1. WELCOME
2. TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN 1-9 GRAPHIC NOVEL
3. E-MAIL SCAM
4. CALENDAR SCAM
5. JAPANESE BOOTLEG
1. WELCOME
Welcome to the first Shannon Wheeler Newsletter. I’ll post cartoons, news about current projects, reflections on past projects, plans for future projects, and I’ll share an anecdote or two. Not to brag, but holy crap, I know some talented people and I’m excited to share their work, too.
2. TOO MUCH COFFEE MAN 1-9 GRAPHIC NOVEL
My Kickstarter was a success. If you missed it, the digital version is available on my Etsy shop for $10. It comes with a coupon for $10 off the subsequent physical copy.
The book is now printing. I opted for a local printer, heavy paper, and spot U/V (shiny parts on the cover, the blue above). More money but a better product. Working local has other benefits. In the middle of the night I woke up worrying about the width of the black on the spine. When I contacted the printer they said they’d already fixed it. I was off by 1/16.” Printing locally means less profit but a better book. And I’m 1/16” closer to being a happier human being.
This project was not without hiccups. For no reason my credit card was declined when I tried to pay the printer. It turns out that any unusual charge triggers a card freeze. Scams are everywhere.
2. E-MAIL SCAM
Late one night I got an e-mail offering me a well paying job to create a set of cartoons for a Covid presentation. It was similar to a job I’d recently finished for the Northwest Down Syndrome Association. I’d drawn the virus, shots, doctors’ offices. It would be a snap. Two days later, a check came for the full amount. It sounded too good be true. Uh-oh. The name on the check was a church in Kentucky. Hmmm. There was no contract. True to form, a couple days later, they said their sponsor backed out and they needed me to Fedex a refund in the form of a cashier’s check. They generously offered a thousand dollars for my trouble. Full stop, red light. I told them I was waiting for their check to clear. They implored me to hurry. I balked. They threatened legal action. Their check bounced and things got ridiculous. They accused me of lying - they claimed I had cashed the check and they had a cousin in the FBI and an uncle at the IRS. My local Portland Police recommended blocking all texts and emails. Instead, I texted the scammer, “Please don’t turn me over to the authorities!” They got more threatening. I used more excuses. Flat tires, a snowstorm, and a bank not having money order forms. It became a ritual for me. Every morning began with new threats and I’d respond with more ridiculous excuses. Eventually the scammer told me to never contact them again. It was fun while it lasted. I thought it was done until another cartoonist reached out. The scammer had used my name to offer them work. Same scam. In the following weeks, other cartoonists reached out to me with the same lament. Eventually it died out. The scammer moved on. It was fun while it lasted.
3. CALENDAR SCAM
Last year I bought a calendar of National Park Monsters. Great idea. Great art. Fuzzy printing. Even the text was unfinished. Complaints to the company got no response. It turns out they’d stolen digital files and made a bootleg calendar. It was the comments in the social media posts that alerted me to this ugly truth. My take away is, always read the comments first. The artist, Matthew Buchholz, had been ripped off. This year I bought an authentic calendar. Same images but high resolution. This next year will be a higher quality repeat of last year. Hopefully this is a metaphor that things will be the same, but better.
5. JAPANESE BOOTLEG
In the new TMCM 1-9 book I deconstruct the joke behind the image of the Japanese Bootleg. The punchline is that eventually in 2002 a Japanese company licensed the image and sold the shirt there.
Your pal,
Shannon Wheeler
Cartoonist
Launching a Shannon Wheeler Substack
Great newsletter, Shannon!
I love the part about the scammers. I used to be an office manager at a graphic design firm and would get phone calls every so often from a company asking me to “confirm” an order for toner. Of course I never placed the order. I called these scammers “Office Supply Pirates” . They would call businesses in hope of getting someone that didn’t know any better and get them to confirm a non-existent order that they would charge triple the normal price for.
I felt it was my duty to keep them on the phone as long as possible to keep them from calling other people to scam. I’d tell them I need to check the model number on the copier before I could confirm the order (“due to the toner fiasco that happened the last time. I didn’t want that to happen again!”) I would then put them on hold and do some work for about 5 minutes and then would pick up the phone, out of breath and apologize that I had a sudden emergency I had to deal with and I needed a few more minutes to get to the copier. Put them on hold and do some more work. I would do this until I could tell they were going to give up on me. I would then tell them i had the model number and wanted them to double check it against their records. Because of the previous problem, I really needed them to write this down. I would then give them the model number, U-R-A Cr00k.
I won if they hung up and I got bonus points if I could get them to swear at me!
So glad you have created this space.