It’s finished.
With the files out the door to the printer’s I can announce production on Mixtape #5 and Mixtape Vol. 1 is – to borrow movie biz terms – “a wrap”.
It’s oddly fitting that April 2014, a month that sees the first Pixies album since 1991, also sees the conclusion of the first arc in the saga. But, Mixtape #5 is indeed finished and indeed closes out the story begun in April 2012. I’ve always been a believer that for a story to have resonance, it has to actually end. And Mixtape #5 represents an ending of sorts. It concludes the journey our characters have been on the past five stories, bringing them together just in time to start pulling them apart.
So the question you’re asking is probably something along the lines of: “is it over?”
Believe me once you read this one you’ll believe it is actually The End.
Probably because this issue in particular deals with death, with losing a person you expected to see every day, and takes us back to that basement and that box of magazines, T-shirts and mixtapes unearthed on page one of issue one. We also learn the identity of just whose box of memorabilia it is.
While much of this issue will read like an end to the series rest assured it’s not – scripting has already commenced on the second arc, which takes our mains through their final months of High School and living in the same town together. College and real life beckon, and where these characters all end up will be surprising (at least I hope so). Volume 1, which I’ve titled “Left of the Dial”, is really the first act of a much larger story. We’ve set our characters up and their central dilemma – how do we remain friends when it seems like the entire world is trying to pull us apart – is the one that carries us through the second volume “Daydream Nation”, into the third, and beyond.
Speaking of surprises, we’ve included one (or several, depending on how you look at it) in this last issue of the first arc. Hopefully it’ll make you want to go back and re-read the first four issues (or check them out if you haven’t already).
Mixtape #5 will be available April 30 thru Indy Planet, and this website. Digital versions of issues 1-4 are available on iTunes right now, with #5 arriving same day as the print version. There’ll hopefully be a flurry of activity on the Mixtape front. Media copies of the newest issue have already gone out, and some interviews on the series and its future are in the planning.
Thanks again to all of you for your support of Mixtape. Believe me a black and white comic about teenagers and feelings isn’t the easiest of sells so I appreciate every person who’s read it and will hopefully continue to read it. It’s certainly been the most rewarding project of my career, and believe me when I say it’s just getting started.