Better Later Than Never!

(Or Some Things Are Definitely Worth the Wait!)

Welcome back, Blue Moon Substacker pals! Sorry I’m a couple days late with this edition, but I’ve been on a bit of a vacation for the past week or so. Still, it seems fitting since in today’s post I’m gonna share the splash of an upcoming story for Diversions that’s been about 20 years in the making!

A bit of background: Blue Moon Comics actually started as an idea of mine way back in 1988. While I was fortunate enough to gather an awesome group of creators to help make comics, we never got the opportunity to publish anything. I tried again in 1998, and that time, armed with the lessons I’d learned from my previous attempt at publishing—along with a photocopier, a pc, and an ink-jet printer I was able to publish nearly two-dozen or so titles over a roughly three-year span. The comics involved many great small press creators and were well recieved by the critics of the day. We had a bit of a cult following. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to keep things going. My job situation and resulting funding drought forced me to close down shop.

In 2019 (of all years!), I started rebuilding Blue Moon and working on something that would come to be called Diversions. Heard uvvit? :D The first issue came out in early 2020 (one good thing came out of that year), and here we are in 2022.

But what about the story I mentioned at the beginning? Well, here goes: at some point during the late 90s/early 2000s run of Blue Moon, artist/inker/letterer ace David Vance (who’d illoed a much-loved and much-reprinted Black Rose story) was assigned a horror story called “Heart of a Monster.” With the end of that Blue Moon era and an onset of health problems, David stopped making comics for a while. Thankfully, he’s doing better now and had found that old script and the art he’d completed. He contacted me via good old FaceBook and asked if I’d like to see the finished product. Yeah, buddy! I was thrilled to re-connect to an old Blue Moon compatriot, and even more happy to hear about this story. He sent me the files and are they ever gorgeous! He penciled, inked, and lettered our twist on The Frankenstain Monster, elevating the story to a tribute to Hammer and EC—and I can’t wait to run it in Diversions! Here’s a sneak-peek of the not-yet-in-color splash David did for the story. Only you lucky Substack Blue Moonies get to see it for now. Brilliant, isn’t it? I’ll share more of the story with ya soon!