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First newsletter of 2024!

First newsletter of 2024!

29 Jan • This will only take you 5 minutes

Been watching Glee for the first time

You should know I love Riverdale. I think it’s peak television, and nothing will ever be like it ever again. Now watching Glee for the first time with my friend who is an encyclopedia of Glee knowledge, I’m appreciating this show as the precursor to Riverdale. There would be no Riverdale without Twin Peaks and Glee. It’s a show that was airing while I was in high school, so it’s kinda nostalgic. The songs, the clothes, the jokes, the addressing of homophobia, it’s extremely early-10s.

So that’s the background soundtrack to coloring my book. How Could You is due at the end of February, and it’s about half colored. I haven’t done much this month apart from working on my book (and a few cool commissions), but at least it isn’t an insane crunch like I had in November. The pace is doable, I am strong and resilient.

Horn Dog Collection print edition

I printed this zine, and stocked the online shop with 25 of them. They were gone in like, a single day 😳 I severely underestimated y’all’s need to jerk it. It won’t happen again. I’ll make the order to restock them this week and send them to White Squirrel (my online fulfillment guys <3) but in the meantime, you can pre-order the restock!

Thank you for all the love! https://renstrapp.bigcartel.com/

Baby (Autostraddle Comic)

I stuck Olene, Yona, and Jackie (characters from How Could You) into this month’s Autostraddle comic.

Mail Club & 18+ for January 2024

Shrike bird sticker and postcard design for this month! I love this Hozier song :^) I have begun printing my stickers with Saturn Stickers here in Portland, and I really love working with them so far.

For the 18+ crowd, I bring you Karlach. I also have sneak peek pages of the spicy park ranger x invasive plant comic I’m working on with Mel Gillman for an upcoming anthology! I finished coloring that this month, it’s coming soon!!

You can check out my tiers and join the mail club here ❤️‍🔥

What else did I do this month, hmm…

Fan Expo suuuuuucked. OOF!!! En and I were able to go, and I’m glad we could say hi to the few handful of attendees and fellow artists who made it into the building. But the snow/ice just made it too treacherous for most people. We left early on Sunday to haul our suitcases of convention gear through the snow/slush from the bus stop to our apartment. We lost a ton of money on the table fee, but them’s the breaks sometimes :/ no one can control the weather, after all. Will we do it again? Since the con is so local to us, and they did a decent discount on the next year’s table, I’m willing to give them a second chance in 2025.

But our spring lineup of events will hopefully make up for it all! Check out our list of shows above. We’re doing ECCC (my fave con), Squatchcon and MVCAE (two little local shows I’ve never done before but am excited to try out), C2E2 (another new show, never been to Chicago before!), and VanCAF (my absolute fave CAF, possibly my fave show of all time, fave reason to go to Canada). I’m hoping for another stellar line up for the autumn as well.

Palestine is on my mind. It’s hard to swallow the news. It’s easy to feel swallowed by the news yourself. But we aren’t meant to swallow it. We’re meant to rage against it. Don’t give up hope in the shadow of the empire. Find something you can do to make life better for someone. Even if it’s small, it’s meaningful. Take care of each other every day.

Here’s some sweet treats for you to check out:

This month I looked into whether my bank is funding fossil fuels. Make the move, switch to a local credit union! https://bank.green/
Laugh Riot by Jonas Goonface is pay what you want!
It’s always time to learn about Fucking Trans Women by Mira Bellwether
Very short hike this month, more like a walk in a park! Woodland Trail and Timber Road Loop

Cheers!

Ren

PS: If you want more content that isn’t in this newsletter, I recommend joining my Patreon for some exclusive work every month like comics, sketchbook pages, spicy drawings, and some mail rewards!