Daily Grind Vol. 3 and Vol. 4 Are Here!

Plus A Mini Warehouse Sale restock!

Artist sketchbooks have always been one of my favorite things to buy. In those early years of trying to teach myself how to draw, they were the college or art school I never went to. You can only learn so much from looking at a comic, but sketchbooks showed you the behind the scenes stuff. The exercise that went into being good at the craft. Publishing my own sketchbook was one of my first big goals when I was getting started in this career.

A few years into drawing comics, I finally felt like I was ready to go for it. My first book was like everyone else’s books. A 24 page, black and white, fold and staple, old school Zine style sketchbook called EFELANT. I can’t remember how many copies I printed but it was low. Like maybe 50-100. They were done at Kinko’s and I know I was hunting for change under the couch cushions to pay for them. They sold out pretty quick, but before I printed more in that format, I decided to make a change.

Print on Demand was very new back then and there weren’t a ton of options. But a small print shop opened up for some press comic companies. It was more expensive, but the books were perfect bound and looked like legit books. I decided to take that scary leap and risk the money to make a higher quality product. I reformatted EFELANT for traditional comic size and printed up 500 and started selling them at cons. I didn’t have an online store of any kind. That wasnt’ really a thing you could just DO back then. You had to pay thousands to set up e-commerce in the early 2000’s.

A few years later I thought it was time to go for full color and try something no one was really doing yet. HARDCOVER! That was a wild swing at the time. You had to print at least 1000 to get the cost low enough to make it work. And 1000 books is A LOT! I figured my last risk worked out, let’s go for it again. The 48 page, full color, hardcover sketchbook B-SIDES was born! I was such a novice. I didn’t realize that 1000 books would show up on a pallet. I lived on the third floor of a three floor walk up in Chicago at the time. The pallet was dropped off on the side of the street and I had to lug dozens and dozens of boxes of hardcovers from the front of my apartment to the back and up the three flights. That day was DUMB!

By this time I figured out how to make an Ebay Store and was selling online and on the road at Cons! A big shout out to my old friend Joe Currie from Strictly Underground! I quickly hit a place where I couldn’t ship things and draw monthly comics and stay sane. Joe had been running his own indie publishing company for years and knew the in’s and outs of mailing comics! He would bring a carry on suitcase to my apartment every few weeks and pick up the books ordered and fulfill them for me. Joe has really been such a key figure me being able to do this job. He’s an amazing man!

After that, the books got bigger, better quality, bigger print runs with Junk, Stuff, and Daily Grind soft cover. And just because I like to keep things interesting, I went back to the old black and white, fold and staple again with Things. There was one goal I hadn’t hit yet. Publishing a series of art books. Having a unifying theme that would allow me to add more volumes as I had more work ready. And that’s where the Daily Grind Hardcovers come in and why I’m writing this today.

A few years back we published Daily Grind vol. 1 and vol. 2 collecting several years of my daily sketches. Well, vol. 3 and vol. 4 are ready to GOOOOOO! And I don’t mean ready to send off to the printer, I mean they’re here at Stupid Fresh Mess right now! They’re ready to GO as in be ordered and start heading your way. I’m so excited to be able to offer these you all. It’s so cool to see all 4 of them stacked together!

I’ve rambled on about my art book publishing history for long enough. I’ll hand this over the Megan now so she can give you the details what we have for you!

I guess I get to be the one to drop the news about our LIMITED EDITION Daily Grinds! We had a lot of fun with the messy splatter painting we did on Daily Grind 1 and 2 but wanted to change it up. (Mostly because we’ve since purchased new non-splatter painted furniture for the studio). Skottie decided to do some iconic Stupid Fresh Mess doodles this time! We’ll have about 100 of each book available. Look how fun!

Vol 3 will have the that Skottie face like we have on our box stamps and bag seals. Vol 4 has a drawing pencil. You can purchase these individually or save a few bucks if you grab them both. Everything is available right NOW!

PS: now is the time to also get Daily Grind 2 if you haven’t already. Inventory is getting low. We are fully sold out of all 1,000 copies of Daily Grind 1.

What’s up in the shop is that we just did a mini re-stock of the WAREHOUSE SALE section! This re-stock has mystery packs of prints, Big Marvel mystery grab bags and the very LAST of our I Hate Fairyland Prints which haven’t been available for a few years.

Several of our Skottie Young artist exclusive covers are on SALE as well. Swing by our EXCLUSIVE VARIANT COVERS and see if you need anything.

We’ll soon be announcing signed sets of Skottie’s DEATH OF SPIDER-MAN series, full set’s of Skottie’s 1:10 and 1:25 covers for I Hate Fairyland, the next Personal Collection of Skottie Young CGC Signature Series and possibly an ORIGINAL ART SALE thrown in there. February is going to be busy in the shop!

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the next books available in The Personal Collection of Skottie Young. Most of these are courtesy of his storage unit raid in Peoria, Illinois. Stay tuned to the newsletter for drop details!

I HATE FAIRYLAND BOOK 3 deluxe hardcover- On Sale 02/12/2025 (available HERE)

I HATE FAIRYLAND #20- On Sale 02/25/2025

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #67 8 DEATHS OF SPIDER-MAN- On Sale 02/12/2025

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #68 8 DEATHS OF SPIDER-MAN- On Sale 02/19/2025

GODZILLA VS. FANTASTIC FOUR #1- On Sale 03/19/2025

HUMAN TORCH: BURN collecting issues 1-6 On Sale 05/06/2025

STRANGE ACADEMY OMNIBUS (with Skottie Young cover ) Collecting issues 1-18 and Strange Academy Finals issues 1-6- On Sale 05/20/2025

We hope you’ll come visit Skottie and the crew at Planet ComicCon in our hometown of fabulous Kansas City! It’s really an AWESOME show. We’ll be there Saturday the 22nd and Sunday the 23rd! Information about the show and the rest of cool creators there can be found at planetcomicon.com