Netherworld Post Office

In addition to art, I do Art Business Stuff.

I saved my pennies, made a few long term and beneficial deals, got lucky a few key times in the last few years, and have been cashing in my chips.

The goal is to do less Art Business Stuff and focus far more on Netherworld Post Office.

I don't think that is a surprise.

But it has lead to a surprisingly hard-to-answer question:

"Okay, great, well what is Netherworld Post Office?"

...oh... bones... that is a great question.

I have so many ideas.

I build my heart in the impossible, but I am stuck in the impractical.

I am building up my ideas, my resources, I am in love with art and comics. I love mail.

I tell the back office clients: "I have an idea for a greeting card company, based on things I've built in the past. Keeping the ghosts, keeping the monsters... but more mail-focused."

They respond: "Great, how can we help?"

I call in my favors, cash in my chips, start researching. I launch prototypes of Netherworld Post at least twice, get my feet wet, experiment, prototype more.

I research what I can produce in-house, what I have to outsource to print. I begin transitioning the graphic design / business spaces in the studio into packing areas.

I haven't written silly-kissy-monster stories much in the last few years, I get back to work on this. I fall in love with writing again. I fall in love with making comics again.

I write essays on dragon economics, stories about mermaids, I sketch comics and zines.

I research Vincent Price, whom I love and credit as a massive inspiration, helping me through dark times when I was a weird kid in places that did not reward being a weird kid.

I write fanfic about characters appearing in 80s Halloween commercials.

I have a gigantic pile of half-finished work and an absolute mountain of started and outlined pieces.

Have you ever played a fantasy game, and instead of handling the main path, you spend all of your time on the side quests?

You have maxed out your armor, learned all the spells, acquired all the runes of whatevers, you can brew potions and craft with your eyes closed.

Then you take a step out of the elementary monster dens, only to realize you have essentially farmed the elementary levels to reach mid-to-end game strength.

"Oh, right, the actual game part of the game!"

This is where I am finding myself.

I started down the path of re-re-re-re-investigating how I want to handle postcards, and suddenly realized I was at once doing too unfocused on the big picture and too hyperfocused on nuances that do not matter.

As an example: One of the projects I want to build is an in-universe, fantasy, newspaper for monsters.

I started hammering down the basics of this idea (for the 100th time, I come back to it every 3 weeks or so) when the real world Netflix / Paramount / HBO deal started making the news.

In an absolute fit, I realized I was building a single newspaper entity for the entire Netherworld.

"I can't have one newspaper that covers every realm! Shouldn't the dryads of Autumn's Lost Wood have an independent news source than the vampires of Witching Hour Glass' beach resort?!"

Just to recap.

To emphasize.

I was worried about a fictional newspaper empire in a fantasy world where stories range from "you, my wife, are cute, let's go on a date" to "this skeleton is having a dungeon guard and loves their job."

So not only is nothing real, none of it is hard hitting journalism to begin with. The baked-in theme of all of my stories being "this is a monster utopia full of magic and delight."

To ensure this is put into the record: It took me a bit of time, but I do fully recognize how absurd my concerns are, and have been giving myself a grand laugh about it.

An image from the original pitch to the back office clients when I told them I wanted to pivot into building Netherworld Post Office.

I am extremely grateful they agreed and have funded everything to this point with extra research and increasing the size of existing projects.

...but now...

• I have the studio set up.
• I have "these items are made in-house" area set up.
• I have the "send this to the printer" areas set up.
• I have the "put stuff into boxes and then into the mail" set up.

So now that the side quests have maxed out the stats, what is Netherworld Post going to be?

TRADITIONAL MAIL?
First, cracking up again because I wrote without measuring, "traditional." These shops tend to focus around narrow sets of holidays and life events.

I like A7 flat cards (medium size) because they are easy-to-frame and have a pleasant physical presence. The industry standard seems to be A2 folded cards (small), with a heavy emphasis on wholesale orders to card shops, stationery stores, and gift emporiums.

ARTIST ALLEYS & SHOWS?
A thick overlap between "I make cards" and "I table at conventions and fairs." In many ways, you are a mobile stationery shop, either traveling city-to-city (possibly country-to-country) or you stay put, waiting for the shows to come to your city and attempting to get into as many as possible.

WEDDINGS?
This is an interesting space, from a production standpoint, because there are massive opportunities. Big weddings can involve a lot of paper goods, small weddings can become hyper-specific.

...but ultimately...

My work is not constrained to stationery.

I write essays about mermaids, stories about vampires, white papers on the economic viability of a new ghost-run donut shop and how this will impact the foot traffic with an existing haunted coffee shop.

I put the shop on pause because ostensibly to change the colors of envelopes and tinker with a few new options on the back printing of cards offered.

• Then read a few articles about independent greeting card companies and how they are expanding / handling day-to-day business.
• I reflected over conversations over the last year with brick-and-mortar card shops. Huge thanks to A Favorite Design in Chicago, IL and Slackline Press in Brandford, CT.
• I similarly chewed on several years of breakfasts with a digital-focused stationery designers, Donovan Beeson, one of the best mail-based artists in the world.

Every time you have the opportunity to start over with advanced experience, it bears consideration.

It is admittedly dangerous.

The risk is never getting past the starting line, into the main quest, because you keep focusing on the side quests.

The reward, if you can find it, will be one of two things:

1. You either advance far quicker, go far faster, reach far higher than you could have without the prep, experience, trying, failing, crashing, rebuilding, relaunching. Art and science both demand experimentation. Sometimes (most times) it will fail. Thems the breaks, friend.
2. You realize the side quests are the main quest. This meandering proceess is what you want to do afterall. The treasure is not at the end of a linear path, but rather, built up over the myriad of experiences and experiments. (Something something life is a journey something something this is the best part).

The shop is on pause for a handful of weeks, again, while I figure out where I sit on the above spectrum.

Like a fantasy protagonist, I need to review my loot inventory and check in with the local townsfolk, have a strong drink, comedically fail at returning the flirty and witty banter from the tavern staff, sit by the fire, gaze lovingly out the window to the moon, and dream.

Energy levels are high, thrill of being able to do this work higher yet.

Netherworld Post Office is a culmination of a lifetime of making lots of things across lots of media. I write this and immediately diminish the surprise that it's been so hard to focus.

Up until this project, I have made whatever has been tasked to me and/or whatever whim caught my attention (and very often, one lead to the other).

I'm hesitant to say "it is time to put down roots" because that... is not... who I am as a person.

It feels more appropriate to say it is time to ditch the quest log and map out the side quests. Figure out which ones I want to do again versus which were fun to handle, once, but are best left as experiences.

Ah.

Hm.

Oh.

To wrap, because this is appropriate:

That last segment is both 100% accurate and 100% reflective of the exercise in writing this blog post.

I have missed blog posts, and rambling this has healed an ache I had not realized has been lingering for a long time.

I started writing this out because I needed a NOT CLOSED, GONE TINKERIN' sign and blogging this out, rather than a quick social media graphic, has been immensely and surprisingly pleasing.

Cheers, my fellows.

Chat with you all in a few weeks or so.