Done, Not Done

Let’s get the big news out of the way:

In Your Skin #4 – the final issue of my mini-series with artist Som, publisher Image Comics and production house Tiny Onion – was published on 29th July, which means the whole story is published and out there. We’re now working on the collection, which is out in comics stores on 28th October, and bookstores on 24th November.

It’s been almost a month since the book came out, and I think it’s still sinking in for me that I’ve finished my first book-length project. We’ve now put together the collection – I wrote an acknowledgements page, and there’s a lovely introduction from James. But now it’s all done – for the first time in three years, I’m spending time not thinking about In Your Skin. There’s much more to be said about the experience, and I’ll be writing more about how it all came together – hope you folks will stick around for that.

This newsletter is coming much later than I’d like – as you might expect – but it’s been quite an intense month, and as always, if something could be taken off the plate, I try to do that to avoid being overwhelmed. More on this below.

AIPT Comics said issue 4 delivered “a near-perfect, chilling ending”:

In Your Skin #4 delivers a near-perfect, compelling ending to one of the most gripping horror comics I’ve read in a while. If Bidikar continues to write more comics, I hope he keeps up the good work or finds a creative team that’s as well suited to his talents as this series.

Major Spoilers said:

In Your Skin #4 provides a surprisingly poetic and tender conclusion to a series that’s been brutal, troubling, grotesque, unnerving, and harsh, while still being all of that. A few vestigial moments and details detract a bit from the visual showcase that wraps this up, but they don’t actively make the book worse by any means. All in all, this is a great ending to the series that manages to provide a sense of finality, while still leaving some things unanswered.

You Don’t Read Comics said:

The drama. The horror. The emotional resonance. It’s all there on the page in a remarkably concise four-issue series the closes on some strikingly interesting visual poetry. It all fits on the page the way it simply wouldn’t be able to manage on any screen without losing so much of what makes it so captivating. Very powerful stuff.

Comic Watch thought it “stumbles a bit in the end”, but:

[…] still manages to stick the landing. There are still some things left on the table, but it still has some interesting things to say about identity. Hopefully this creative team will get more work in the future.

Finally, not a review, but Greg at Robots from Tomorrow (who interviewed me for issue 1) had Som and me on the podcast for an “exit interview” – we had a great time chatting about the book without worrying about spoilers. You can listen to the whole thing here.

Along with finishing my first book, I also turned a year older. I have a surprising number of friends whose birthdays are adjacent to mine, and we’ve been having some conversations about getting older and how we’re spending our time.

Last year, I was plagued by this nagging feeling that I had no grand creative purpose governing my life – nothing I felt I was working up to in the long run, or that challenged me like lettering used to when I started out. This year, I’ve leaned into the lack of a general purpose, instead using my time to explore and play with different ideas without the expectation that one of them will turn into something. After all, I backed into lettering without realising it was happening – no reason why I should be in such a rush to find my next long-term obsession.

I have also started maintaining a pocket-sized rambler notebook, which I sit with for an hour a day and just listen to what comes out – a lot of the time it’s nonsense, but some of it is clarifying things that I want to do next, stories that I want to tell, or ways I want to be spending my time.

One reason this newsletter is coming so late is that in the middle of writing this (right after I wrote the last paragraph, in fact, which is why I couldn’t continue its thread), the chronic back pain I’ve intermittently suffered from came back. If you’ve been a regular follower of this blog/newsletter, you might remember that this was a big part of my life from 2022-2023, and was almost entirely due to sedentary overwork.

I thought I’d had it licked, but with all the travel this year, sandwiched by periods of overwork to compensate for the time off, I had basically let my health go to shit.

This has been frustrating, since I’d promised myself during the last bout that I wouldn’t let this sort of thing happen again. I’ve been having checkups done (turns out I had a vitamin deficiency which was a major cause of the pain, of course along with the fact that I had stopped doing my desk stretches as regularly as I should), and I’m undergoing physiotherapy. But I think it’s also time, again, to rethink how I’m living my life, and whether it’s worth sacrificing physical health just to get everything done that I want to (it’s not, obviously).

This has been playing in my mind since July – I’m still figuring out what next when it comes to writing, and I’ve been wondering if it was time to increase my lettering workload (obviously not, given the health crisis). I think “play and explore” is a much better use of my time for now.

So I’ve engaged in another declutter – to make sure I spend less time at the computer and more time out and about. I’ve logged out of all social media on the computer (it all lives on the iPad where I can check it once a day), I’ve deleted email from my phone (it usually isn’t on there anyway, but I reinstall it while travelling to make sure I don’t miss any emergencies), and I’m making sure more of my day involves physical activity.