Vampire Girl Merchandise and More Now Available

 Now that the spooky season is upon us, this seems as good a time as ever to promote and exploit The Joseph Scarbrough Universe's resident spook with a new collection of VAMPIRE GIRL merchandise on our new Redbubble store!

https://www.redbubble.com/people/jscarbrough/shop?artistUserName=JScarbrough&collections=3727996&iaCode=all-departments&sortOrder=relevant

At the moment, we have t-shirts, wall posters, notebooks, pins, and even coffee mugs available for purchase, but Redbubble has a number of other products and items to choose from, so if there may be other pieces of VAMPIRE GIRL merchandise you might like to see or may be interested in, you can make a special request!

Of course, there's also still plenty of Steve D'Monster merchandise available as well, get yours today!

http://jscarbrough.redbubble.com

In addition to this new collection of Redbubble VAMPIRE GIRL merchandise, I have also come to a rather tough and difficult decision to part with the artwork from the original VAMPIRE GIRL Production Bible - this includes all of the original penciled and inked pages that made up the 17 strips from 2011 and 2012, as well as all of the individual panels that were drawn for the additional 35 strips of the second season from 2022 and 2023; other official VAMPIRE GIRL artwork is also being offered for sale as well.

 

 

These are being offered directly from me, and you have a few different options to choose from; if you are interested in owning a piece of official original VAMPIRE GIRL artwork, you can reach out and contact me.

New Redbubble Shop!

Steve D'Monster shirts now available!

That's right folks, you can now get your own official Scarbrough merchandise from our new Redbubble shop! For the time being, there is a line of Steve D'Monster apparel and products available, from t-shirts to tank tops, from throw pillows to tin buttons, you can now own a piece of official Steve gear, with more to come soon!

Drop by sometime and buy sometime!

jscarbrough.redbubble.com

Levana in Analysis

Have you ever taken the time to read up on literal character studies? To see how a fictional character is dissected and given a psychological examination just to see what's beneath their surface and makes them tick? They can often be quite a fascinating look into deeper depths of the character that we may otherwise not give much thought to within the context or even subtext of the character that the character is featured in . . . and as it turns out, Levana has just been put through the wringer of such analysis.

Drunk Duck/The Duck Webcomics contributor, Tantz_Aerine, has a semi-regular feature in which she takes a character from a comic hosted on their site, and puts that character through an analysis that consists of four basic examinations: one based on the character's overall design, one that evaluates whether or not the character has any sort of mental and/or emotional issues, how dimensional the character is, and how the character's environment has any sort of effect on their overall personality. Imagine my delight when I saw on Drunk Duck's homepage that Levana had been featured in the spotlight of such an analysis! Tantz has done a thorough job in dissecting and analysizing Levana's character, and from many different angles, ranging from behavioral to psychological, and from comedic to dramatic perspectives . . . and I was very much impressed with her studies of Levana character, and what she had to write about in terms of Levana as a character, and the journey that she has gone through over the course of the VAMPIRE GIRL comic (most during its inaugural run from 2011 to 2012) - she very much managed to figure Levana out to a tee, and it offered me so much joy and satisfaction to see a work of mine written about like this. Of course, as always, I also have to give credit where credit is due, because Levana's journey would not have been what it is had it not been for contributions and input from Marie Kerns throughout the creative process; Tantz mentions throughout her analysis that VAMPIRE GIRL as a whole balances both comedic and dramatic tones throughout, and while the comedic tone was mostly me, it was definitely Marie who added the dash of drama to the story and Levana's overall journey, and I can't thank her enough because of that.

You can read Tantz's analysis and studies of Levana, her character, and even what sort of afflictions she could be diagnosed with because of her unique set of problems for yourself:
https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2023/may/26/character-analysis-levana-from-vampire-girl/

Becoming a COVID Statistic

That's right, I ended up becoming a statistic . . . despite having been both vaccinated and boosted, I ended up testing positive for COVID, which means I'm among the number of people across the globe who have ended up with what the disease experts have been calling "Breakthrough Cases." How is that even possible? Well, one thing to keep in mind is that even Dr. Anthony Fauci had said before that vaccinations and boosters do not guarantee that anybody will be completely, 100% immune from COVID-19 or COVID-related illnesses, rather that the vaccines and boosters can greatly reduce the severity of the symptoms associated with COVID should you test positive. Even so, I am glad that that was the case, because even though I ended up coming down with a mild case of COVID, the symptoms I did have were definitely enough to really do a number on me. 

So, despite being vaccinated and boosted, how did I even manage to come down with COVID in the first place? Well, as it turns out, I ended up getting COVID from Toto and Journey. Okay, that's not to say that either of these two bands are the ones who gave me COVID, but I did start feeling sick after attending a concert of theirs back in February. It started out with little concern at first: I had a dry cough . . . that's not too unusual for me, especially around this time of year with changes in seasons and weather . . . but as my coughing became far more persistent and even a little violent, and I began to experience a drop in my strength and energy, a trip to the doctor's office and two tests later revealed that my flu test came back negative, but my COVID test came back positive. Immediately, medication was prescribed that I had to start, one medicine specifically to fight COVID itself, and another to try to settle my cough.

The fatigue was bad enough, but the worst symptom that I dealt with was "COVID Throat"; it was the most horrendous sore throat I had ever endured in my entire life - everytime I tried to swallow anything, it was a new adventure in pain, and of course, I needed to try to stay hydrated, but even drinking water was highly excruciating. It also didn't help that it turned out that I was also diagnosed with a case of acute bronchitis on top of COVID, as that only contributed to my increasingly incessant and violent cough . . . which eventually also turned excessively bloody as well. So yeah, despite the need to try to stay hydrated and take my medication, COVID Throat made it nearly impossible to stay on top of either of these things.

All things considered though, it really could have been a lot worse: had I not been vaccinated or boosted, I could very well have ended up in ICU, hooked up to respirators, and fighting for my life, which thankfully, I was able to avoid all of that, so in the grand scheme of things, a lack of energy, a painful sore throat, and coughing up blood were small potatoes in comparison. . . . But, this is also a wakeup call that, despite what normalcy we may still be trying to return to, COVID is still alive and well, and doesn't appear to be going anywhere any time soon.

VAMPIRE GIRL: The Second Season Begins October 19

 

Some of you may be able to remember back when I had written about the 10th anniversary of my webcomic miniseries VAMPIRE GIRL that although I had wrapped up Levana's story and arc in those initial seventeen strips, that I did have an idea for a continuation of a second season of sorts, but I had never bothered following through with it for a couple of different reasons, one of which was because it didn't seem necessary to follow up on after happily ever after . . . that, and because when VAMPIRE GIRL was in its original run on Smack Jeeves in 2011 and 2012, nobody read it - and that in and of itself was due to a couple of different reasons, but now is not the time to discuss this.

Now is the time for the announcement that since January 2021, I have finally been working on the second season of VAMPIRE GIRL, which will begin next week, October 19, and run weekly on The Duck Webcomics . . . unfortunately, it was going to be hosted by the premiere site for webcomics, ComicFury, but that fell apart, and I lost that deal (so please disregard the references to ComicFury in the cover art).

Why finally work on this project now after all these years later? Well, for one thing, the idea continued to rattle around in the back of my mind all these years, and never necessarily left me . . . plus, for whatever reason, there seems to have been something of a renewed interest in Levana and VAMPIRE GIRL in the last couple of years or so, even I'm not sure why. Taking this into consideration, now seemed like a good time to revisit the idea of the second season, and just do it! It's been a long and somewhat tiring process (as opposed to the first season, which was clearly a rush job), but I have a little bit of confidence that the second season will actually do relatively well - especially since the reruns of the first season having been on The Duck (and briefly on ComicFury before I got banned) have gotten much more attention and retention than the original run of the comic ever did on Smack Jeeves!

In closing, if you are interested in seeing more of Levana and some of her friends, like Laura, Dr. Charmin, and the Wizard, or are curious to see if being mortal lives up to her expectations, or even what sort of consequences becoming mortal may have on her life, then be sure to read VAMPIRE GIRL: The Second Season, every Wednesday on The Duck!

www.theduckwebcomics.com/Vampire_Girl