Bottom of the Deck – 2022/10/13

Wasn’t sure if I was even going to post this, but here we go.

It’s been a while.

My unsuccessful attempts at blogging in the past notwithstanding, it’s been pretty quiet on this site for a little over a year. No news, no comics, not so much as a peep. Even my other social media posts have been sporadic at best. To be honest, I was hesitant to even look at the homepage myself; it’s been sitting there this whole time, a testament to one more unfinished project that I let myself start and abandon.

Except this project isn’t over; not by a long shot.

I won’t lie, there were moments in the past year when I wasn’t so sure about that. My creativity and motivation suffered a major blow last year; I lost my day job due to a company restructuring, and the idea of losing my livelihood and possibly my home sent me into a tailspin; having been retrenched before in the past, it was an old trauma brought back with a vengeance. 

I was fortunate enough to get my job back a month later, but I had fallen a long way in that time, and crawling my way back out of the pit was not easy. I was unsure of my position, feeling that at any moment they might turn around once more and change their minds again, and the constant paranoia added to a fresh wave of responsibility. It was a torrent of fear that threatened to flush me back down into the pit, and I struggled to maintain my grip on the ever-slick sides as I slowly forced myself back to the surface.

I think it was Comic Con Africa that was the final handhold that I needed to pull myself back out. Returning to the convention scene after all this time was like drawing back a curtain and seeing everything that I had been missing out on: the creativity, the passion, the joy for the characters and stories that we all love so much. I was even able to sell some of my art there that people liked and appreciated; it was a major boost to my self-confidence that I hadn’t felt in so long.

It made me remember why I wanted to do this in the first place.

I kept this website functioning because I fully intended to return to it one day; I didn’t know when, I didn’t know under what circumstances, but I knew I’d be back. There is far too much stuff that I want to put out there for me to give up on Fifth Ace Comics completely. I have so many characters I want to share with the world, so many stories I want to tell, and the only way I’m going to be able to do that is if I start posting again.

It’s going to be a gradual process, but consider this post my first step back on the road. This is a marathon, not a sprint; I’m going to be taking things slow and steady, and I hope that the work you’ll be seeing from me in the near future will be all the better for it.

Keep an eye on my socials for some miscellaneous art pieces, and (fingers crossed) I’ll be back next week with some official content.

Ciao for now.