SPECTATORS - Part 78

Plus, new SAGA this week!

Sep 18, 2023

∙ Paid

What’s your “spiciness” tolerance level when it comes to fiction?

Brian here, and whenever artist/co-creator Niko Henrichon, letterer Fonografiks and I release a particularly steamy installment (like today’s!) of our NSFW serialized graphic novel Spectators, we simultaneously attract a number of new subscribers AND lose a few of our more wholesome readers. The perv churn is real, but the numbers seem to be breaking in our favor, so my deepest thanks to those of you who continue to support our sophisticated smut.

If you were summoned here by this week’s new issue of Saga, welcome! Spectators is very different from any project I’ve ever collaborated on, but if the graphic sex and/or violence in Saga didn’t scare you away, I think you might dig this story, too. You can check out the first 180 pages of our planned 300+ page epic in the Exploding Giraffe Archives, and then join us here every Monday evening for more new pages, always free to read.

This week, our spectral protagonists Val and Sam haunt a future version of The Ramble in Central Park, where an impromptu, uh, gathering has formed not long after the news of a terrifying nuclear attack on American soil…

Spectators 192 194

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Spectators 192 194

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How fucking spectacular is Niko at drawing spectacular fucking?

Every month, the endlessly generous Monsieur Henrichon gives away a priceless page of his hand-painted original artwork (normally only available for purchase through Essential Sequential), and behold which masterpiece you could win for your wall this time:

Paid subscribers in what we call The Tower are automatically entered in this monthly drawing (membership is 5 bucks a month, or just $40 for the whole year), and you also get access to dozens of hours of past, present and future bonus content. Plus, your contributions directly fund our team’s ongoing work on this wholly independent graphic novel, so I will also love you forever.

We’ll announce the lucky winner of that artwork next Monday, so you fence-sitters have seven more days to join up and be automatically entered.

Clunkily shifting into a different gear, thanks to those of you who shared your memories of 9/11 in last week’s chat thread, even those of you who were only in grade school at the time.

Many somber tales from that horrific day (and its even more horrific aftermath), but there were also moments like these, from reader Dimitrios E.:

I have a very bittersweet relationship with that day.
It started with me walking out of the WTC subway station at 8:30 am to go to work 12 blocks away at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. It was followed by a lot of really scary - and still upsetting - vignettes following the attack.
To be honest I don’t really like talking about it. I would rather skip that and instead tell you that I was subsequently corralled by authorities to make my way on foot uptown, where I found myself in front of my ex-girlfriend’s home near Union Square. I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in almost 1 year. Up to that moment I had told myself I would never talk to her again, but I rang the buzzer and... she opened the door and let me in. We’ve been together since that day. Married since 2006, with twin 10-year old children.
Like I said, bittersweet.

Thanks for that, Dimitrios.

For what little it’s worth, our underpaid intern Genesis the Exploded Giraffe randomly selected you to receive that out-of-print hardcover of Ex Machina, which your twins are thankfully not yet old enough to read (or I would have felt truly ancient).

Sad I wasn’t able to make it to the always excellent Baltimore Comic-Con, but when I read on his Patreon that one of my all-time favorite cartoonists Jim Rugg was going to be releasing a new zine called 1986 at the show, I begged good friend/superstar writer Torunn Grønbekk to snag me a copy.

And lo, my prayers were answered:

Thank you SO MUCH, famous colleagues!

I haven’t gotten my mitts on this awesome-sounding book yet, but Jim describes it thusly:

1986 zine celebrates comics’ most magical year, 1986! Dark Knight, Maus, Watchmen, the black-and-white explosion, ninjas, and so much more happened in 1986. It’s the year that comic book stores surpassed newsstands in comics sales. 1986 zine showcases the creators, characters, books, news, ads, publishers, and artwork that made that year so special!

Did anyone else score a copy?

Sorry again I won’t be appearing at any conventions for the foreseeable future, but I’m planning to eventually offer Tower members another exclusive signing opportunity, so feel free to tell that coworker who wants to give their partner an autographed Lying Cat Funko or whatever:

This Wednesday, at long last, Saga Chapter Sixty-six finally arrives at your friendly neighborhood comic shop!

Normally, I run a short preview of upcoming issues, but I didn’t want to spoil a single moment from this one.

Instead, for this week’s Tower bonus nonsense, I thought I’d share some of the fantastic runners-up of the Fifth Saga Costume Contest, whose jaw-dropping grand prize winner—and NINE spectacular finalists—will all be revealed in the pages of this Wednesday’s “To Be Continued,” the Saga letter column diligently designed by Exploding Giraffe’s own Fonografiks.

Those ten entries (selected by my aging mail-dachshund Hamburger K. Vaughan) are going to blow your mind, especially when you see the quality of some of the incredible work we didn’t have space to show off.

Like all of our published finalists, these twelve ridiculously talented runners-up will also be receiving some cool prizes, including a lifetime paid subscription to Exploding Giraffe, as well as a selection from the new Saga merch we’ll be debuting with this week’s issue.

And Tower members, if you’d like a shot at a signed copy, just let us know in the comments: What are you planning to dress up as this Halloween?