Sub Or No Sub

That sounds like a game show, right? The first year on Substack comes to an end and with it a few changes

Hey, Stupid Fresh Messes! It’s been way too long since I’ve personally sent out a newsletter and I wanted to apologize for that. This summer ran over me like a bullet train! I have no idea where the time went or how we’re already getting ready to send our kiddos back to school, but we are. I don’t think that it being 100+ degrees outside for the last 6 weeks helped much either. Anyway, enough moaning and groaning from me.

I’d like to thank Megan and Joel for keeping up our newsletter and posting new comics and sales and all the fun stuff you like from STUPID FRESH MESS!

SUBSTACK SUBS

Last year I signed a deal to relaunch our STUPID FRESH MESS Newsletter here on Substack. We used our grant money to bring on some amazing writers and cartoonists to make some awesome comics and give them to you all! We were going to keep the comics over the subscription paywall, but quickly decided we wanted EVERYONE to read and see the great work of all these creators and not just a few hundred paid subscribers. So, we started giving free digital graphic novels, out of print sketchbooks, behind the scenes video, making of material, and more to the paid subscribers and a few more big perks to come for the Boss Level. As the first year comes to an end, we’ll be making some changes to our subscriptions.

BOSS LEVEL

As of today, August 1, 2022, there will no longer be a BOSS LEVEL option if you sign up for a Paid Subscription. We have shut that off. On top of the crazy rare TWIG PREVIEW BOOK that shipped out to our Bosses, the I HATE FAIRYLAND Exclusive Variant Covers are being prepared now for the November launch of the new series. We’ll be in touch with our BOSS subscribers before then for your current addresses and whatnot.

FREE, MONTHLY, AND ANNUAL SUBS

The biggest change is that all posts will be available to everyone! There will no longer be a paywall for anything. We’re keeping the Paid Sub options as a tip jar-like way to support the crew who works hard to put together giveaways, the streams (when we get back to them) and all the other things we want to do while we keep building this community. If you continue to support the SFM team by paying for a sub, we REALLY appreciate it, but if you don’t, we also REALLY appreciate you equally and will continue to share brand new content with you, give you info and details about our art drops before everyone else, and give you sneak peeks at new projects and behind the scenes of all my projects. All of that, plus we’ll be publishing the UNTOLD TALES OF I HATE FAIRYLAND at Image Comics in the coming year.

BUT WHY???

We spent a year cooking up ideas for this platform to help grow subscriptions. Each idea took time to discuss, research, weigh pros and cons, learn from, and to finally implement. No matter what the idea was, for every new paid sub we’d get, one or two would drop off. Haha. We pretty much stayed at the same Sub number since last September. All this took huge amounts of time away from me working comics, covers, commissions, daily sketches and all the other stuff that brought you all here in the first place.

On the other hand, free subs went through the roof. While the paid subs were only a few hundred, the free subs grew in the thousands. That let us know a lot about you all and what you want out of this newsletter. So we listened.

We realized while we are grateful for the support the paid subscribers give us, we value ALL of you who decide to let us send out Newsletters to you on the regular, whether you pay or don’t. We love our SFM Community and want it to keep on growing. So throw in some loot or don’t, it’s ALL GOOD! We just want to make stuff and share it with you all.

Thanks for sticking around this year while we fumbled through adding all this extra work to our plate. You make our lives so fun and worth all the hard work.

See you in the funny pages!