She’ll be all right!
Chapter 47: Want to own a piece of WTFPFH?
Slow week!
Review our book!
Get some original art!
Back Greg’s Kickstarter to get a fun book for you or someone you don’t know!
Mixtape! - The best band in hardcore right now?
Hi again.
First, some housekeeping. As you may have noticed the name of this here publication changed. Or maybe you didn’t, because why would you? Either way it used to go by the very sexy name Matthew Rosenberg.Substack.com. Now it goes by the even sexier name AshcanPress.Substack.com. Why the change? No exciting reason really. Joe Biden called me and asked me to change it, so I did.
I noticed last week that I didn’t get 10,000 new subscribers despite having having multiple pictures of international hunk Green Bean. I thought that was weird and something must be wrong. I mentioned this to another Substack user and they mentioned that I can turn on email notifications to see when I get and when I lose subscribers. So, like the glutton for punishment that I am, I toggled those two little switches. And boy was I happy to get the little notification a few minutes later that someone had just signed up. So flattering that anyone cares enough about what I have to say…
6 minutes later I got the notification that that same person had unsubscribed. What the hell, people? Cute pictures of puppies is the best tool I have in my arsenal. If you’re not sticking around for that I don’t even know what you want. I guess maybe better writing, but that’s not on offer here. It’s puppies or this garbage. And we are very literally out of puppies here.
One trend I noticed this week was me popping up in other people’s newsletters. First it was this-
That’s right. My newsletter has sunk so low that we are now screenshotting other newsletters for content. In this case it’s the lovely Chip Zdarsky who chose to portray me as a megalomaniacal sociopath because I congratulated him on his books selling well. But at least he got good dog content out of it by showing off my cute dog/cat/lynx-thing Bubastis.
Then this happened-
This is from the also lovely Kelly Thompson’s newsletter. Clearly a picture of me is emerging as someone who just sits in their air conditioning, sending people messages about their careers like some sort of shut-in lunatic. That isn’t true at all. Really I was messaging Kelly to tell her that her favorite character, Rogue, is even dumber than she thought. Normal person stuff.
Other than that, I’ve mostly just been sitting in the A.C., sending people messages about their careers all week. But also trying to catch up on work, working on some cool top secret stuff, and reading some comics. I finally finished watching Obi-Wan Kenobi so you should all feel free to discuss it now. Not going to talk about it much because Star Wars is personal to me the same way business owners think their employee’s salaries should be, but I will say I really loved seeing Hayden Christensen back in the role. He really felt like he was giving it his all and I got pretty choked up. I am nothing if not a Star Wars nerd through and through.
I don’t have any comics out this week, so I will take a moment to talk about WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE? because I’m never not doing that.
First of all, did you know that even if you didn’t read the book, or even if you read it and didn’t like it but still wanted to support us, you can go review the book on Amazon. Now our preference is that you always, always, always buy from an independent business. If you don’t know where one is you can go here and find one. So why am I asking you to review the book at Amazon? Well for a very simple reason. It makes me money.
You see Amazon isn’t just a robot manufacturer / space program. They are also the world’s largest seller of books. And how do they sell so many books? By having an algorithm that pushes popular books on people against their will. And how do you move up in that algorithm? Well the easiest way is by selling books there. But short of that, it’s reviews. Good reviews help make your book standout on a website that has over 6,000 types of body pillows, and standing out helps it sell. And the more it sells, the more visible it becomes. The end result of all of this is Tyler and I being so rich that we build our own space army and go to war with Amazon. But we’re still at least 2 years off from that, so for now, if you have some free time and some nice things to say, feel free to throw us a review. If you have nothing nice to say Tyler’s twitter account is @boycartoonist.
In other WTFPFH? news, the amazing Josh Hixson is selling his pages from his guest spot on issue #7. I can’t say enough good stuff about Josh’s work. He just gets how to make comics in such a raw way. Every shot, every character design, every action, are perfect choices. He can do emotional beats, horror, action, comedy, sci-fi, all with equal tenacity. I have been a fan of his for so long, and I could be wrong, but I think his first published work was actually this HeroesCon charity fundraiser cover for 4 KIDS WALK INTO A BANK. Probably shoulda asked before I wrote this. Oh well. We don’t fact check here.
I love this cover and he’s only gotten better since. Take a look-
I’ve been lucky enough to get to know Greg Burnham a bit these last few months and he is a writer I have a ton of respect for. He is passionate and thoughtful about what he makes and why. He also works his ass off self publishing books like the excellent TUSKEGEE HEIRS series, which has developed a loyal following because of all that. And if you’re a fan of superheroes, sci-fi, or adventure comics I suggest you pick those up from him.
But right now Greg is Kickstarting a children’s book called SWIM, KELLY! SWIM!
With charming illustrations from Mikayla Moore, this book would be a great gift to any kids in your life, or parents of kids in your life, or you if you like reading kids books! But also this project has a cool feature I’ve never seen before. If you want to support Greg or the project, but have no one in your life to give the book to, there is an option to pay to donate a copy to a school or day care local to Greg. That’s a real neat thing to offer and a real neat thing to do.
Despite not being as prolific as a lot of their contemporaries, I still think Dangers are pound for pound the best band in hardcore whenever they actually release music. Well they just put out a new single so looks like 2022 is their year.
Stay safe. Take care of each other. Give your friends unsolicited advice.
-Matthew Rosenberg
NYC 8/9/22
Dangers is great. Growing up in So Cal i must've seen em a dozen times. Played with them at least once.
*puts on Messy, Isn't It*