comics, art, and thoughts by bug & delade
This week’s Follower is going to be a little bit late as I’m having trouble with my shoulder, yet again. But, the inks are done, and the page is readable, so folks who are part of the Chio Club can get an early look at what’s coming next for just $1!
Check out the update on Patreon
And if you’re not part of the Chio Club, you can find out all about it here! It helps keep me alive and making comics, and I do my best to reward subscribers with early looks at what I’m making and more!
Hey folks!
You may have noticed by now that Follower is back to updating somewhat regularly! It’s taken me a long time recovering and adapting my processes to get here, but I’m doing my best to keep up with new pages. There’s a chance I’ll need to delay a page now and again due to health issues, but overall I’m doing much better than I was this time last year, or even just a few months ago. In general, I’ll post updates about comic delays on social media (find all of them on this page) or in Discord (https://discord.gg/jxCYAeePZ4). I’m currently most active on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/radiochio.bsky.social), which is now open to everyone. It’s been a nice experience and kind of refreshing from the Twitter rat race, so I encourage you to join if you’re curious!
Part of my reason for writing this post is to talk a little about what it takes to keep Follower going, by which I mean, what it takes to keep me going. Right now, I’m both too disabled to handle a regular job, and at the same time the government can’t decide if I’m disabled enough to get any kind of assistance. It’s been more than two years since I’ve been able to work regularly, and we’re beyond strained, financially, as a result. This is kind of a terrifying position to be in, and even more terrifying to talk about publicly, but here I am anyway. Doing my best!
Follower itself costs a bit in fees for hosting, software subscriptions, and other odds and ends each year. By and large, Patreon/Ko-Fi help to cover a lot of that, but it doesn’t leave me with much in terms of money to survive on and take care of necessary bills and medical costs. Right now, we have to hold out until my disability appeal winds its way through a really hostile system, which will take an unknown amount of time. Right now, Delade and I are in a temporary situation staying with family, but this can’t be permanent. It’s sort of an impossible task, where we can’t really save any money to get out on our own, and are kind of stuck in waiting limbo. It’s awful.
I’m putting this out there, because there are a handful of ways that you can help without directly spending money (unless you absolutely want to), so here goes:
All of these are free to sign up for and the subscriber and view numbers will really help me out a lot. Also, if there’s any kind of behind the scenes video content you’d like to see, please suggest it in a comment! Videos are fairly easy for me to make while I’m doing other comic work, and I’m always happy to talk about how I make things, especially if it helps someone else.
On the other hand, if you want to directly support me, I have both a Patreon and a Ko-Fi which I’ve started calling the Chio Club. For $1 a month, you get access to things I’m currently working on before they’re live for everyone, and other tiers come with other rewards. I do my best to come up with extras as I can.
There are also shirts and other merch items in my shop. The cut I get from these is relatively small, but like anything else, it adds up, and it gives me a little joy to know somebody out there is wearing my artwork.
Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read this. I feel like I’ve spent the past year trying to dig myself out of a pit of health problems, and I’m finally getting to where I can start working a little more and thinking a little more clearly. I appreciate the patience our readers have had in waiting for new updates, because it’s been pretty hard not to work on things as I normally would for so long. I still can’t, but I’m working on getting there.
Do you want to see Chios confessing to crimes? Well good news, that’s a thing that happens on this week’s Follower page.
🧬 Newest page: http://follower.messenger-comic.com
👨🏼🔬 From the Start: https://follower.messenger-comic.com/follower-webcomic/follower/
🦘 RSS: http://follower.messenger-comic.com/feed/
💖 Early: http://chio.club
Also, if you like reading comics on apps, Follower is available on both Webtoons and Tapas! And if you subscribe there, it really helps me out, because I’m a little bit closer to being eligible for an ad revenue share.
💚 Subscribe on Webtoons: https://webtoons.com/en/challenge/follower/list?title_no=74968
💛 Subscribe on Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/Follower/info
I’ve had to make a few changes regarding Follower’s update schedule. It will be returning on February 21 to accommodate my health issues. More details are in the post below if you’re interested. Thanks for your understanding!
I’ve been working on new Follower pages and there are currently 3 previews up for Chio Club members! That means you can get 3 updates ahead of the current story, and be way ahead by the time regular updates resume in February!
Join the Chio Club and support the continued creation of Follower!
Hey folks! Just wanted to make a quick update post about some new stuff that’s been posted for Chio Club supporters!
First: the final version of Follower page 8.14 is up. It took forever, working on and off through shoulder pain, but it’s finally done, and thankfully I’m starting to get some pain relief. (As a direct result of Chio Club & other support!)
I also uploaded rough versions of pages 15-17, since those are next on my agenda and it might be interesting to see through this part of the process.
Next: I have a timelapse video of work on page 8.14 which will be up on Monday for Chio Club folks.
Still easing my way back into working on pages, but it is so much easier now that I have some means to manage some of the pain I’ve been in. I just have to be slightly more aware of when I’m overdoing it, because it’s easy to get caught up in it and then pay for it later. (That’s what happened to me on Friday, oops.)
Anyway! Onward to more new stuff! Join the Chio Club for early sneak peeks at what I’m working on, and to help me stay alive and out of pain!
Hey friends! It’s been a while since I’ve updated, so here I am, because I have one!
So, Follower has been on an extended hiatus while I’ve been dealing with health issues and pain problems, and I think I’ve finally made some progress dealing with all this. You can read more about it in the latest Chio Chronicles newsletter or in more detail on my personal Tumblr, but in either case, I’ve been feeling significantly better over the past couple days, to the point where my really problematic shoulder is practically normally usable again. I’m in disbelief and very, very happy about this development.
Anyway! I’ve been working on drawing, specifically on Follower updates, and assuming things continue in this way for the foreseeable future (I have no reason to think they won’t) I’m aiming for a return to regular updates February 1, 2024. I’m overshooting a little, I would have liked to start at the beginning of January, but I want to be realistic about my limitations. And this date could still change if I keep having trouble over the long term, but I feel like I’m finally on track to things starting to get better.
Thanks for continuing to stick with me despite how complicated and slow this has all been! I’ve been dying to draw for months and now I can and it’s absolutely wild. I can’t wait to get more pages done and posted! As usual, subbing to the Chio Club via Patreon or Ko-Fi will get you access to whatever I’m working on at the moment.
Thanks again for reading, and I’ll see you on February 1!!!!
We’ve done it, everyone! After what’s been a real rollercoaster of a year, we made it to the end of 2023! This edition of the Chio Chronicles is going to be a big wrap up of everything we’ve done this year, so if you’re just joining us, or if you’ve been here all along, we can all look back on 2023 together!
In the beginning of this year, I started working on some video projects as a way to keep making stuff and being active as a creator online (so people wouldn’t forget I existed, I hoped…) and one of my early experiments was a video essay on joint hypermobility, one of the major health issues I’ve been dealing with over this year. I made it both as an explainer and a kind of journal piece about what I’ve gone through.
Throughout the year, I’ve worked on a few simple animations, in hopes of one day maybe being able to do some for Follower. The one pictured above is called Snack the Mouse, although I’ve done a couple of others based on Follower, as well as some kind of autobio animatic-style pieces. TikTok has been a real help in getting some of my art out there, especially in this way! But most of these are on my Youtube channel, too!
My ability to draw has been hit or miss this year thanks to untreated chronic pain, but I’ve found that I can (usually) at least write when I can’t physically draw, so one of the ways I’ve been trying to do that is create some useful resources for other artists and comic-makers. The first big one of these posts I did was a run down of some of my favorite books for comic artists!
Sort of spontaneously, I decided to attempt Nanowrimo this year, and actually managed to complete the requisite 50,000 words! I posted early drafts week by week in November for Chio Club members. Although I made the minimum amount of words to “win,” I still haven’t finished the story itself, so I’ll be working on this on and off into 2024.
My novel is tentatively called “Cat Person,” and it’s a take on zombie horror. Right now I’m working on finding the holes in the first 50k words, and then once I’m sure that’s all in order, the ending should click together nicely. If you’re interested in seeing what I put together in November, join the Chio Club at $5+!
One of the ways I’ve been coping with the frustration of my health and dealing with the health care system as a whole this year is making some simple sketchy comics about how I feel about things. Some are more positive than others, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
You can view my comics as I make them at Radiochio.com under the “healthposting” tag.
I’ve also been doing a series of off-the-cuff blog entries about my experiences on Tumblr, also under the healthposting tag (so it’s easy for people to either view or block them, because I know this stuff is not everyone’s cup of tea) and it’s been nice to kind of have a small group of folks with similar conditions where we can all nod at each other like, “yep, that’s how it goes.” You can check out my blog posts there under the healthposting tag!
One of the most life-changing things that happened this year (and there were a lot of those, it’s been a year) was losing our cat Milo in October. He was more a part of our creative process and daily life than we ever realized. In all the writing I’ve done this year, one of the things I’m proudest of is the little eulogy I wrote for him. He was my best little buddy and work supervisor and I’ll miss him forever. It meant a lot to be able to write about him and share my strange, wonderful little cat with the world.
Overall, 2023 was a difficult year, and in some ways we barely made it through. But your support as readers has meant the world to me and made some of the really rough stuff feel worth it, so thank you for being here and continuing to be interested in the stuff Delade and I make!
2023 has been a real rollercoaster of a year for us, between my personal health diagnoses, losing our cat, and struggling in general to stay afloat in a never-ending tide of…life… But somehow we did it, and still managed to make some stuff despite it all.
A lot of our merch is on sale through December 9! If you’ve wanted to grab something like a t-shirt or mug, this is the ideal time to do it! Digital products are on sale, too!
Coming up in 2024: hopefully some forward progress on Follower. I’ve been having to actively fight with my providers to get any kind of pain relief, but I may be able to take some measures into my own hands by pursuing a medical marijuana diagnosis. Unfortunately, due to the unusual state of legality with this, my health insurance does not cover it in any way, so I’m on my own. I’m working on getting together the money to get through a certification appointment and actually be able to acquire some medical-grade product, but it’s a process. Still: this is some of the most hope I’ve felt in months, because there’s an actual chance for pain relief here. Chronic pain is like being in an unbearably loud room that you can’t leave, every moment of your life, and this is the opportunity to turn the volume down just a little bit, so I’m going to fight to make it happen.
If you are interested in contributing to help me pay for healthcare that my insurance won’t (but please take care of yourself first, of course), I am not currently doing a gofundme because I don’t have solid numbers for a lot of things, but I am running sales on digital comics through Ko-Fi (with the code BLACKFRIDAY) and Itchio, so you’ll at least get something cool for helping me out.
Pursuing this treatment has very good odds of putting me back in a position to draw on a regular basis, so, fingers crossed, everybody.
One of the new parts of the new Follower website I’m working on and considering opening to readers is the option to help transcribe pages for vision-impaired readers. For now, I’ve been doing the transcriptions myself, but there are hundreds of pages to go. I might open this up to the community as a volunteer project. If you’re at all interested in this sort of thing, please drop in on the Discord chat and let me know!
If there is community interest, I will open up a private channel just for transcribers, and probably create a special role for it.
Thank you for reading this month’s news, and thanks for sticking with us through this wild year. I have hope that next year will be better, because you’ve got to hope for something. Here’s to more new stuff from us in 2024! May your new year be filled with good luck, delight, and excellent snacks. I hope ours is, too. ❤️
It’s that time of year again, isn’t it? Here’s everything I have that’s going to be on sale for that oh-so-salesy time of year. If you’ve ever wanted to grab some physical merch or download a comic, this is more than likely the best deal you’ll see all year.
Get all of my comics and other downloadables for 50% off! Or, you can get the entire collection for $25.00 on itchio. Use the code “blackfriday” on Ko-Fi for 50% off everything in the download shop. Get some comics to read over the holidays, some wallpapers for all your devices, and some sketchbooks to flip through and see my creative process!
Looking for shirts, mugs, stickers, and basically anything else fit to print on? Well well, have I got some links for you.
My Threadless Artist Shop is on sale! Tees are $15, plus everything else is also on sale! I’ve got Follower designs, original art, and more. Keep an eye out, because the amount of the discount might change through the week, wink wink.
Starting today, November 20, my Teepublic Store is also on sale! Everything is 40% off through November 28! I’ve got dinosaurs, original art, and even licensed Star Trek art!
Be sure to keep an eye out especially on the merch shops, because sometimes they like to drop surprise sales and discounts that even I don’t know about until they happen!
It’s Friday again, which means it’s time once again for Friday First Drafts! If you’re a $5+ member of either our Patreon or Ko-Fi, you can get early access to the first draft of my Nanowrimo novel. I’m having fun writing it, and might polish it up and do something with it once the month is over.
Join at the $5 or higher tiers on either Patreon or Ko-Fi to get access to the latest EPUB file of my horror/thriller/whatever novel, “Cat Person!”
