“H” is for Hiatus – Hero By Night On Hold for now…

Bad New/ Good News– First the bad….. It makes me very sad and depressed to report this news, but I want to be as transparent with the fans and supporters of Hero By Night as possible here. The ongoing print series has been suspended BY ME due to financial issues at our publisher. I couldn’t keep this on my schedule, because frankly it’s gotten to the point where I need to make hard decisions to be sure my time is spent on projects that pay me on time and have some security to them. Up until this point, Platinum has been rock solid and something I could bank on contractually and I enjoyed that security.  While the plan had always been to stay on schedule through Issue 7 (a Christmas issue), and the book hadn’t been officially canceled by Platinum Studios, I couldn’t in good faith keep going when behind the scenes I knew that there would be books solicited that would not be coming out on time– our issue 4 wouldn’t be coming out because Jason had to make the hard decision to stop coloring Hero By Night for the same reasons, so my book was sitting uncolored and i knew we’d be missing the print deadline dates.

Now the semi-good news— Hero By Night has been my full time job since 2006– The folks at Platinum Studios have been awesome to me and have invested a lot of their time and money into the Hero By Night Universe– it’s no secret that just about EVERY independent comic book company is losing money on their comics– and even knowing that Platinum continues to have faith in the property. I can firmly say they’re doing everything they can to rectify this situation, but it just didn’t happen in time to save the ongoing print book. And for the naysayers out there who believe Platinum is just a big corporate bad guy looking to collect and steal away Intellectual Property rights, it might shock you to know that we’re actually discussing getting the rights back to the whole thing that I sold to them— this would allow me to  take HBN on my own, self publish on the web or in print among other things…. but I have no idea what I’m doing at this point, or if I’d be able to continue it on my own– At this time, I feel pretty down and defeated, but I’m sure in time I’ll be back roaring to go.

Loose Ends… This all came about pretty abruptly and killed a TON of plans I had– I was hoping for the best and that it would work itself out in the past couple weeks, but it hasn’t–

RING SALES– Anyone who bought a ring from us, those are being made directly through me and this won’t effect your orders. In fact, I should have those in hand and ready to go out in the mail to you shortly. ONce the dust settles here, this is how I’ll be doing more merchandise, and you all helped to prove that this is doable direct to the fans– THANK YOU!!!

ISSUE FOUR - sits completed in black and white, but uncolored. I may run it as is for everyone who wants to see it. It’s one of the best issues yet, and one I’m pretty proud of and features awesome new villains. If Jason and I decide to go this alone, this might be what we launch our new effort with. We’ll let you know.

A closing THANK YOU and what all this has meant to me…. Hero By Night was and is my love letter to a genre in comics that I feel has grown up too much– one that use to tell us important messages about social responsibility, morals, choices– I tried, without being preachy to instill a bit of that old school goodness in HBN as much as I could. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but YOU have proven that it does. We’ve received countless GREAT reviews, been called one of the best comic books out there, and have inspired countless other creators we hear from. It’s been an entirely humbling experience for me. I don’t want it to end, and I do have plans I’d like to put into motion, but I have to reorganize a bit here. I want to hear from YOU though… what are your thoughts? What would you like to see happen here? Can the community online support this property fully and allow us to continue it? I don’t know… I hope so. I appreciate all of the encouraging messages we receive. — I want you all to know that YOU have been the hardest part for…. ask anyone I know about this, from people inside the publisher, to friends, to my own wife… and beyond the fact that I’m losing a job here and not making money, I say…. “What will I tell the readers?” — How could I possibly break this news TO YOU. — Some people don’t really care about that. I’ve been in conversations where I’m told not to worry about it… “It’s only a handful of people in the big picture”, I’ve been told…. but to me, you’re ALL friends. You are one of the most important things in this, because beyond making this comic for myself, I make these comics FOR YOU. With YOU in mind. Not money, not based on what’s hot in Hollywood at the moment— I make them for YOU. So it’s practically killing me to write all of this and lay it all out there.

To Jason Embury– my friend, and who became pretty much a non-credited partner in this whole thing… He’s really made my work shine. When I draw comics now, I draw them with him in mind, knowing the things he can do with the images, and he knows what I’m getting at with compositions, etc. I’m sure you won’t be seeing the last of our work together. I know that for a fact because we’ve been working on OTHER things the past couple weeks that you’ll see soon.

To James Patrick - another old friend I brought on board when we went “ongoing”– Like Jason, I think I’ve worked with him for so long, its just a no brainer. He knows how I think, he knows the way my characters talk– he knows my VOICE– and he makes my characters SING with awesome dialogue. All of the inner JACK dialogue that has been KILLER, comes from Mr. Patrick. — In life you find these people you know you’ll still know when you’re 80– Jim and Jason are those people to me.

To Platinum Studios — THANK YOU for the opportunities not only with HBN and other things, but for some things in the future as well.  It was a hard business decision to make to turn off the spicket here, but I’m positive things will work out for the best. I’ve learned A LOT by working with all of the good people there. There are unsung heroes behind the scenes who have spent good amounts of their own time and extra effort pushing my work around (not just HBN, mind you) — Dan Forcey is their MVP in my book– I can’t even go into the multitudes of reasons why, just trust me that this is fact. This isn’t how I’d of liked to end HBN through you guys, but I’m kinda between this rock and a hard place too.

Yeah, all of this is pretty depressing for me. I’m going to do a bit of reorganization here and figure out what the game plan is overall. Basically, I guess I’ll be out looking for a job and figuring out my own finances.