SPECTATORS - Part 49
Plus, a new Artopsy from Niko Henrichon!
You don’t care about the Super Bowl, do you?
Brian here, and I just wanted to watch the commercials like a good consumerist, but my dumb family instead made me play an impenetrable board game called Scythe? I still don’t understand what happened, but it involved my children laying traps for me and stealing my food, so basically just real life.
Before we get to your weekly NSFW comics, some of our free readers have noted that they suddenly haven’t been able to download the PDF or CBZ files we include with each dispatch, even though those files come before our paywall. Substack Mission Control is apparently hard at work on a solution, but for now, I’ve removed the paywall from our Spectators: The First 125 Pages post, so everyone should now be able to read/download/own that first giant chunk of our serialized graphic novel (a change that also makes the exclusive look from that post at my long-lost Longshot project with incredible artist Pete Woods available to you free readers as well, so enjoy my juvenilia, now on the house!).
Anyway, while we get that download situation sorted, everyone should at least be able to read today’s vignette of Spectators, drawn by co-creator Niko Henrichon, lettered by Fonografiks, and introducing a hateful new character written by yours truly:
Poor Valerie Amber Norwich can’t catch a break, huh? Her misadventures continue next week.
For now, Niko and/or I usually pop into the weekly chat threads with you generous paid subscribers in The Tower, and after last Monday’s look at one of my unmade TV projects, we were discussing old shows we wish were still making new episodes.
Tower reader Rosy F. suggested:
Mission: Impossible, both the 60s and 88-90 series.
Cool selection, Rosy, and our semi-fictional intern Genesis the Exploded Giraffe has randomly selected YOU as winner of that deluxe edition of Doctor Strange from the Folio Society, with a gorgeous cover by my old pal Marcos Martín:
And don’t worry, I didn’t scribble over Marcos’ mindbogglingly magnificent endpapers when I signed this beast:
Genesis will be in touch for your address soon, Rosy, and I believe ALL of our various rewards have now been sent out to readers, so if you’re a Founder or past prize winner who hasn’t heard from us or received your goods yet, please feel free to reach out to Genesis directly anytime, thanks: explodinggiraffesubstack@gmail.com
If you didn’t win a signed book this week, never fear, I’ll be sharing info about an exclusive signing opportunity for you Tower members soon.
But if you just can’t wait, I see that our friends over at OK Comics in Leeds still have a few copies of Paper Girls: The Complete Story with a special bookplate signed by artist/co-creator Cliff Chiang and me, while supplies last…
Back in the early aughts, I used to have an old-fashioned blog my wife referred to as my “brag,” where I’d share shameless stuff like this:
![Image[6].jpeg](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F838b51fc-3f4c-4697-a8f2-1ac3ae42e717_3024x3024.jpeg "Image[6].jpeg")
Fiona and I just received this pic from our beloved French publisher François Hercouët, who writes:
I wanted to let you know that Saga won the prize for Best Comics at the 2022 BDGest’ Awards Ceremony. BDGest’ is the biggest French online community of bande dessinée readers so this is quite meaningful !
Congrats to my partners Fonografiks and Fiona, and merci to the BDGest’ community for this very cool honor (and to Urban and our French translators for their excellent work).
For the rest of you:
I feel confident how this poll will go.
All right, that’s it for you fabulous freeloaders, but Tower members are in for a treat after our great paywall: the first “Artopsy” of 2023, as award-winning artist Niko Henrichon takes you through every step of creating one of his epic double-page spreads.
And if you’d like to potentially OWN one of Niko’s masterworks, a reminder that anyone who subscribes or renews as an Annual member before February 27, 2023 will be automatically entered in a drawing to win a page of original art from Spectators AND one of those coveted Saga #1 Retailer Variants.
But for now, Genesis recently found this amazing color sketch by Niko, which we’ll be giving away to one random commenter in today’s chat, so I’ll meet you there, cool?
