no one

wants that all right one person wants it but it is the other thing um with the calendar is that i'm trying to this is my sixth kickstarter and every year that i've done a kickstarter except for maybe the first one i have what i i have one or two what i call like cutesy tears um for where monsters lie it's like oh you get the book and you get a badge like a patch oh you get the book and you get like a some prints or a shirt and i looked at the numbers on those and they were like Kind of not worth taking up the space, so I love doing those.

Those are kind of the most fun ones because I go, ooh, how many people are going to get a patch? I made a neat patch to a property very few people know about.

How many people would like one? And so for this year, I was like, I'm not going to do the cutesy tier.

I'm just going to make those add-ons.

All those things are going to be add-ons.

And with this, you want to have the cutesy book-related thing, but no one knows what the book is about.

Yeah.

yeah

but there's another 75 000 at least who are reading you know what i mean uh And so, but prior to that, like numbers were dropping, especially creator and stuff was not doing well.

I did several books with a publisher that didn't do a great job marketing them.

So they almost could not exist, which is frustrating.

And I knew end of life kept getting pushed back.

Like we, we started on that book.

I thought it was going to come out February of last year.

going to tell you

I could see that.

Uh, uh, I got so distracted because my friend showed up.

Uh, So I wrote it.

I mean, literally, I went back and looked at one of my all-time favorite comic writers is Mark Grunewald.

So I wrote it.

I wanted to write it as if it was an ongoing.

And you know there's going to be trade collections.

Go ahead.

The

difference from 2024 Kyle Starks to 2023 even.

I think 2023 is when I Hate This Place first started coming out.

I mean, it's a huge difference in where I exist as a creator by name in this industry.

Whereas...

You know, in 2017, when Rock Candy Mountain came out, I had a very strong, small, but very, very strong.

What's the word I'm looking for? Very feverish fans.

I

Right

...

Loretta's life.

Are they, you know what I mean? Like, she's asleep, but if someone shows up, no one goes through.

That's also like, how does this stay in business? No one's driving through there.

Neither here nor there.

But I think having a single mom, I think if you're at that age where as a human being, you're starting, which he's not yet, he's now maybe eight issues in, starting to where you have to quit being an irresponsible, immature little child and start to take on, if anything, your life's responsibilities, right? Like, um, he's at that point, I think if you're, if you're not just the worst human on earth, sort of being confronted with a single mother puts a lot of things in perspective about maybe how easy your life is, and you can respect that person.

Right.

What makes it fun? What makes it different?

Here's the thing that makes it different and makes it fun are probably the same thing.

I'd say number one is like this is...

It's not the last comic book only show, but it's comic books only, which means everyone who comes to my table knows what a comic book is.

And there's like a 50% chance they know who I am.

And like, that's good.

We like that.

upside down.

Yeah.

I have a, I'm neck deep in Heroes.

I have to, uh, I have to still them, uh, the I never really finished anything, uh, of any sort of significant note, and it was the mid-'90s, and then I went to college, and I think comics were pretty bad for the most part in that, the mid-'90s.

So I was kind of happy to l- to not pay attention for a while.

So I went to college and kind of sold drugs, and-

Mm-hmm.

Um, the, generally it's publishers...

Let me think about this.