Cura Te Ipsum – A Digital Comic by Neal Bailey and Dexter Wee

No, don’t be afraid, we’re not going to suddenly start missing updates! Dex is a art making MACHINE, folks. He truly rocks.

HOWEVER, that said, we want to get a good buffer going, as we have eaten up a bit of it with other, cool SUPER SECRET stuff Dex has coming out elsewhere, and more power to him for his industry, his skill, and his ambition!

He said to me that he could knock out the buffer and kick his own ass and do it, and by God, he would have, because I’ve never met more of a workaholic artist than Dex, but my response, as should be yours, is “NO!” Don’t kill yourself, buddy. I told him that I was sure all of you fine folks would understand if he took it easy catching up, especially given our SECRET POSTERS.

Ah-whah, you say?

Well, Dex, about a year ago, did five truly awesome posters. Some of you may have seen one of them in color if you bought the second trade. The others, you haven’t seen, and they give you a bit of a tease as to what’s coming, along with a compelling image. They will be what you see Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with perhaps a special surprise or three on Tuesdays and Thursdays, to thank you for your patience in a break in story, but no break in content. This will last from page 151 on June 15th, a Friday, the last page of the third trade, through when we return with new story pages on July 2nd, a Monday.

Anyone out there who wants to do a guest piece is more than welcome to contact me. We have planned material, but I’d love to see stuff others might want to put together. Doesn’t matter if you’re five and it’s your first drawing or if you’re Adam Hughes. And if you are Adam Hughes and you want to do a piece, I will gladly dress up in leather and model. Or, alternatively, agree not to dress up in leather in exchange for the piece. Atsa good deal for independent art! The only important thing, and this is absolutely essential, please only send in existing Charlies/Charlenes/characters. While I’m sure your Charlie ideas would be wonderful, there’s a legal issue there, and I’d have to delete them unseen, which would make me sad. I wish we lived in a world where I could say “Come up with crazy Charlie ideas, and we’ll showcase the best ones!” and could just trust the world to be cool, but then I run the risk of someone saying I stole an idea from them, and I gotta protect Charlie and company.

Beyond that, we will also use the buffer to design our new trade, volume three, and figure out how we’re going to want to knock it out. We have an image selected, pages in the can, and I should have prices soon. Speaking of prices…

Here’s a reality I’ve had to come to terms with. When I published the first trade, the cost per copy was substantially lower than it is now. Paper prices have gone up, as have shipping prices, so I’m in an odd position. I don’t WANT to raise prices, but I may have to. I’m not sure what it will be, I’m guessing 12 bucks a copy instead of ten, but it may be 14, depending on what the prices are in the intervening six months since we made the last trade. Question, and feel free to comment, if I have to raise prices, will anyone then NOT be able to buy? This is very important to me, not for profit purposes (HAHAHAHAH, profit? Pfft!), more for sustainability. Profitability is a word that hangs around Penny Arcade, and more power to them, but we’re not there yet.

I am thinking I will tell you guys now, so anyone who wants to buy 1 and 2 at the old price can, before prices potentially rise.

Also, I am considering putting together a YEAR ONE trade, in paperback. That might be more spendy, I don’t know… is twenty-five dollars insane for a year one trade? Thirty? Twenty? What is reasonable for a full year under one cover (provided you don’t have it already). I need your input, folks.

All that said, I will soon post something on Comic Rocket, a site I am digging that I am remiss in telling you guys about. Expect a post some time soon! We are also two pages away from another issue of Cura in color!

I’ve been reading and enjoying the work of Eric Trautmann and Brandon Jerwa for some time now. I’ve also been quite fond of Steve Lieber’s work. When I found out that the three were doing a graphic novel together, it made the pull list immediately. I expected a good read. I expected a fun, honest comic. It’s what those gents do, after all. They’re among the few I turn to when I want to know what I should do when creating a comic book for a reason, and their friendship has sustained me through much doubt of my own ability and simultaneously it’s given me the courage to forge on.

What I wasn’t expecting was nearly being reduced to tears multiple times. I wasn’t expecting such an amazing piece. I went in, as one often does with familiar faces, with the expectation of good or better. I got what had damned well better win an Eisner, or I’m gonna find me some judges and mete out justice.

My dad served in Kuwait. My grandfather served in World War 2. I grew up in the area where most of this book took place. I was born in a military hospital, Madigan. Fort Lewis was a place I spent a great deal of time cavorting around on in my youth. The military culture that is ever-present and a part of life in Tacoma, Washington, in the northwest in particular, gets into your bones and defines your culture. It makes us who we are even if, like me, you’re a relative pacifist and find war a last resort. Still and all, you know fifty soldiers and you almost never meet one who isn’t, to a man or woman, courageous. Worthy of a story. As this book illustrates, war and its ins and outs are neither good, nor bad. It’s not black, nor white. In point of simple fact the realities are almost impossibly complex, and dealing with it drives great men and women to their graves. Those who survive can come through numb, and even those on the periphery are touched by the brutality of war and our need for defense, a need that has costs. The book covers all of this and more, and without being on the nose or delivering a soapbox message.

Without attaching itself strongly to the heavy politics of the last decade (which played hell on formerly idealistic me), this story approaches the human side of the war without being preachy, in a strong, real, human way. Without giving away the punch of the story, the trade follows Terry Glass through a series of trials and travails that have him questioning himself, his role in the world, and the role of the military and private contractors. From the low pay given to soldiers to the perceived high life of private contractors, the graphic novel runs the gamut from the perspective of a central character you ache being close to as he gains and loses things that give his life meaning, fighting goalposts that move in sometimes severe, chaotic ways. We see the impact that loss, war, and bureaucracy have on the life of someone who, in almost every situation, just does their best to do the right thing. It’s a story of what happens when being the best man you can be isn’t good enough, and it’s also a story of finding out that even the best people, when confronted with the realities of war, can swerve on the path to righteousness.

Lieber draws as he always has, with a very human touch. Even the battle scenes are about the people, and when the shock moments come, when the brutal glorious crescendos hit, they punch you in the gut. Trautmann and Jerwa teach me (as they have since I started trying to write these here funnybooks) what it means to tell a story in pictures, and I sit here in awe, furious that they’ve kicked my ass at the craft yet again, because this isn’t just a good book, it’s a fucking great book, and if you don’t pick it up, it’s your loss.

You can find it here.

Go.