Things are chugging along behind the scenes and will continue to do so pending any sudden health emergencies. Everyone on Team Robo has been working from home since things started getting weird and so far no one has any symptoms.
You might have heard that your local shops won't be getting new comics for a while. That's a bit of a kick in the ol' finances. Especially after we had to cancel our major convention appearances for Spring and early Summer. Lots of industry folks are planning like conventions will back by late Summer, but that's wishful thinking. The venue for the biggest show of the back half of the year is being converted into a hospital right now. And I just don't see how we're going to justify allowing a convention's worth of people to travel from all over the country so they can mingle in one place for a weekend given the risks associated with, uh, every step of doing that. Not until somewhere in 2021 at least.
With the lack of convention sales and the Direct Market income for the rest of the year, independent creators need your support more than ever. You can help Atomic Robo by grabbing comiXology editions, or backing this year's Kickstarters, or joining our Patreon, or just adding atomic-robo.com to your ad blocker's whitelist. Every little bit helps! You can pick up something from our online shop but there will be no shipments until April 10th at the earliest due to, y'know, state mandated shutdowns.
Hey, how about some good news?
We spent most of 2019 working on an all new creator owned property and it's our hope to share that with you later this year. That's also why we've been posting these cute "zine" style comics. We wanted to do something like them for years, but they never fit into our production schedule until now. And, bonus points, doing these lets us get to know Alan and the New Kids better before we throw them into our next crazy sci-fi adventure, Atomic Robo and the Vengeful Dead. The whole volume is already written, we're currently outlining the one after that, and planning the one after that. So, like I said, we're chugging along.
It is my hope that the urgency of this pandemic reveals the need for radical action to solve the monumental global scale problems our civilization has created. We must think of the COVID-19 response as a preview of what will be required by all of us to confront the ongoing climate catastrophe. We are already seeing proof that a radical rearrangement of human activities and priorities to solve monumental problems is possible. What we do today with empathy, imagination, and bravery to save millions of lives will be the foundation of what we do tomorrow to save billions of them.
Stay safe.