Dystopia; or briefly The Thing That Describes a Lot of My Mindset About the World

Jeff Donaldson and I were the main figures in a comic studio that Jeff started almost 34 years ago. The studio ran for almost the entire decade of the 90s before economic factors (lack of distribution, lack of money) shut us down. A few months back, Jeff told me that he'd started drawing again with a new program and wondered if I was interested in digging up some of the old material that I'd created for said studio- Fifth Panel Comics -and seeing if we could produce it as a Webcomic. I signed on and here we are:

https://www.dystopia.ink/

Dystopia is a multi-genre setting somewhere in middle America that was basically a way for me to introduce a lot of concepts that I hadn't found a home for, as well as a way for everyone involved in the studio at the time (somewhere in the range of a dozen people, but really a half-dozen "regulars") to collaborate on the same project, if they chose to do so. I explain a lot of this here: https://www.dystopia.ink/2024/04/20/the-origin-story/ which is the almost-first post on the News page of the site. At the moment, when you go to the News page, you'll see the most recent post, but then have to scroll down to see the older ones. I'll figure out how to rework that at some point. Anyway, all of the posts on the News site describe the basic background of the setting, how we wanted to implement it, and what the idea is for the future. The comics, OTOH, are here:

https://www.dystopia.ink/comic/

When you first arrive on the site, you'll automatically see the last page that Jeff has completed and can use the controls to shift to the beginning or to previous (and subsequent) pages and so forth. At the moment, we're beginning with a story based on The Rim, the top level of the city (Into Darkness), but we'll be moving around from there. Jeff is hoping to maintain a schedule of a page a week as we move forward. Meanwhile, I'll be posting more stuff on the blog page (News) and, for those so inclined, we've set up a Discord (linked on the Home page) and will be hoping to hear/see as much feedback as possible; not just on places like Facebook, but the site itself.

If you know anyone who likes comics, Webcomics, SF, horror, cyberpunk, or anything even vaguely related, PLEASE feel free to send them the link to the site. The most gratifying thing for me as a writer has always been for as many people as possible to read it and see if they get something out of it. Quite literally, the more the merrier, yo. Thanks and I hope (at least some of you) enjoy.