Tapas Closing, and More
In this newsletter, you’ll find out about everything I released over the past 30-31 days.
Anything not labeled “Patreon” or “paid” is free and publicly available.
August 8 to October 8, 2026
We didn’t have a monthly roundup last month since almost all of my work was behind the scenes, so we’re having our first ever 60-day roundup! Some news, but it shouldn’t be too overwhelming.
Tapas Closing
In case you haven’t heard, the webcomic hosting platform Tapas has announced that it’s shutting down. The official end of service date is March 31, 2027. On that date, you will no longer be able to access any comics hosted on the platform.
I have mirrors on Tapas for both Into the Smoke and Demon of the Underground. If you use Tapas to read either comic and want to continue reading, you’ll need to switch to another reading location. Here’s what I suggest:
Into the Smoke
The best place to read Into the Smoke is at its home site, intothesmokecomic.com. It can be hard to keep up with updates on an independent site, so you can get new episode alerts the following ways:
- Subscribe to Into the Smoke’s email newsletter.
- Follow me for free on Patreon to get email and/or app alerts. (You can also join as a paid supporter and get access to bonuses.)
- Add Into the Smoke’s RSS feed to your RSS reader.
You can download PDF installments of Into the Smoke for free on itch.io, or purchase full chapters. Itch is currently updated to chapter 2, episode 20, with the next installment planned before the end of the year.
Into the Smoke is also available on Webtoon, but it hasn’t updated there recently. I might start updating again after my graphic novel is done, so if you use Webtoon already, I recommend subscribing. (If you don’t use Webtoon already, it’s best to stick to the main site!)
I also plan to add ITS to some other hosting sites in the future. When I do, I’ll include it in the Monthly Roundup!
Demon of the Underground
The best place to read free pages of Demon of the Underground is at its home site, demonoftheunderground.com.
- I plan to continue releasing members-only pages through the end of chapter 4, but the schedule maybe inconsistent until I’m done with my graphic novel.
The best place to read all currently completed pages of Demon of the Underground is on Patreon, with a pledge to the Bonus Tier.
- Demon of the Underground is on hiatus until I’m done with my graphic novel, so there might not be new pages until next summer. When they start again, I’ll announce it in the Monthly Roundup and on Patreon!
Since Tapas was the only place I was posting new vertical-scroll adapted episodes, I’m discontinuing the vertical-scroll version for now.
Crimetober Month PRINT SALE!
In honor of Crimetober, I’m having a sale for 15% off all my prints! This includes my most popular print, the Birds are Criminals collection. INPRNT is also currently hosting its own sale, which stacks on top of my 15% discount code. You can see all the available prints here at my INPRNT shop. Use coupon code: 8OEY2LMV
Into the Smoke
Into the Smoke is my new free vertical-scroll webcomic. It updates every other Wednesday. “When gay medium Blaze binds himself to an evil spirit, he hopes solving the ghost’s murder will help bring him peace. But Alastor the Angel Killer has other plans…”
New Episodes This Month:
While I’m working on my graphic novel, I’m trying to maintain the equivalent of 1 ITS page per week. Most episodes are an average of 4-ish pages, so that means there might be a longer wait between some episodes, instead of our previous consistent “every other week” schedule.
If you got this Monthly Roundup by email, either through the ITS Newsletter or via Patreon, you’re already set to get ITS episode alerts by email too! If not, you can sign up for ITS email updates or follow my Patreon for free, and then you’ll always know when the next episode posts.
Extras:
1. September was a Sketch month on Patreon! That means I did a collection of original sketches for all patrons to see, and patrons in select tiers got to request an original to receive in the mail. This month, I did “the characters’ ‘actors’ on the red carpet,” and it was a ton of fun! It included both DOTU and ITS characters, and you can see the ITS “actors” here:
- Sketches 7-12 (Patreon)
- Sketches 13-16 (Patreon)
2. For September’s Bonus Tier post, I did an age progression chart for Blaze to prepare for an upcoming episode with a lot of flashbacks. (Patreon)
3. For August’s Secret Gallery Tier post, I did another set of page-format adaptations for a vertical-scroll Into the Smoke episode. (Patreon)
4. It’s a new month on Top Webcomics! We don’t have a new incentive this month, but a vote for Into the Smoke helps more readers discover Into the Smoke, and I appreciate all of you for the support!
Vote for Into the Smoke on TopWebcomics!
Demon of the Underground
Demon of the Underground is my longest-running webcomic. It’s about Pogo, a half-demon with telekinetic powers who falls into a treacherous underground world beneath Chicago. The first 300+ pages can be read for free at demonoftheunderground.com. Current pages are being released on Patreon, with plans for new free pages in the future.
FREE PUBLIC DEMON OF THE UNDERGROUND PAGES ARE BACK! They will continue at least to the end of chapter 4, minus the most nsfw pages. You can find them in their original single-page format at demonoftheunderground.com, and they will release in batches. With the announcement of Tapas’s closure, new pages will no longer post to Tapas.
Extras:
As mentioned in the ITS section, September was a quarterly sketch month, and I drew the characters’ “actors” on the red carpet! You can see the DOTU characters here:
- Sketches 1-6 (Patreon)
- Sketches 7-12 (Patreon)
Odds and Ends
It’s time for Comic Character Design Bad Decision Bingo!
I put together this little bingo card after a conversation with other cartoonists about the ill-advised decisions we’ve made in designing characters that we’ll have to redraw 800,000 times.
Share the post, share your filled card, or see my filled card:
Bonus Tier patrons got early access to the game card and my card, as well as a layered .psd template to drop in their art!
1000+ Sketch Ideas For Your Original Characters
This month, Secret Gallery patrons got free early access to a resource collection I’m planning to clean up and release in my shop in the coming months. In celebration of recently hitting 1000 Patreon sketches, I’m sharing a big giant list of ideas for other people who also want to do a thousand character sketches!
More on Tapas, Webtoon, Art/Writing Contests, and Fair Contracts
I had mixed feelings about the announcement of Tapas closing. I know a lot of people who went all in on the platform and are suffering pretty hard right now. I encourage everyone who reads their work to follow them to wherever they end up taking their work, because that’s a really tough situation.
I’m suffering less, in that I was never willing to give Tapas as much of myself or my work. I was part of the Creator Bonus Program for a while, but I was always very careful about promoting my own website above my Tapas mirrors, and not doing any exclusive work for them. The same goes for Webtoon. I hope that as few readers as possible have to significantly change their habits in order to follow me after the closure of Tapas!
I have minimal losses in part because I minimized my own gains from the start, so I had less to lose. I never tried to maximize my readership on those sites. But the reason I did that is because, being experienced enough to know what to expect from a fair contract, I never trusted Webtoon or Tapas enough to give them an audience I couldn’t take back, or to do exclusive work with them.
Both sites leaned heavily into the practice of holding contests for hobbyist creators, and then rewarding the winner with a professional contract. Tapas wasn’t like this at first, but they prioritized it in their later years.
I put up a pretty lengthy post on Tumblr about why art and writing contests are exploitative, why the contract terms are usually unfair, and what to expect from a fair contract. You can read it here.
And that’s everything from the past two months! See ya next time!
