This Month @ SOLRAD: November 2020

Today is the day – Election Day is here in the United States, and soon we figure out how deep the rabbit hole goes. The time is simultaneously hopeful, scary, and weird, a combination sure to lead to both indigestion and migraines in equal measure.

As the publisher of SOLRAD, I’m very pleased with the work we’ve been able to accomplish so far this year. In our first year of publication, we’ve done a massive amount of work, and I think the results speak for themselves.

In order to help us meet our funding goals for the rest of the year and beyond, we’ve started up a Patreon page:

One of the challenges we’ve run into this year is the continued reallocation of grant funding towards living expense-related issues. 12.6 million people are still out of work, and nearly five million people in the USA are approaching long-term joblessness over the next month – the arts have been hit hard, and we recognize that raising funds to write comics criticism through grants has gotten significantly harder over the past 8 months.

If you like what we’re doing here at SOLRAD, please pitch in. We’ve got our first set of pledge tiers up, and we’re considering additional physical rewards soon.

We spent the last few weeks publishing some amazing work, but we’ll be taking a quick breather in the middle of the week this week to collect our thoughts. As Alton Brown so eloquently stated – “No matter what happens tomorrow, we’ll still have tiny chocolate donuts.” Depending on the results of this election, I might be eating a few boxes of those.

Later this month we’ll have a new piece from Ken Eppstein about the role of NGOs in the battle for a living wage for cartoonists whose main income comes from page rates. We’ll also have more reviews, long form criticism, and a variety of interviews and features for you to enjoy.

I’ll see you on the other side.

Alex Hoffman, Publisher