And thus the fifth chapter of The Hero’s Journey wraps! Holy crap… would you believe that this project has already taken me eight years? This was supposed to be the swan song for Deep Fried, MY journey to finally putting Beepo and Roadkill to bed for good! How is this taking so goddamn long?!?

I hope you enjoyed “Jazz Hands”, my most notorious installment of Deep Fried ever. I have always wanted to use Deep Fried to push the boundaries of humor (at least what I think are the boundaries), and I have really enjoyed using this story to probe the barrier between gruesome comedy and the truly deviant. (I mean, Deep Fried is no Mr. Birchum, but I do what I can to at least keep my balance while riding on the shoulders of such giants.)

So, “What are next?”, as my favorite YouTubers often ask. Well, soon there will be print and digital editions of “Jazz Hands” to purchase, and I hope everyone who turns up here every week for for each wicked new installment of Deep Fried will chip in and at least buy the digital version, thus making me feel less insane for drawing this story when I should be hunting for paying work, which I desperately need like a beached whale needs a drink of water.

The concluding chapter of The Hero’s Journey will be “Schizophrenemies”, and boy oh boy are the consequences of the previous chapter about to fall on Beepo’s head like an asteroid. He may wish he could trade places with Barry before this is over! (And speaking of Barry, just wait until you see what Roadkill has in store for him!)

And when will this debut? Welp, I think the time has finally come for a Kickstarter to collect The Hero’s Journey into one volume, and that is where I intend to premier the conclusion to this tale. This collected edition will also include a wraparound story of Roadkill describing– and doing his best to justify– Deep Fried itself. It should prove to be a great conclusion to nearly twenty five years of Beepo, Roadkill and Squints shenanigans, so I hope you will all turn up for it.

Yet, have no fear! The finale to The Hero’s Journey will also appear on this site as well. But after eight years of work, let’s just say that Roadkill is not the only one who has to face the music and justify Deep Fried. I really do want to get this story wrapped and to do it in style, so this Kickstarter will determine where finishing The Hero’s Journey will fall on my list of priorities for the coming year. Expect the Kickstarter to happen in September!

What else are next? I have been giving serious thought to launching a Patreon, and I am just about ready to pull the trigger on that. Mind you: I do not intend to paywall future Deep Fried comics. All my regular ongoing material–Deep Fried, Clarissa, Weapon Brown (MORE Chuck? You never know;)–will still appear on this site. But I am trying to decide what kind of premium content will keep people interested enough to be monthly patrons, and I welcome your suggestions.

At present  I do have my self-run subscription tiers on this site, which I principally use to debut the nudie art that goes into my erotic artbooks, which you should buy all three of. I will most likely keep that material on this site only. For the Patreon I may return to an abandoned side of my work: those humor strips of the sort I once did for MAD magazine. I could do a free one once a week for both this site and Patreon , and a second  patron-only strip, as well as WIP of the various other projects I am working on behind the scene, current news on Kobayashi Maru (which is turning into my most fraught comic project series ever–I could do a weekly video diary about just that!), and who knows what else?

Like I said: Suggestions! And thanks for reading.