There’s a lot of pressure for creative folks to relentlessly present a positive face towards the world, particularly online where the dynamics of social media seem to be fueled by stacking up endless victory after endless victory. Things are always going great, except when they’re doing even better than that, and to hint at anything other than a glowing appraisal of one’s current projects, life events, or future prospects is strictly verboten, and a potential red flag to keeping anyone interested in your career.

Personally, I think there’s a lot more to learn from failure than success. I also feel that the habit of hiding failures from the public eye makes it very difficult for creators to relate to each other, to say nothing of the audiences who are engaging with our work. We are all human beings, we are all subject to the capriciousness of fate, and we all make mistakes. Keeping that side of our lives locked in a black box makes us less than what we fully are, and cuts us off from genuine human connection, which is the exact opposite of what most of us are trying to achieve when we put our stories out there in the world.

With that in mind, I’m starting the first newsletter of 2025 with some bad news: the Dead Air graphic novel is going on indefinite hiatus. In the simplest terms, Joe hasn’t recovered to the point where he is capable of working on this project. Healing isn’t a linear process, and there’s no clear timeline as to when he might be at that point again. As a result, it’s not possible to plan out when, or if, the series will resume.

Dead Air was a story I was extremely excited about. In addition to investing huge amounts of time and money over several years of my life, I poured my entire heart into this project, and it was something that had a deep, personal meaning to me as I examined a time and place that was formative to my personal development, in many ways setting me on the course to where my life is now. To think that no one will know how the story ends is crushing, to say the least.

I’m sorry I can’t tell you when, or if, there will be a new issue of Dead Air on the way. All of you have been incredible in your support for this book, and now we’re pulling the rug out from underneath you. Not finishing a project is not at all my style, nor is it the standard I hold myself to as a professional. 

But here’s the thing: that’s how life can be. None of us are immune to the completely random tragedies or obstacles that can be thrown in our way at a moment’s notice. Neither Joe nor Angela could have predicted the extreme health challenges they are facing together during a very difficult year. On my side, there’s absolutely no way I could have planned for this eventuality, either, no matter how careful I was about managing the project.

That’s one of the points I hope to make here. Sometimes, you take the loss. Sometimes, everything goes wrong, and puts you into a spin you can’t pull out of. This is something that I don’t see discussed all that often online, where plastic smiles stretched over tense, sweaty faces is much more the norm, regardless of what’s going on in the background.

This is one of those times, and yeah, it sucks. I feel awful, and it’s been really hard for me to come to terms with this reality. But I’d much rather share this loss with you than pretend everything is ok, that this hasn’t affected me, and that I see a path forward for the book. Because I’m human, and you’re human, and this only works if that’s the level on which we engage with each other. If we’re able to acknowledge the imperfect world we live in, and do our best to navigate it without hiding behind a wall of pretense.