what a month! thank you for reading and supporting "a ghost story" for another month. i hope you continue to enjoy reading my comic for many more months, and years, to come! as a reminder: patreon is going to completely fuck up my income in november for spurious and annoying reasons. you can help by pledging at least $1 a month for early updates and hopefully more goodies as my health continues to improve (as it has been, its just taken years instead of like, months). i'm hoping for many small pledges including the graciously generous ones being provided by current patreon donors in order to offset the inevitable fucking when i am forced to switch over to a less beneficial means of charging people (getting paid "per month" instead of for every comic page i deliver). if patreon isn't for you, you can donate monthly or with one time payments through kofi. please and thank you for considering any amount to help keep "a ghost story" up and running.

oh and before we start: it's free comic book day! don't forget that you can download the re-draw of the first chapter of this webcomic, "in the black", for free...or name your own price lol. but put in 0.00 if you want. i just want people to read it.

my recommendations are pretty sparse this week since i've been spending most of my time reading books and manga and going through the backlog of frankie's shelf while im working.

• i read a few of dennis cooper's books last week as they're each around 200 pages long. i read "the sluts" (liked it more and more as i marinate on it), "frisk" (which i liked considerably less than "the sluts"), and am in the middle of reading "closer" (which i'm enjoying). these books are not for the faint of heart lol. they are sexually violent, disturbing (even by my jaded standards), explicit, and filled to the brim with unpleasantness. but to me it is a deeply refreshing turn away from the hyper-marketable and saccharine take on gay relationships that has become the bog standard in what feels like basically all forms of media. it is a uniquely unflinching ugliness that's welling up from somewhere very dark that many people would seek to see eliminated rather than explored. i would not recommend these but i am getting something out of reading them.
• for manga, i'm still chewing through "dorohedoro" which has become incredibly confusing and weird 70 chapters in. im not even halfway through and kind of shocked at what's gone down. really interested to see where this could possibly be going. "the lies of the sheriff evans" also has like 5 chapters left before its done. i am never not shocked that the one joke the comic has managed to be stretched out over 240-ish chapters. really fun and breezy read despite the length.

here are some bonus comics this week. :) i was worried i wouldn't have any! more of this strange ship:

the other one is actually pretty long so i think i'll save it for next week. thanks for reading!

no doodles this week!! sorry about it, i was focused on something a little more complicated and getting through the monthly hormonal onslaught lol. i have a handful of recommendations instead:

• this week i read some totally dogshit manga called "green box" that completely fucking sucked lmfao. it was very, very entertainingly bad. there's a whole genre out there where the protagonist is a thinly veiled attempted by the author to create a sort of under-cooked light yagami clone: amoral, antisocial, and willing to kill untold amounts of people in order to further their goals. all of these protagonists land like a thud because they lack any actual signs of intelligence or cunning behavior because the author also can't conceptualize what a brilliant plan might look like. so instead they're just like stupidly evil while gloating about their brilliance (without any humor or insight as to how stupid the entire situation is).
• i've also been reading the daily uploads of "the lies of the sheriff evans", which is creeping into its final 20 chapters. it just landed a punchline that took like 75% of its 200+ chapter run to set up which was very satisfying. i found it pretty enjoyable. im looking forward to seeing it through to the end.
• i've been reading "dorohedoro" after devouring all there was of "dai dark". both kick insane amounts of ass. im only about 1/4 of the way through dorohedoro though so no spoilers! im wondering how on earth this is going to get stretched out for 150 more chapters.
• miri the cat sleeps and kneads in a pocket
• can you live an average life in skyrim?
• charborg destroys an entire nation in kenshi because they pissed him off

thanks for reading! hopefully i get this thing ive been working on forever done sometime before i die lol

sadly no doodles recently! i got sucked into tomodachi life and fruitless work in other things, so side-doodles didnt really manifest. here's some recommendations!

• you probably already know this, but the anime "witch hat atelier" has 3 episodes out now and it is beautiful. very faithful to the beloved manga, its well worth spending a your time watching if only for the visual feast. the choice to make the illustrations appear as pop-up books in the anime is pretty inspired.
• i made a soup recipe
• i wrote a recommendation for another anime that just started airing: "kujima: why sing when you can warble?"
• ronununu has released another strange silent hill f animation. i love these so much.
• i wrote a recommendation for a really incredible japanese webcomic "paperaQ". please read this. its so good.
• article about an art museum that was built like shit
• lately i've been really into "frankie's shelf", which reviews primarily thrillers and paperback fiction. very entertaining.

thank you for reading "a ghost story"! i barely scraped by my taxes this year (it seems like it kicked a lot of people's asses this year), so if you have a little spare change, consider donating to my patreon or leaving a tip on ko-fi.

hi everyone. im going to hold off on my recommendations this week because i drew a ton of doodles to share lol. next week i have a webcomic recommendation and i'll give me usual list of videos/articles/whatever :)

first off, i was commissioned by someone very kind on tumblr to draw valdo and voldo from soul caliber doing something or other. i decided that if they ever met, this is what they would do:

if you want a commission, you can email me at beasmygod@hotmail.com! this one was 30 dollars for 2 figures in black and white. but if you want to support me long term. you can donate to my patreon or my ko-fi :) you'd be helping me pay my taxes big time! and to stay afloat in this fucked up world lol.

here are some other doodles i made!

former friends:

inappropriate!:

and lastly, a scale of how good most of the cast is at cooking:

i had a busy week i guess. im also working on a print that's not a print. it will be available for patreon donors to download and do as they please with it when its done i think. still figuring out what to do with this stuff i've started making lol

no doodle this week related to the comic! i'm getting a commission done and working on something more complicated. then im going to try to get a handle on the backlog of stuff i need to work on. for real this time! i feel like im finally approaching the ability to start doing that again. here's my weekly recommendations:

for manga, i've been reading:

• "let's go karaoke!" and "let's go familyres!" by yama wayama, whose work "the star of girl's garden" i enjoy very, very much. "let's go karaoke!" and its sequel revolve around a reserved middle school (and later college) student who is kidnapped by a yakuza for after school singing lessons. if the yakuza loses the annual family karaoke contest, he will be forced to get a bad tattoo by the boss lol. the yakuza is friendly, but annoying while the middle schooler is, rightfully, terrified. very funny and understated work.
• i also read "Kujima Utaeba Ie Hororo", which is about a giant weird bird-man thing from russia that moves in with a family in japan for the winter. he wants to eat japanese food. everyone just sort of accepts the situation quickly and doesn't question it too much. very sweet and pretty funny. 
• lastly, ive been blazing through "the lies of the sheriff evans", which is a manga with a single joke (sheriff evans became a sheriff in the old west to get popular with women, and always fails) that has somehow not managed to run it into the ground after 100 of the 200 chapters ive read. who knows what the next 100 chapters hold but i have a feeling i know what it is lol. surprisingly funny considering the limits imposed by the simple premise.

in other things to read and watch:

• this lady in rhode island is being sued because she was feeding turkey vultures in her backyard by throwing whole chickens out there and attracting a shit ton of rats
• ive been watching dungeon chill's videos as i work on things. here's one about a weird vampire game that was only released in japan for the ps1. very well made videos about relatively niche video games that usually did not get ported over to the west. the one about sweet home was also very interesting, especially in how it relates to the movie it was based on.
• charborg and criken are vampires in the sims, badly.
• buffalo chicken wings for the chinese palate 
• dark souls 2 poop only run

enjoy! uhh please subscribe to the patreon, which is 10 comics ahead of the main page here. or donate through ko-fi if you can manage. thank you very much for your support, for reading, and for following me through this story im slowly trying to carve out.

unfortunately spent a lot of this week lying on the couch going "oooerrggg orrrrggg" but i started a little side drawing for fun and worked on my stupid, never-ending bloodborne project thing. here's some things i watched/read this week!

• i played the tomodachi life demo and am unfortunately looking forward to playing it when it comes out. im kind of a sucker for the stupid shit tomodachi life allows you to indulge in. i think it will be fun to make my little comic freaks come alive in that game.
• tokyo tv has been uploading official subtitled episodes of "the solitary gourmet", which was originally a great manga about a salary man who is kind of a misanthrope. he eats food and enjoys his solo life. very simple premise and execution. the tv show is a delightful take on the premise. great for if you just like seeing good food.
• the only true crime youtuber worth watching, matt orchard, released another video demonstrating how circumstantial evidence can be used to win trials.
• triple canopy, an arts magazine, released an article entitled "black block": â€œDo we think that being truly critical of a black artist’s work would be, in some way, racist?” An essay on the false choice between boosterism and marginalization, and the assumptions that keep critics from seeing clearly". a really fascinating overview of a complicated problem in arts.
• red letter media asks: what are these movies?! 
• a previously discussed artist, salmonrowe, released a zine about their sweet little cat on their patreon :)
• uni the cat turned 6 years old!
• i made a post about what i consider to be "influential webcomics" on tumblr!

here's this week's doodle and the context required to understand it lol.

thank you! if you enjoy the work consider sharing it, tricking people into reading it, donating to patreon or ko-fi to help keep the lights on, and so on. thank you all very much for reading, commenting, and being generally lovely. see ya next week!

i can't even begin to tell you how happy i was to not have to draw this office again after this.....at least for now lol.

uhhh things i watched/read are kind of limited this week! i need to do a better job of writing them down so i don't forget.

• the ringo award nominations are up for grabs. i highly suggest reading and nominating the ever excellent webcomic "rigby, WI", which is one of my currently running comics right now!
• i remembered that there was a sequel to the excellent manga "thermae romae" today and read what there is available to read right now. it's still great. its about an ancient roman bathhouse architect who slips through time to modern day japan semi-frequently to get new ideas for his bathhouses from onsens lol. one of the most recent chapters had him witness capybaras sitting in a hot spring. great stuff.
• i watched charborg play kenshi. he repeatedly tricked the AI into enslaving itself lol.
• i learned about "pillars of eternity" from warlockcracy. kinda want to play it now. if you like CRPGs he's worth checking out for an interesting way of discussing this genre of games for turbo nerds.

oh right...i did draw something this week lol. 

this was a commission! if you want a commission, well. email me at beasmygod@hotmail.com and it'll probably be between 20-50 bucks unless its really crazy. but why not. times is tough. otherwise you can donate at patreon or ko-fi to help keep the lights on. thank you to everyone who reads and supports me because man are we about to go through it here in america lol. your generosity is extremely appreciated and knowing you take time to read my comic means a lot to me. thanks guys. hang in there.

what a week, huh everyone. anyway, here's some stuff i've been doing/reading/watching/whatever

• a comic artist i enjoy very much who goes by the username "salmonrowe" has released many pay-what-you-want comics that are well worth your time. 
• i watched many of logan from earth's gmod exploration videos this week and learned a lot about what people are doing in that strange and oft overlooked creative field. very interesting stuff out there.
• mandalore reviews "the sinking city", a game i had completely forgotted about until he covered it. and my first reaction was "oh right! this buggy mess" lol.
• here's a thread highlighting funny moments from my re-read of "one day outing foreman", which i love so much. everyone should read it lol
• surprisingly funny ASMR guy i found lol. you know how it is, looking up asmr on youtube looking for weird gems. this is def one.
• my friend's webcomic "doomsday, my dear" is at its VERY DRAMATIC climax!!!! i've said this before but this is one of the comics that got me into reading webcomics. 100% worth the read!!

and here's some stuff i drew this week!

first comic:

second comic:

some related images:

hi! i dont have much stuff to share this week in the usual format. i was uncommonly busy this week! however, i do have this list of manga i read that i posted on tumblr (some really, really good ones in here!) and some bonus comics i drew! :D

crack-shipping (?) bonus:

bonus bonus:

and, uh, this!

not much to report on right now! if i have more time this week (not likely!) i'd like to take a third crack at that final panel. im just not wringing the pathos i need out of my limited abilities here.

• i've been watching this guy go through random, old gmod maps, which has been a really interesting look into a community i haven't even thought about much. there's a lot of creativity present in these little exercises and challenges people subject themselves to. its interesting whats out there!
• my husband's recipe for clam chowder
• my cat sat on my pants
• one of the best free-to-host comic websites, comicfury, is in need of financial assistance to keep up with the demands of running a website. <- this is the forum post explaining the situation and how to help!

  for a minimum of $5 a month, you can help keep comicfury afloat and keep webcomics free for all :) comicfury has existed for so many years that its hard to imagine a world without it! please consider donating if only for the sake of keeping webcomics alive. i have no relationship to comicfury outside of a respectful awe of their ethos and mission. they are essential to keeping comics online in the hands of people free of corporate influences. please help keep it that way.

  here's something i drew this week :)

hi! as of typing this, my internet is DEAD for unknown reasons and im using adam's hot spot to quickly post this. here's my list of links:

• a video detailing the insane person who was weirdly determined to be the only baki translator despite not even being able to speak japanese.
• a gengar print i made :)
• as for manga i've been reading, i got really into "Nikubami Honegishimi", which has both a very pleasant, distinctive art style and an intriguing plot, but two very fun, diametrically opposed protagonists. i've also gone back to re-reading umezu's "fourteen", because its just frankly one of my favorite comics ever made in the entire world lol. its like being on a rollercoaster that won't stop whipping you around back and forth and coming to sudden stops only to rapidly start up again.

here's a doodle i forgot to post! maxine and valdo briefly putting aside their difference to engage in a -stealing operation.

hi! i've been chipping away at patreon comics and some side work. am i finally at a place where i can juggle more than one thing at a time...? sort of! def getting there though :D that's a big relief. here's some crap i've been looking at for the past week while juggling irl things.

• i've been purposefully reading some terrible manga lately to laugh at it, but i have to give a special shout out to both "dead word puzzle" and "the quiz" for being uniquely atrocious in a b-movie kind of way. there's gore in these, since they're horror manga, but that's about it.
• i also read some pretty good manga: "fuan no tane*" (the newest incarnation of the "fuan no tane" series), "ura baito" and "100 ghost stories that will lead to my own death". all also horror manga, but executed much, much better lol. because these are actually good, you will have to hunt for them on your own.
• tomato bets on the lives of babies
• charborg asks his chat to debate whether or not they could live if they were the size of a peanut.
• i participated in hourly comics day

here's a drawing of valdo and his kid i made after i realized i used to draw jeremy with the 5 o clock shadow lol

hello and thank you for your patience! i now have 9 days of buffer which is an amount im much more comfortable with. we are back on a saturday schedule! i am slowly moving toward a 2x a week schedule again. at a snail's pace but i am growing faster as i continue to recover from various ailments and problems and learn to deal with my shifting life. thank you again for coming back to read "a ghost story", to leave comments i can read and get all flustered over, and try to trick people you know into reading it.

breaks to build up buffer will hopefully become and more and more infrequent. remember that you can get normal updates via patreon for as little as a dollar a month. every little bit helps. thanks for reading and see you again next week :)

i've been threatening to do this for a while, but next month for sure i will have to take the month off to replenish the buffer. the holidays, being sick like 3 months in a row on and off, and other nonsense took a huge bit out of it. although i held into it for a while after several months where it was like on and off and on and off. im getting back on the horse just at a snails pace. it doesn't help that im trying to be more ambitious with things as well lol. well. thank you for being patient as things have been so weird as of late. things are likely to get more uneven as i shift into a new phase of my life that will demand a lot of my time. but im going to bring this comic to the table as often as i can :) its just a matter of learning how to budget my time more responsibly and "get better" both in terms of health and speed at which i can produce pages.

barely any links this week due to the holidays:

• tomato plays a hunting game and sucks very bad at it
• how many trees are there in skyrim?
• this lady eats unbelievably expensive sushi courses that are kind of interesting. im living vicariously through her lol
• adam and i watched "hard boiled" tonight on tubi and it was a great john woo action flick lol. baby pee saves the day and thats not a joke

thank you for reading. see you next week! my goal for next year is to get fast enough to get back to the 2x a week schedule!

still recovering from this eternal cold or whatever it is, but finally on the tail end of it. science should really do something about that thing. i spent too much time quickly trying to teach myself how to draw a semi-convicing action pose for this and have to thank the kindness of people online for their guiding hands on this. bodies in motion are not intuitive to me -_-

i have some links! maybe they are interesting to you...maybe not:

• this tumblr creates album covers with gmod. they update sporadically but i like it when they do :)
• you can vote on whether or not you've read a webcomic on this tumblr. you can vote for A Ghost Story here!
• comix cleric is running a kickstarter to pay for their webcomic management system software. their page goes into why this kind of thing is wanted and needed for people looking to self-host their comics!
• i completely forgot to post this but i wrote a review/analysis of a comic i received from a comics mailing club called "can you find alissa may?" in the hopes that it can reach its target audience!
• "homemade gatorade", an animation by carter amelia davis is going to the sundance film festival!
• what's actually illegal in GTA 5?

and to end with, here's a tutorial from tumblr on how to draw lucy:

you'll never believe it but i was sick yet again lol. this time from some crud like strep or something. miserable affair. finally on the mend but i spent the majority of the week flitting in and out of consciousness while waking myself up with my own snoring and zooted on theraflu. ill be crunching a page for patreon this week and i'll have fun links for you next week. this week i just didnt do much except sit on the couch and let cats walk back and forth on me. thank you for reading! sorry for being so sickly.

im bushed! stayed up late to finish the page that's on patreon right now by the time this posts. here's some links:

• a very relaxing look at an expensive sushi course in japan
• something wicked, a fellow who makes sculptures of marginalia creatures and demons from paintings, creates a "rainbow bastard" with the help of his friend
• tomato plays the new mdickie game and rolls possibly the best power ever lol. try to guess what super power it is before watching this.
• not really a link but the HBO series by comedian tim robinson "the chair company" ended last weekend and it was hysterical. there's going to be a season 2 but i appreciate them answering none of my questions. great ride.

thank you for reading! i am so tired. time to fall asleep......after i draw a few more eyes.

i have a very short list of links this week bc i am EXHAUSTED from the holiday weekend and wrapping up a page tonight! have you noticed all news articles are about miserable shit. if they were cool i would post them but instead they're not. i saw a post yesterday that reminded me of the articles from 2022 about the dad with ALS who had surgery for a brain implant and used it to ask for a beer lol. i wish all news was like that.

• a video about bizarre russian politics, video games, and quake. this guy's entire channel is great if you love CRPGs
• grassy valley: a comic about three bunnies that use a computer presumably in the 90s to surf the web together. very pleasant without being cloying. author/artist has an incredible knack for writing types of internet guys.
• artist michael kupperman is having an incredible sale on prints and original art. too good to pass up imo
• ive been posting this everywhere but i love this video of tomato screaming at the backyard baseball children because they play like children. 
• mr. magpie's harmless card game: a little bit balatro, a little bit inscryption, this game is still in development but has a lot of potential. i watched a guy play it on youtube last night and found it very intriguing. simple, but complicated once you get under the hood.
• soup recipe i made yesterday because i felt under the weather. used the leftover thanksgiving turkey and it was so good i ate the whole pot. worth going out and getting wild rice for.

that's all! here's an image i made explaining how it feels when my cat sleeps on me at night

thank you very much for your continued support and readership of "a ghost story"! what a stressful year lol

comic making has been a slow and wretched process this week. hopefully i will have a new page on patreon by today but ive been chipping away at trying to portray action and bodies in movement and its been a real....struggle. lol. i got some great help though, so hopefully i'll be able to power through the remainder of the page tomorrow. ooerg. arggg.

here's a very short collection of links/things worth looking at:

• a great video about art's purpose in the world today that kept me from completely losing it while throwing myself against the art wall over and over again this week. a big relief to hear an articulation of feelings i have about art in a coherent manner lol.
• a cookie recipe i was sent:

• an anon ask i was sent, with a response:

thank you! see you next week! thank you as always for reading "a ghost story"!

no news! and a very sparse links update today. i have not been sick, for a change. still slow at making comics, though. but when im not suffering from some kind of mysterious ailment, i at least feel like i can get back on my feet. also i have a lot of stuff around the house to figure out and clean up that got left behind as i languished pathetically for years lol. i gotta get it together!!! i want my 2x a week schedule back!! i feel like its just going to be a while until i can make "better" comics faster.

• miri the cat is 5!!!!!!!! it seems like just yesterday she was a little fuzzball in a gutter
• i've been playing "look outside" in my downtime and have been really, really enjoying it. the sprite art is really remarkable. sprite art in general is one of those mediums that retain a sort of magic to me in that the creation process still involves some tricks that are hard for me to wrap my head around. it's a real masterclass in using your limited space effectively. very fun little game. i think im about halfway through and it keeps throwing new weird shit at me lol. if you like the grotesque, you will enjoy it.
• lazygamereviewer, a vintage computer/computer accessory collector looks at some very strange mice. i've always liked this guy's timbre and shtick. very mellow and even handed. entertaining and a good eye for kitsch.
• tomato and his stupid friends throw each other off cliffs for 4 hours. shockingly entertain VOD to throw on while you're doing something boring lol

hey thanks for reading. i recognize the story moves slow as a consequence of the slower update schedule and also because i made it slow lol. i feel like im not hitting some standard i want to constantly so i appreciate those who continue to read, or those who pledge to read when there's a good point to catch up lol. you can help me pay my taxes and keep A Ghost Story running on patreon. thanks for your patience.