000’s, less so. In 2017, I’m told even less. The ebb and flow of popularity seems to be the pattern through everyone’s life. I’m no exception.
Thus, the necessity to perpetually expand yourself into the mainstream.
To these ends, I have been doing just that with the people who run DC comics, located not in New York as it had been for the last 100 years, but now in the sunny climate of Burbank, CA. I’ve made personal visits to these opulent offices twice in the last few years, and it’s a delight to meet everyone from the top honcho’s like Dan Didio, who pretty much runs the company and makes all the day to day decisions, and the various editors who’re responsible for putting the line of books out every month.
So, what can you expect from the humble Dude and his latest work for DC comics? The books that you’ll see me illustrating are the upcoming Kamandi Challenge #8 (with a superb script by Keith Giffen), and a 3 issue arc I’m not allowed to discuss—also coming soon. What audience I may attract with these new books, I’ll hope to channel back to my work on Nexus which will continue between work for DC.
Makes sense, right?
Also know that every comic I illustrate has a tremendous amount of work involved in its creation, and that’s why artists always appreciate hearing what you think of what we do, either by writing directly to me, or, even better, through letters to the publishers and various editors we work for.
Onward, to the unknowable future,
Steve Rude the Dude
Learn more about the medical emergency: www.GoFundMe.com/brandonrude