PART ONE
PART TWO
PART TWO PART 2
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
Back in part five I said that it felt like there was a curse on Shadoweyes.
First there was the disastrous falling out with my collaborator, of course. Then the year I did the original two books, 2010, was the worst year I’d ever had financially and it looked like I’d have to quit comics. At the end of that year, too, my cat died and it felt like that was the beginning of a real bout of depression that would last for years. I remember 2011 being dark and slow; even though my comics career was saved by a job working on Rob Liefeld’s Glory, the gusto and fire I’d had during the previous year was gone, and I’d have to take periodic breaks from drawing Glory because I was too depressed. Around the same time, I was trying to get volume 6 of my comic Wet Moon back on track after a delay, and I just couldn’t feel it out and get it to a point where I liked it and enjoyed working on it.
I don’t think all this was because of Shadoweyes, per se, but it sure felt like it at the time. It felt like somehow the comic and the process of creating it had permanently derailed my life and career; instead of continuing the relative clockwork of releasing Wet Moon books and doing volume 6, I’d done TWO Shadoweyes books back to back, and that somehow wrecked the momentum I’d had for the first 5 Wet Moon volumes. There I was with no money, working on a licensed superhero book, my cat was dead, my fire for comics was gone, for the first time I felt unsure about Wet Moon which was supposed to be my baby, all because I poured so much into that blasted Shadoweyes book! Had I betrayed Wet Moon for the new and shiny Shadoweyes?! How had I made such a horribly wrong turn?!?
I did eventually get Wet Moon 6 back on track and it came out in 2012 (which looking back now is really fast compared to the gap between vol. 6 and vol. 7), but I could never seem to get Shadoweyes back on course. Partly it was because I didn’t make any money on it, my savings was gone, I no longer had the financial security to work on a project that didn’t pay the rent. I still didn’t have my mojo back, either, it really did feel like 2010, the Year of Shadoweyes, had somehow broken something in me. I used to be a machine when it came to comics, I was so fast and reliable and I’d know almost exactly how long a certain project would take me to finish, my scheduling was like clockwork. I don’t blame Shadoweyes anymore for what happened but in my head I still divide my career as pre-2010 and post-2010. I’ve released a lot of work since then, but I still feel like I’ve never been able to recapture the spirit and speed I had from 2003-2010.
Then I got a kick in the pants when I discovered that Shadoweyes’s original publisher was no longer printing the first volume. It was officially out of print and only the second book was available, outside of used book sellers or whatever that had copies from the original print run. Part of this was my fault since I hadn’t delivered a third book, subsequent volumes in a series tend to give earlier volumes a sales bump as new people discover it, but part of it was just that Shadoweyes didn’t really have any marketing plus it was at a rather small publisher. There were apparently no plans to reprint the book, and at times I thought maybe I should just forget Shadoweyes and move on, cut my losses and leave the series unfinished, end the Shadoweyes Curse for good.
BUTTTT I didn’t. I made the decision to leave the publisher and take Shadoweyes with me, which made the publisher really mad. They insulted me, called me names and called me a slacker for not doing the next book, accusing me of acting like I was too good for them, among other stuff, it was pretty bad, I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since.
Anyway, the publisher being such a jerk to me only reinforced that I’d made the right decision to leave. The backstock of remaining Shadoweyes copies was pulped and the publishing contract was terminated. What a mess, just one more thing in a long line of Shadoweyes-related things not going right.
Iron Circus Comics would be the next publisher of Shadoweyes; we did a colored version with mistakes fixed and other tweaks, it got a hardcover release, and suddenly things for Shadoweyes were looking up. It felt like a new lease on life for the comic, and it kinda made me realize that I still loved those characters. Around that time I’d also struck up a friendship with Shadoweyes superfan Erin/missgreeney, whose love for the characters really lit a fire in me, and it can’t be overstated how much her enthusiasm has motivated me over the past several years (she would also end up helping to color the Iron Circus edition of the book!).
Despite my feelings toward Shadoweyes changing and being more positive, I still wasn’t able to find the time and money to actually be able to finish the next book which I’d been chipping away it little by little for what felt like forever, going through draft after draft, starting and stopping, scrapping parts of it and starting over, etc. etc. not to mention the book having like six different titles over the years. The Iron Circus edition came out in 2016, and there I was in 2021, over ten years since I’d done the original books and five years since the Iron Circus edition (which had felt like a reset button on the series but then year after year started to pass). My money situation was decent and it seemed like maybe I could finally finish the book (finally settling on the title Shadoweyes For Good) between Ninja Turtles story arcs, but I kept getting various offers from other publishers and I never felt like my financial buffer situation was quite good enough to devote however many months to finishing Shadoweyes (note: I do make money on it now but it’s more side income, not enough for a full-time bill-paying job).
But then Substack came along and gave me the financial buffer! At first I thought I’d do a different book to post here, something new so you guys could read something standalone without having to read any older/existing volumes to know what was going on in the story, but then the Substack folks and Iron Circus encouraged me to do Shadoweyes, and here we are.
Is the Shadoweyes Curse lifted? Or is it still lurking in the shadows, waiting to cause something else to go horribly wrong and keep the series from ever being finished? If the curse IS lifted, will I get my mojo back and again become the relentless comics machine I was in my mid-20s?
I don’t know, but I guess we’ll find out. TOGETHER. <3
THE END.
That concludes the Shadowhistory series! Thanks for reading, everyone!
Thank you for sharing! tbh Shadoweyes is the only original property of yours I actively follow and buy, since I'm a terrible comic fan, so you've got fans out there who really only care about your weird big legged vigilante. ;)
Thank you again for sharing all this background information, I highly appreciate you taking the time to tell us everything that's happened during the development of this book.