Life Update: March 2025

At the end of last year my wife and I had just purchased 11 acres of land in the Philippines. Beautiful ocean views all around on a private coconut farm.

Although it must sound like we spent a boatload of money, it was not. In fact, the low price and massive future potential made it hard to ignore the offer. And so we ended up spending most of our savings to acquire it.

It will be years before we can start building anything there but our short term goal is to get the (once lucrative) coconut farm up and running again (Joy is good at managing people over there, even from a distance.) And we need to make a road on the property so that it's easier to access.

Ideally we would like to split our time between Idaho and the Philippines and so this is a big step in that direction.

Anyway, because of this purchase, I suddenly found myself with a drained savings account.

I tried freelance but quickly realized that it took me way more time to finish a freelance painting than it took me to finish my own art.

My books were almost all out-of-print now, even Cognitive Drawing and I couldn't justify spending another $10,000+ to reprint each book to replenish my catalogue.

So at the beginning of the year I decided that my best bet was to dive headfirst into Phobos again, and try to get another 300 page hardcover into Kickstarter by Spring.

Enter Titan Press

After months of waiting, suddenly a big book deal materialized out of nowhere. (Actually it was my friends over at Macroverse who set it all up) And they wanted to publish my entire catalogue calling it the "Brubaker Catalogue".

For 2025 they are planning to publish:

• An omnibus Edition of reMIND

• Phobos books 1,2 & 3 (Manga sized, 200 pages)

• Written by A.I. (yeah, seriously)

For 2026 it looks like they will publish:

• Phobos books 5 & 6 (Manga sized, 200 pages)

• SITHRAH 1-5 (Manga sized books, 200 pages)

• Call Me Hallow 

• Maybe Cognitive Drawing (Male & Female)

As you can see this is 15 books! And then if they make hardcover and softcover editions the following years or Omnibus editions that makes even more. It's a crazy big licensing contract.

In addition to that, Titan Press wants to run my Phobos Kickstarter (as their first kickstarter) partnering with Macroverse who will handle printing, shipping and book design. That way I can just stay focused on churning out what I do best, comic pages. :)

There are even talks about the first books being launched at San Diego Comic-con. So I might actually be there this year if they are serious about bringing me out. :)

Needless to say, this is all happening at a perfect time. And it looks like it will give me some much needed income, and work, for the next 2 years (as I try to finish Phobos and Hallow).

I've always had the hunch that retaining the rights to all my books was a good idea. I imagined licensing them for the rest of my life to publishers and studios. Now I'm even more happy with my decision because it seems like it's actually happening. :)

Anyway, here are some new spreads that I haven't gotten the words into just yet, but I wanted to show them to you anyway because they look cool.

I should have a new batch of pages for you to read next week. :)

Thanks so much for your support and see you in the next update!

Jason