One Last Scare

“Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.”
- David Cronenburg

And done!

62 film recommendations, 31 posts, 42 illustrations, and just over 30,000 words written in about a month. What an absurd thing to do. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading along. I’ve really enjoyed doing it. It’s been such a delight to really throw myself into it and have an excuse to revisit all these movies. 

The idea was to talk about some of my personal favourite horror films that I don’t see as many people talking about - and using them as a way of talking about particular trends in horror. Or at least what attracts me to the genre. An extended, 31 day love letter to horror.

But I also enjoy a challenge like this. I draw a lot for my job but don’t get to write as much as I’d like. Making myself write something about each film every day was good for me this month. It’s good to exercise that part of my brain. I like trying to organise my thoughts and feelings about the culture that I respond to - and articulating those thoughts so they make sense to someone else. 

Unfriended

As I’ve hinted at in my posts about Cam and We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, I’ve been trying to reorient myself on the internet by a) having healthier relationships with apps and my phone in general, and b) limiting my social media use. Part of that has been helped by Musk’s deleterious takeover of Twitter, part of it is helped by the ways the algorithms/capitalism are making the experience worse, and part of it is helped by how there hasn’t seemed to be a single place where everyone has agreed to congregate (yet).

But the problem with my lack of engagement has led to the algorithm punishing me. My reach on all these sites feels diminished - especially on Twitter. While this may sound ludicrous, that has an impact. That hellsite was where I’d built a modest enough following to get my work out there to the people who cared and it would even lead to art directors directly commissioning me.

A part of setting up this substack was to see if I could start from scratch a little and find my audience without being at the whims of the Most Divorced Man on the Internet. But it’s not about Musk alone. It’s about having a little bit of agency as a comic artist, illustrator and writer who doesn’t want to play the algorithm game. Or worry about whichever site has decided to throttle posts with links in, or shadow-ban you. Substack may well become a site that is untenable to be on for some reason, but at least I can move to a different newsletter service with the same subscribers. That feels more sustainable and within my control. 

All of this is a preamble to really discuss:

The Future of Grave Offerings

I’d like to keep this going.

Obviously I can’t sustain a daily post throughout the year, but what I’d like to do is maybe try and make space for an illustrated horror movie review once a month. That seems doable on top of my other work.

Alongside that I’d like to use it as a way to talk about new work, events I’ll be at, and any other related news. The general newsletter things. 

I also thought it would be a nice place to occasionally highlight some older work that people may have missed, talk about my process when I’m starting new projects, and recommend things I’ve liked by other people.

If that sounds like a newsletter you’d be interested in, and you’ve not yet subscribed:
[a subscribe button should be below but cheeky ol’ substack may have replaced it with an “upgrade to paid” button if you’re already subscribed]

When October 2024 rolls around, I may have another try at doing a daily thing like this again. Maybe with more guest posts? Maybe weekly instead of daily?

However, if you signed up for this month and aren’t keen on getting future newsletters from me every 2-4 weeks, I won’t be offended if you unsubscribe!

It Follows

All my anti-social media talk notwithstanding, if you’ve been enjoying Grave Offerings and want to find me elsewhere, I’m @tomhumberstone on most platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, TikTok, Letterboxd…) and you can find the rest of my work at tomhumberstone.com.

All 62 films recommended this month are on this Letterboxd list.

If you enjoyed following along this month, and think it’s worth something, you can:

1. Buy something from my online shop.
2. Buy me a coffee on ko-fi.
3. Sign up to a paid subscription of this substack.
4. Alternatively, just spreading the word and sharing this substack is helpful!

My Comics

If you’d like to hear what I have to say about AI art, automation and the misunderstood history of the Luddites, you can read this comic I made for The Nib. It’s not not horror.

And if you’re interested in reading something longer-form by me, my graphic novel Suzanne: The Jazz Age Goddess of Tennis came out last year. It’s about Suzanne Lenglen, a tennis player from the 1920s who drank cognac during matches, had a 179 match winning streak, and changed the way women dressed in the 20th century.

While calling it a horror would be a stretch, I think there’s a lot of body horror in the book. It’s about how we can mentally and physically put ourselves through hell for the approval and love of others. To me, that’s scary.

Grave Offering Zine

I drew everything this month as illustrations that could be printed in a two colour risograph zine. I thought I might look into collecting a 20 page zine of my favourite illustrations/posts at some point. Would this be something you’d be interested in? Let me know in the comments or email me at tomhumberstone at gmail dot com. Tell me what your favourite posts were this month. Maybe you’d prefer some limited prints?

For now, here are some:

Bonus Illustrations

One of my all-time favourite horror films is Scream but it felt far too well-known to write about with my vaguely-defined idea of picking underseen/obscure gems. Maybe one day in the future I’ll do a post about this modern classic - I feel like I have a lot to say about it and its sequels. Regardless, I’m glad I got to throw a Kevin Williamson rec in with The Faculty. I also did this illustration in the run-up to Grave Offerings because I wanted to draw Sidney Prescott even if I didn’t write about the film:

This was an unused illustration for Caveat that just wasn’t working for me:

An unused illustration for Dead Man’s Curve. It didn’t feel like it captured Matthew Lillard’s likeness enough:

An illustration for Assault on Precinct 13 that I ended up not using in my first post about Green Room:

And that’s Grave Offerings wrapped for October 2023!

Long live Grave Offerings.

If you’ve been reading and enjoying Grave Offerings and want to share it with friends, that would be hugely appreciated!