Wednesday, December 16, 2009

The New Stumblebum Studios... Again

Welcome to the homebase of the New Stumblebum Studios! Which is really just me, Paul Milligan, and my art (and whatever other rambling nonsense I decide to post here... you'll see).

Stumblebum Studios was formed in 2004 by me, A.C. Hall, Dana Place and Kevin Steele as a way to promote our creative endeavors. Over the next few years we self-published close to a dozen different comics (including four huge and awesome anthologies), recruited even more wonderfully artistic friends, began a weekly e-zine with articles and reviews covering all forms of entertainment and made a bit of a name for ourselves on the Texas con circuit. And then one day it all just kind of came to an end. With a whimper, rather than a bang.

See, just before the end we went through a massive reorganization. We invited a whole bunch of new talent to join the team, revamped our website and were getting primed for the next big step. Except we never really took it. We just sort of floundered with no real plan or direction to follow. I blame myself for that... I was so caught up with reinventing our look and our roster that it never really occurred to me that, hey maybe we should have some goals too. And slowly but surely we drifted apart until there wasn't really a Stumblebum Studios anymore, just a website that promised news that was never to come.

And for the most part I think we were cool with that, because most of us had become too busy to notice anyway. I like to think it was because the plan worked. That the original goal of showcasing our talent and getting our names out there was fulfilled. We were busy. We had projects. It was time to move on. We just didn't want to say goodbye is all. So much so that for years afterward Dana and I would constantly talk about what to do with Stumblebum. But it never materialized into anything. And so Stumblebum continued to sit quitely in it's little corner of the web, like a kid that not only gets picked last for dodgeball but when he is picked is done so grudglingly and is quickly knocked out of the game by his own teammates. Probably a red-headed kid.

But then people were constantly telling me, "You need to get a website." "You need to have more presence online." "You should do something with the Stumblebum name." "You smell. Take a shower." And so I took a shower and I thought, I used to have a website, didn't I? An awesome one? One that people really loved? What the hell ever happened to it?

Well you're looking at it. Yeah I know, it's just me this time and I was never really the best part of Stumblebum to begin with, but a world without Stumblebum Studios in it... is that a world you really want to live in? I'm doing this for you, see? Enjoy my art and make the world a better place! Stumblebum is back, baby! This time for good. (Or at least until the computers become intelligent, revolt and we end up in a never-ending war with the machines for the future of the planet. They have robots that eat corpses to power themselves for God's sake! It's true! We're all doomed!)

4 comments:

Cal Slayton said...

Glad to see this.

Paul Milligan said...

Thanks Cal! Hey, I owe you a sketch. Are you going to be at the Dallas Comic Con in January?

Art Love said...

God, do I know how all this goes. Ghostwerks definitely went through everything you wrote about here, especially using the time and creative space we had to reorganize, promote, change the website- all while realizing "Hey, have we made a funny book in a while?"

Good luck, Paul. You always seem to be involved in something cool. Keep it up, man.

An PS- you're recommendation (like a million years ago) sold me. I've become a Patrick Gleason fan. Dude is consistently bold. I dig it.

-M Lagocki

Cal Slayton said...

Yeah, I'll be there. If I don;t get you;re done before the show, I'll do it at the show. But I'm aiming on doing it before.