The Canister X Transmission: The Very Long Year Six - Collected Newsletters

By A.P. Fuchs

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Running from June 2020 to March 2024, The Canister X Transmission was sent via email to readers worldwide.

Readers received news straight from A.P. Fuchs's bunker studio at Axiom-man Central that was meant to engage, entertain, and have some fun.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coscom Entertainment
• Release date: Jun 29, 2024
• ISBN: 9781927339947

A.P. Fuchs

A.P. Fuchs is a working writer and illustrator, and the author of more than forty books. He is most widely known for his superhero epic, The Axiom-man Saga, and his shoot 'em up zombie trilogy, Undead World. He's been an independent publisher since 2004 and has played every role in the publishing business, including-but not limited to-editor, book interior and cover designer, publisher, and marketer. His spectrum of work includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry, comics, essays, and articles. He also writes a weekly newsletter called The Canister X Transmission, which you can subscribe to here.He can be found on most social networks sharing information. Join his Patreon journey for serial novels, essays, behind-the-scenes stuff, and more at www.patreon.com/apfuchs His YouTube channel is YouTube.com/@apfuchsWriter and illustrator A.P. Fuchs makes his home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, smack dab in the middle of North America.

Book preview

Introduction

Brief letter

Work log

Blog Headlines

Content notice(s) – Pertaining to any new on-line content released during the week.

Release notice(s) – (When new stuff and/or re-released stuff comes out; this feature might not be in every issue.)

Sign off

Simple. To the point. And something I haven’t done in previous issues.

I hope as you read the collected Year Six that you are entertained, informed, and discover and learn new things along the way.

Thank you, reader, for joining me.

Onward.

- A.P. Fuchs

Axiom-man Central, MB

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Issue Two Hundred-sixty-one – June 20, 2020

Hello, and welcome to Year Six of THE CANISTER X TRANSMISSION, a weekly newsletter for my readers and our little place to unwind after a bustling week.

A few issues back, I discussed the new format for Year Six. Please note it was meant to be a loose skeleton upon which to build so it might get tweaked along the way.

It’s been a good while since I had an itemized format for this newsletter. A fixed format was how it originally started and we did that for a good while before switching to a weekly letter. At some point during The Long Year Five, format started to creep in again and we just ran with it. Year Six is similar because it has similar features, but it’s still presented in a new way.

Hope you like it.

It’s been busy here at Axiom-man Central. We have a lot on the go and I’m doing my best to keep everything organized and maintained. Sometimes things go smoothly, sometimes not, but either way, we work and try our best because that’s all anyone can do anyway.

We’re in a season where I’m juggling both the past and present and sometimes looking to the future.

Explained:

PROJECT REBUILD is about the past and bringing my backlist into the 21st century. This is also the final piece to PROJECT REBIRTH.

FREDRIKUS and Patreon are about the present and releasing work online.

PROJECT COBALT is about the future and how I’ll be spending most of the remainder of my career.

Presently, work-wise, we’re primarily spending our time on the past and present. Sometimes PROJECT COBALT stuff occurs, but our main focus is bringing things up to speed.

It’s been a long road filled with things working out and other things crashing but, alas, that is life and here we are. And this is the attitude we’ve been trying to adopt over here. That’s life. It isn’t scripted, it isn’t neat and tidy, it isn’t commercially packaged and tucked neatly into genres and pinpoints. If anything, life is a messy art project because we are always creating, rebuilding, tearing down, revising, adjusting and doing the best we can with what we have and what our resources allow. Anything beyond that, in my opinion, doesn’t fall in line with reality.

In short, let’s try our best and hope for the best.

Work log:

PROJECT REBUILD; FREDRIKUS.

This week at the Realm of Heroes and Monsters (the blog):

Status Report – 061520

On Think Days

Fredrikus Episode 4 Part 2 Now Online

Content notices:

This Friday saw part two of two of Episode 4 of FREDRIKUS. It also delivered the punchline. You can read the strip and previous episodes by going here.

Also, the general plan with FREDRIKUS as of this writing is to simply publish online until I have enough episodes completed to collect in print and eComic with the bonus material I have for it (the bonus material is presently airing in the Patreon version).

A new chapter of ZOMTROPOLIS also aired on Patreon this week and you can get access to the story and the entirety of the previous serial novel, GIGANTIGATOR DEATH MACHINE, by going here.

Thank you in advance if you become a patron. The arts biz was hit hard due to COVID-19 so Patreon is just one way to dampen the blow a bit.

And that’s it for this issue. Thank you for joining me for Year Six. We’ll see you next week.

A.P. Fuchs

Axiom-man Central, MB

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Issue Two Hundred-sixty-two – June 27, 2020

Greetings and welcome to this week’s edition of THE CANISTER X TRANSMISSION, where we’re taking a crash course in comics-making from the School of Hard Knocks (of which I already have my diploma in triplicate; might as well make it a quadruple).

That’s not to complain despite it be trying on multiple levels. See, one of the points of making FREDRIKUS besides telling a weird story about an anthropomorphic dog in a dystopian sci-fi world is to get myself up to speed on comic book construction. It’s been so long since I’ve made comics that I’ve forgotten some things. Yes, forgetting those things has brought some trials, but those trials have also taught me lessons old and new. This is all preparation for PROJECT COBALT, which, though I pick at it now and then, is more for 2021 and onward. I’d rather get the problematic stuff out of the way now than have to deal with it later.

In health news, it’s been a trying week. Looks like that upswing I had was short-lived, but I have a good doctor and am in good hands so here’s hoping for improvement as we continue forward down the Timeline of All Things.

As mentioned on the blog, we’ve initiated Mostly Broadcast Mode and are spending little—if any—time on the social feeds. Sometimes I find them too overwhelming with all the chatter, and while I realize chatter is what they’re for, past experience has taught me that too much chatter isn’t good for the ol’ mental health space and unplugging for a season to just focus on the work is a good thing.

Back to FREDRIKUS for a second. I need to issue a disclaimer. In short, one of the reasons for doing FREDRIKUS outside of a creative outlet was to make it a kind of public learning experience. I’m letting the cards fall where they may when it comes to this strip. I’m going against my perfectionist ideals and am learning to just make art. Sometimes art turns out pristine and sometimes it turns out messy. That’s not to say significant effort isn’t being put into this strip. Trust me, there’s effort, but I’m also (re)learning to have fun with comics and not turn each strip into a make-or-break ordeal. This is taking some time and some reprogramming of the mental headspace, but progress is being made, progress that, I hope, will pay off in the future when we get going on PROJECT COBALT.

Speaking of PROJECT COBALT, I’m looking for suggestions on well-crafted black and white comics. I’m not talking about collections put out by the majors which are basically uncolored pages. I’m talking about comics deliberately created in black and white, ideally ones that carry a decent amount of detail work. If you have any suggestions, please write in and let me know so I can investigate. I also encourage you to seek out good comics in the black and white realm. It’s an interesting reading experience when taking in the artwork of stories created specifically for black and white. The amount of care that usually shows through on each page demonstrates how the line work was used in lieu of color to create textures and shading. It’s a treat for the eyes and worth seeking after.

In YouTube news, one of the ideas I’ve been toying with off and on over the past long while is to do a weekly update video. The idea behind this is it would replace any update entries on the blog. Is this something that you would like or prefer? Sort of a weekly round-up of news, what’s going on, etc. It would take some planning on my end but could be viable if there’s enough interest. I’m always looking to streamline processes around here so this will require further thought.

Work log:

FREDRIKUS.

Blog Headlines at the Realm of Heroes and Monsters:

Various Bits from the Net – 062320

Status Report – 062520

Station Ident – Jun262020

Fredrikus Episode 5 is Live

Content notices:

A new episode of FREDRIKUS aired on Friday, this one more sentimental than previous episodes. You can read the strip here.

Uploaded a Behind-the-Scenes post to Patreon and revealed some details about a recent short story commission. You can check it out by becoming a Behind the Scenes patron here.

And that’s it for this week’s edition. Take care of yourselves. Stay safe. The world isn’t always a nice place to live in, but there is always a silver lining somewhere in the clouds and you don’t have to look too far to find a rainbow or two either. It’ll all be okay in the end and we know this because we’ve been here before in our own way and in our own time.

Nothing lasts forever.

See you in seven days.

A.P. Fuchs

Axiom-man Central, MB

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Issue Two Hundred-sixty-three – July 4, 2020

Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of THE CANISTER X TRANSMISSION.

Let’s get right to it.

On Monday I had a consultation with my web hoster because ever since they moved me to a new server back in February, I’ve been having issues with the blog—and later the Fredrikus site—whereby new entries weren’t showing up unless I manually cleared the cache (which totally defeats the point of automating posts). So, stressed to the nines because I’ve had my fill of being let down trying to get my media machine to work, I gave them a call and the guy implemented a fix that seems to have taken care of the problem. I do want to add a disclaimer to my readers by saying that if at some future point my sites get busted or things start acting up, just be patient while I work behind the scenes to get things going again, which may or may not include new site building for both the blog and the comic.

Remember when the Net used to be simple? You’d make content, post it, and leave it alone. I’m so a man out of time with all this.

That’s my gripe for the week. How was yours?

For the rest of the week, I made comics. My general working method for the webcomic is a three-day process (not full days because I have other things on my plate as well), and it goes like this: Day One - Scan the page, clean it up, add flat colors; Day Two - Add shading and textures to the page; Day Three - Final review then upload it to the Fredrikus site and Patreon and program it to air on the appropriate day (patrons of the FREDRIKUS tier get it a day early plus bonus pages; not bad for a buck). Rinse and repeat.

In my spare thinking time, I’ve been mentally planning my first solo-run Kickstarter for a secret project known only to my patrons on the Behind the Scenes tier on Patreon. I’ve never run a Kickstarter campaign on my own before—the last one for AXIOM-MAN/AURORAMAN: FROZEN STORM was run by Jeff Burton and I just helped out where I could—so it will be interesting to see how it goes once the time comes, which is a good ways off (possibly). However, I have an ace up my sleeve that I hope will make it a successful campaign.

For the blog, I want to remind you to write in and let me know if you’d like to see weekly update videos on the blog and YouTube channel. They are meant as my way of keeping you in the loop instead of text entries like Status Reports. Please let me know.

In the studio, we’re rejigging the white board since 2020 is a gong show and jobs fell through and some space has opened up. We’ve settled on a loose plan as to how we’re conducting our days with certain tasks for the AM and certain tasks for the PM. We’ll see how long that lasts. As well, if you’re a creator looking for an editor, book designer, cover artist, or someone to do spot illustrations, please keep me in mind. Just drop me a note and we’ll take it from there.

PROJECT REBUILD is coming along at a much