The Comics Self-Publishing Relay Race - The Week in Solo Self-Publishing
How this week's shipping, signing, and launching all depend on each other
The Ledger Behind the Ink: A Flatline Production & Publishing Update
There’s a version of self-publishing that looks like magic from the outside — new books just appear, campaigns launch, packages ship — and then there’s the actual machine underneath it, humming along on the good faith of readers like you. This week I want to pull back the curtain on that machine, because right now every gear in it is turning at once. Nothing here funds a salary or a vacation; every dollar that comes in from one project is what pays the printer, the paper stock, and the postage for the next one. It’s a relay race, not a paycheck, and it only works because you keep showing up to run a leg of it with me. That should sound daunting, and honestly some weeks it is — but it’s also, genuinely, the most exciting stretch of Flatline’s life so far. Right now, four projects are moving in parallel, each one leaning on the last, and I couldn’t be more grateful or more fired up to walk you through it.
A Carousel at Night: A Project-by-Project Update
Deep Space Lovecraft — Kickstarter Launches 8/4, Closes 8/11
This is the campaign the whole week orbits. Proofs are back and pre-press is underway, the book design is locked with content upgrades already folded in, and I’ve ordered full-size prototypes from the printer — fingers crossed they land before the campaign even opens, because nothing sells a book like holding the actual book. The two new stories, The Outsider and Dagon, each got their own full-size cover art repurposed as chapter plates, which is the kind of detail that only exists because a previous campaign funded the extra art budget to do it right.
The prestige hardcover tier is where the real funding lift happens: A4 format (210mm × 297mm), hand-autographed and remarqued by me personally. Those premium copies are what subsidize the standard editions and keep the whole print run affordable for everyone else. I’m also exploring foil bookmarks as a free thank-you reward for past backers — a small gesture, but one only possible because this campaign has margin to spend on loyalty instead of just survival.
And a preview for the road ahead: the next standalone Deep Space Lovecraft volume, Herbert West: Reanimator, is already taking shape for a late-September release. It exists on the calendar because this campaign needs to succeed first.
Gothic Horror Team-Up 3 — Shipped 7/24, Arriving 7/29
Digital fulfillment wrapped 7/23, and I owe you a laugh and an apology in the same breath: a batch of backers received download links that accidentally unlocked the entire Last Ride of the 4 Horsemen: Tribulation series. That’s on me — enjoy the mistake, no take-backs. The corrected link for the actual deluxe GHTU3 PDF has since gone out to everyone affected.
Here’s the honest part: this project is one that barely covers the cost of producing it. Every dropped pledge between funding and fulfillment isn’t an abstraction — it’s a direct hit to whether the next issue happens at all. And yet, the decision has been made: we’re moving forward with Issue 4. That’s a bet on you, and I’m making it happily. Today I’m signing all the autographed copies myself, and Amanda is starting on the 60+ remarque editions, with shipping beginning tomorrow. Every copy that goes out the door this week is what makes Issue 4 possible.
Last Ride of the 4 Horsemen: The Complete 3-Volume Collection — Kickstarter Prep
272 pages of story and art, collected in full, with a debut softcover cover for the Tribulation arc making its first public appearance. This launches 9/1/26, and it exists downstream of everything above it — it’s the payoff campaign for a series whose earlier chapters you’ve already trusted me with, and its success is what kept the Tribulation arc’s story moving instead of stalling out mid-saga.
Substack-Exclusive: Frankenstein’s Monster-Sized Cthulhu Horror Stories
This one’s the slow-burn, low-overhead counterweight to all the Kickstarter sprinting above. It continues the version of Frankenstein’s Monster I introduced in 2025’s Gothic Horror Team-Up #1 — the one who followed Cthulhu’s nightmares down to sunken R’lyeh and rose with the city itself, now bound as a ward of the Elder God he once feared. The plan is 2 to 4 pages a week, released here first, eventually gathered into full issues and collected editions available through future Kickstarters or Substack membership tiers. It’s the project built to eventually fund itself — a hedge against relying on campaign cycles alone, and a direct thank-you to the readers who show up week after week rather than just at launch.
None of this works as a single project standing alone. The Deep Space Lovecraft campaign funds the next Deep Space Lovecraft book. Gothic Horror Team-Up 3’s fulfillment, dropped pledges and all, decides whether Issue 4 gets made. That series’ momentum feeds directly into the Last Ride collection launching in September. And the Substack serial quietly builds the kind of steady, subscription-based support that could one day make all of this a little less white-knuckle. It’s a chain, and every link this week held — proofs approved, prototypes ordered, autographs signed, remarques underway, pages drawn. None of it pays me a wage; all of it pays forward into the next book you’ll get to hold.
So thank you — not in the generic sense, but specifically: thank you for the pledge that becomes the paper Herbert West is printed on, for the pre-order that keeps Gothic Horror Team-Up issue 4 alive after the pledges that didn’t make it, for the patience with a corrected download link, for reading two pages a week of a story that’s still finding its shape. You’re not just supporting a comic. You’re the funding source, the quality control, and the reason the next nightmare gets told. I’m endlessly grateful, more than a little amazed, and genuinely can’t wait to show you what all of this becomes.
Thanks for making comics with me!
Kevin LaPorte
👍 Happy to be here