Don't get it twisted
SCHOOL REUNION • LAUREN MARSHALL • 10,000+ DEVIL'S TOILET ORDERS
Last weekend I attended my 30-year school reunion. Yeah, I’m old. In the lead up to the event, I found myself quite anxious. One of the stupider reasons – “people will see how old I’ve gotten” – which of course was the case for eeeeverybody there.
It turned out to be quite a magical night. As you look upon the super-confident Greek Adonis I’ve become, it’s hard to imagine I was once an awkward dork. I swear I was you guys! Well, my biggest takeaway from the reunion was that almost everyone had a twisted impression of themselves. The hot girls thought they were ugly, the cool dudes thought themselves geeks, and eeeeveryone has baggage they’ve held onto from high school.
The go-to question for everybody in every conversation is always “What do you do for work now?” At the 10-year reunion, I was an unemployed, broke musician. 20-year, a mechanical draftsmen. This time my answer was “I’m an illustrator”, accompanied by a mime-like drawing gesture – in case they were unsure what holding a pencil looked like. It’s a job title that always has follow-up questions, some of which can be condescending - “Can you make any money doing that?”. But on this night – my job title brought a smile to people’s faces and, in turn, to mine. "Really? Oh man! You were always drawing in school, like allllways!”
One last takeaway, that we all know but sometimes need to be reminded of – everybody goes through shit. Everybody has struggles. All of us are doing the best we can to survive life. And kindness will win every time.
LAUREN MARSHALL’S SKETCH BIZ
Chuffed to be Lauren’s first guest on her new show – Sketch Biz. We’ve shared the screen a bunch of times, but this was the first time we’ve gone one-on-one. I truly believe Lauren is one of the best working illustrators in Australia right now. She excels at pin-ups and covers, as well as sequential art. She can also deliver the goods both digitally and traditionally, which is no easy feat.
On the show, we talk about the biz of making art. Being creative as a job and doing so while being a parent. Give it a like and subscribe to validate Lauren's choice in having me on.
CELEBRATING 10,000+ ORDERS OF THE DEVIL’S TOILET
Following my appearance on Lauren’s new show, I got a bunch of nice messages and saw some nice comments about our conversation. So I was pretty chuffed to see that it led to a few comic book sales from my website. But, on the show, we had talked mainly about Sluggish, so I was surprised to get a PayPal notification about The Devil’s Toilet #1 (Digital) being ordered. And then again the next day. Then the following day, two more. Maybe somewhere on the internet, someone is spreading the good word… right? I thought.
So I went to my webstore to bask in the shopping spree, to see over 10,000 orders for The Devil’s Toilet. All but 5 of which failed, thankfully. Upon googling, it’s apparently some sort of bot attack chargeback scam. I removed The Devil’s Toilet only to have orders for Vamoose go nuts.
So on one hand, I’ve had to shut down my webstore for a while. On the other – is there an award for Most Ordered Australian Indie-Comic of the Month or something?
PRE-ORDER FREE MONKEYS
Free Monkeys by Rob Lisle and Ben Sullivan comes out September 1st, 2025 and is available for pre-order right now at brick-and-mortar book shops and the following webstores…
Thanks for reading, folks. See you on the next one.
Spedsy