All Good Things…

Sometimes, there’s just no good way to put it, so I’ll just say it. Chapter 29 will be the last issue of Star Power.

For the last seven years, Michael and I have been pouring ourselves into this comic, and now I’m feeling it’s time for something new and different. Seven years is a long time to hang on a project. It’s probably the longest project I’ve ever been a part of. We’ve done a lot of amazing things and produced a ton of work that I’m really proud of. By the end of this, we’ll have six books in print, totaling over 700 pages of content. That’s wild to me.

I’ve grown so very much as an artist. Go back and look at those first couple pages of Star Power. Pretty good, right? Now set them next to the last handful? Ho-lee-shit. I don’t think I’m being egotistical when I say this, but I have become so damn good at this whole comic thing. And I wouldn’t have seen that growth without the years and the pressure to produce content at the rate that I have for Star Power. Considering the quality, the update schedule we’ve maintained has been truly insane. However, Star Power has never managed to capture a large enough audience to make it a sustainable endeavor.

Comics are exceptionally labor intensive. We’re no strangers to the staggering amount of upfront work necessary to get a comic to the point that it’s making money. We saw some really promising growth in the first three years of this project, but that growth plateaued and never reached truly sustainable levels. This is, of course, no one’s fault. We launched Star Power as Marvel’s MCU was concluding its first phase. Since then, the market for superhero stories has flooded and there are so many movies and shows staring everyone’s favorite superheroes that even the Big Two publishers are having a hard time competing with their own content in other media. Superheroes have long been a hard genre to break into, to the point that most publishers won’t even bother accepting submissions for them. That we’ve come this far and produced so much for so long is a testament to our amazing fans and our own stubbornness, but sometimes our best just isn’t enough.

Michael has started a new chapter to the world of his famous Dominic Deegan saga, in order to bolster his income and provide for his family. We’ve had to reduce our update schedule from 3 days a week to 2 so that I have time to take on extra commission work to keep things in the black. Much to my delight, my skills as an artist are proving to be in high demand. I have more clients asking for work than I can comfortably take on while maintaining anything like an update schedule with Star Power. Much like with my days of Finder’s Keepers I am forced to choose between telling a story I love and focusing on the work that pays the bills. It would be a hard call if I weren’t hungry for something new.

Before Star Power, I wrote stories too and I’ve got several of them bubbling up inside, waiting to be told. They’re stories that just can’t be told with Star Power. Star Power is big and loud and fast and frankly a little ridiculous, the way all superhero stories are. I’m yearning for stories that are more intimate, slower paced, more serious and adult. I have characters that I want to see on the page, stories that I need to tell, and I’m really excited about it. I’ll be talking more about my upcoming projects over the coming weeks, and I really hope you’ll come along with me to see them.

Michael and I have been good friends for years, and Star Power ending cannot change that. This collaboration may be ending, but that won’t preclude new ones beginning. What we started here is amazing, and only better things are to come.