SPECTATORS - Part 136

Plus, Happy Birthday to Niko Henrichon!

We’re almost at the finish line.

Brian here, and after three years of hard work by my indefatigable partners—artist/co-creator Niko Henrichon and letterer/one-man studio Fonografiks (who made a particularly clutch suggestion with today’s word balloons)—Spectators is just two more installments away from its final page.

Next week, we’ll run our penultimate vignette (along with my assembled “Favorite Comics of 2024” list), and then a week after that, we’ll send everyone the grand conclusion.

That Monday (Christmas Eve eve), all paid subscribers at the annual or monthly levels will ALSO receive a file containing the complete collection of our assembled 330-plus-page epic graphic novel, so if you’d like to own your own digital copy, why not join The Tower today for just 5 bucks…?

At the end of this month, we’ll pause all future billing and close the oversized gates of The Tower for good, as Exploding Giraffe transitions from a weekly paid production to an occasional free dispatch from Niko and/or me. What the hell am I going to do with my Mondays from now on??

Okay, get ready for one of our longest and most important episodes of Spectators yet, as gloriously Not Safe For Work as ever…

Spectators 321 331

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Spectators 321 331

7.12MB ∙ CBZ file

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Read now

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Ah.

Wait… what?

Stay tuned, Voyeuristic Ones.

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Last week, I asked if you might be interested in an eventual print edition of Spectators, and I was relieved that the vast majority of you said you definitely would be.

Some good news coming very soon then.

And on the subject of print, longtime Tower member Ross B. was nice enough to write:

Thinking about a print version of Spectators and the possibility of reading it again in that format, all at once, made me think about just how different that experience will be than the experience of reading it a few pages at a time via this newsletter (almost) every week for the past few years. Certain moments will hit very differently, I suspect.

One such moment was in this week’s chapter, in fact -- the big kiss between Sam and Val was an immensely satisfying moment and I suspect it will still play well within the context of the book when it’s read as a single entity... but it’s hard to imagine that it will have the same impact on readers first experiencing Spectators there versus readers who have been following Sam and Val a few pages at a time for a few years now. It’s the same reason really good TV shows can be so affecting over a long run -- you can develop such a bond and attachment to characters when you get to spend time with them week after week, month after month, and year after year.

I have no doubt that the experience of reading Spectators all at once (or in a few sittings) in its completed form will still be a satisfying and engaging read -- the work that Brian, Niko, and Fonografiks have done is too good for that not to be the case -- but it will also be a rather *different* experience in some ways. Not bad or good or better or worse... just different.

Well said, thanks, Ross.

I always hoped that Spectators would ultimately be the kind of immersive story that readers might be able to experience in one sitting, maybe on a long flight (carefully angling its naughtiest pages away from the pour soul sitting next to you), but it’s been an unexpected joy to get to watch Val and Sam’s friendship gradually blossom over many months, savoring every panel of Niko’s beautiful work with all of you every week.

Your consistent and ongoing support (even if it was just emotional support from afar) helped us complete our dream project, so we’ll never be able to thank you enough.

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One final reminder that, as Spectators prepares to make the leap to print in 2025, we’ll eventually be removing the pages of our story we’ve shared for free here, along with the last three years’ worth of exclusive bonus content.

But all new and current members of the Tower still have a few weeks to read/download/save all of our past greatest hits, including a travelogue of my family’s visit to the home of superstar creator Torunn Grønbekk:

Or this look back at a very early comic I created with two of my closest lifelong friends:

Or this post, in which I finally reveal the planned secret identity of an obscure Batman villain that Bat-fans have been asking me about for decades:

Plenty more highlights in our handy Exploding Giraffe Archives, so join today and kill a few hours with us instead of doing more dumb work for your stupid boss.

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You new Tower members will also get to participate in our final few chat threads, where we recently discussed our all-time favorite gifts.

Brian W. said:

My wife, a child of the Soviet Union, got access to a modeling school when she was seven because her grandparents worked at the right uranium mine. Not runway modeling, but with clay. She excelled and even had her pieces entered in competitions by her teacher. This is even more remarkable because she is a “dirty betrayer,” aka Crimean Tatar! (Also in first grade, a teacher made her stand up in class as an example of what a traitor to the Soviet Union looked like...at age six!)

My wife does not regularly use her modeling skills/talents. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago. She guided my daughter through the creation of a ladybug pen holder for my desk. If only Substack allowed an image of this cutie to be embedded!

Meanwhile, Elle J. rightly boasted:

My girlfriend got me a blacksmithing class for my birthday. It was 4-5 hours long, you picked your own project, and I made a cool ass twisty knife. Plus they offered mid-way point beers. It ruled. (Hardy & Fuller in Denver, CO for locals!)

And Cory S. wrote:

I’m not great about gifts. I’m the sort that will get it if I want or need it, which I’m sure is frustrating. My wife loves to find me things, a lot of the time the small stuff, simple things that honestly I’d never think of or find, and those are the best. Just this past weekend she was out with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law on a day trip to an Amish area, and brought me back a great gift. You remember Hostess fruit pies? I absolutely loved the blueberry one, but it’s been discontinued for over a decade. Different companies (and even Hostess when they came back from bankruptcy) make some flavors, like apple and cherry, but blueberry is never to be included. But my wife came home with 2 blueberry pies, apparently a small brand I’ve never heard of, but damn if they’re not perfect. It’s the small gifts like that that get me.

Great responses/lives, everybody.

But only two lucky members could each receive one of these signed collections of Saga…

…and our overworked, eager-to-graduate intern Genesis the Exploded Giraffe randomly selected Loveleen B. for that hardcover Saga Book One…

My boyfriend got me a pair of Indian anklets! In my culture they can be seen as something similar to a promise ring. My boyfriend is not of my culture so it warmed my heart that he took the time to look into this and get me a pair.

…and Eric L. for the monster-sized Saga Compendium.

I think the greatest gift I’ve ever received was an anniversary gift in which my future husband hired a local string quartet to play beautiful arrangements of some of my favorite songs of all time, including songs by Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, and Björk, and then invited a few of my best friends to enjoy the performance with me. I’ve been trying (and failing) to give him a gift of equal meaning and substance ever since!

Congrats on your big wins, Eric and Loveleen, and on having such thoughtful partners.

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Finally today, I wanted to take a moment to celebrate my partner (in comics, anyway), Niko Henrichon, whose birthday is this week!

Joyeux anniversaire, mon ami.

I’ve been a huge fan of Niko and his work ever since former Vertigo editor Will Dennis introduced us over twenty years ago, for a collaboration you can read about in our debut Substack:

A while back, Tower member John M. asked Niko and me:

I just finished reading the Deluxe Edition of Pride of Baghdad. The extras regarding the creation process and project are cool.

To BKV and Niko, I wanted to ask if you were vocally “anti” the Iraq war at the time?

I know it was contentious at the time for the American population, but the more we look back on it the worse it seems to have been, for almost all sides. Curious to know what your expressed opinions were back in the early 2000s and if those opinions have changed.

I generally prefer not to discuss my political opinions online, but if you finished Pride of Baghdad, it probably won’t be hard to guess where I stood/stand.

As a matter of fact, nearly everything I’ve written over my career—Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Saga, especially We Stand On Guard—has been me in some way still processing my feelings about that invasion, which Americans from almost everywhere on the political spectrum now seem to agree was an idiotic and disastrous war of choice.

Which makes it all the more baffling to learn that Pride of Baghdad was just included in a list of around 700 books that were “removed or discontinued” from Florida public schools.

Heavy sigh.

Thankfully, all these years later, our consistently banned/challenged/cancelled work still seems to be finding an audience with the youngs:

Pretty gas indeed.

I’m still enormously proud of my first graphic novel with Niko, and I’m excited to reveal that the good and decent folks at DC Comics have given us back all rights to the creator-owned Pride of Baghdad, so we’ll be releasing a 20th Anniversary (!) edition with another publishing partner in 2026.

Again, please stay tuned for more details.

For now, I’m so honored to have been able to summit a second creative mountain with Niko, who’s not just one of the most accomplished and dedicated artists in the industry (there is literally nothing he can’t/won’t draw), but also one of the kindest, funniest, most humble humans I’ve ever met.

Look at this gorgeous “sketch” Niko gave me back in 2016, inside his must-read work on Alexandro Jodorowsky’s Meta-Baron:

Or this one, inside his first volume of Fang with the mighty Joe Kelly:

Never completely satisfied with his already considerable skills, Niko seems to reinvent himself with each new project, so everything he touches inevitably gets my highest recommendation.

Oh, and one last surprise…

Just the other day, Genesis stumbled across some buried treasure, an extra one of our old Founder Prize Packs, which happens to include a glorious piece of original, hand-drawn Henrichon art:

If you’d like a shot at winning this priceless piece of Exploding Giraffe history, please just let us know: What’s YOUR favorite Niko Henrichon moment from the last three years?

Doesn’t have to be from Spectators, of course. It can be one of Niko’s many extraordinary covers, an amazing Artopsy (I still love this comic journal), or maybe just a memorable response from one of our past chat threads.

And if you want to guarantee that you take home a Henrichon original of your own, a few pages of Spectators (and Pride of Baghdad!) are still available for purchase over at Essential Sequential.

Plus, from now until December 26th, you can take 20% off the price of Niko’s artwork by entering this special code at checkout: HOLIDAY20-2024

I’m confident that our upcoming print edition of Spectators is going to help us reach an even wider international audience, so I hope you early adopters nab the best originals before all those latecomers descend on them.

Regardless, we’ll see you back here for our penultimate installment of Val and Sam’s (and our Doorperson’s) story next Monday evening, cool?

Thanks for everything, Niko—especially your brilliant idea for our upcoming final double-page spread—and Happiest Birthday!

Peace,

BKV