Or review, rather.

So, I’d been holding off on attempting to market Martian Sun for any number of reasons, but chiefly, I don’t have much of a product to show. Most comic reviewers online, whether on major sites or blogs or YouTube, work with discrete, published editions — physical or digital — and Martian Sun is a website. I figured I’d at least wait until I had enough titles to collect in such an edition, with the aim of ten.

This had the unintended effect of giving weight to the final title, which should serve as some kind of closure to what’s now a series, despite that there was never an intended through-line. Still, I had the ideal ending in mind, a story entitled “The Invention of Adam.” If there is a thematic or narrative through-line in Martian Sun so far, it’s something to do with murder — entirely incidental — and “Adam” would center on a murder trial. Specifically, it’s about the world’s first murder trial of an android victim, and that’s proven way too complicated for me to write, or even properly begin.

Instead, I’m going with “They’re Watching Us,” which I’d originally tried to illustrate myself back in 2021. I recently commissioned an extremely talented artist for mechanical designs, and I’ll be reaching out to an actual, factual professional artist soon (fully expecting a polite rejection). This one’s about actors trapped in a sitcom produced by evil machines. Note that I’m only spewing these loglines at you with respect to the last post on this blog, about being scooped on sci-fi story ideas.

While in the throes of this decision, I suddenly thought, “Fuck it?” Why not just try anyway? So what if it’s only a website? I’ll just explain that in the email and the worst they can say is “No,” which I’ll be getting plenty of regardless. I reached out to Celia at her horror site Let’s Talk Terror, and to my great surprise, she said “Yes”! The review went live yesterday, and I’m relieved it’s positive and grateful generally. Martian Sun isn’t pulling in any traffic for her, so I’m left with the conclusion that she took the time to read these comics and write about them because she found them worthwhile. That doesn’t compute with modern algorithm-based Internet decision-making.

That initial agreement instilled me with enough confidence to keep the ball rolling. I reached out to, I think, three more sites, more expectant than hopeful — and got nothing back. Not even a “No”!

Now I’m back at square one, where I’ll have to wait for the completion of “They’re Watching Us” before I can try again. In all likelihood, that’ll be next year. But in the meantime, you can read about Martian Sun on Let’s Talk Terror. Celia took a chance on a no-name, and she’ll be the only one for a very long time.