A Half-Assed New Year's Wrap-Up!

Reminiscence & Resolutions

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Ryan Stegman: Alright, so, we're reflecting on the past year of KLC Press...

Donny Cates: Ryan. Ryan. Are you ever, ever going to let me do our intro?

Ryan: No.

Donny: Jesus. Welcome to the Half-Assed Substack Podcast. I'm Ryan. That's Donny. Whatever the fuck our names are. And yeah, as Ryan was so eloquently jumping into, because he's so excited... It's a new year, or it's the end of the year, and the beginning of a new year. And we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the year that has been the year of the Kids Love Chains. Our first year.

Ryan: The year of Kids Love Chains, the year of Leto... I think that we've really done a great job of covering all things Jared Leto.

Donny: Yeah, and there's gonna be a video coming out where we talk exclusively... It might be out by the time this is out.

Ryan: I don't know who we did it for or why, or what it is either. It happened. We were interviewed about the new Morbius movie and how excited we are, which we are VERY excited.

Donny: Very excited about it. Yeah, the last time that I saw Ryan this year, we were invited by the fine folks at Sony to go to a Venom event, a pop-up Venom event for the release of the Blu-ray, I believe, or the home release. And it was what they call a "rage room", where they give you a baseball bat, and a hammer and stuff and they just let you loose, and they made it look like Eddie's apartment. And so we were in there just like, smashing bottles and stuff. And then, we're in these, like, jumpsuits that say Eddie Brock on them and stuff, which they graciously gave us. I still have mine.

Ryan: I know, I should be wearing that today.

Donny: We should be. And then yeah, they put us in front of these cameras and mic us up and all these kinds of things, and then they exclusively ask us about Morbius.

Ryan: (Laughs)

Donny: Just, so weird. So yeah, other than that amazing experience... Ryan, what do you think? How do you think this whole "Kids Love Chains" thing has gone?

Ryan: I think we're doing the best Substack, if not the only Substack that ever existed.

Donny: Right.

Ryan: It's by far the best, though. I mean, I've seen what the other jokers are doing. And you got Chip Zdarsky just biting everything we do. I don't want to attack anybody else because I don't think they would think it was as funny as Chip would. But, uh, I think we've given some great content and we plan on giving even more great content and especially Vanish this coming year, so...

Donny: That's right, it's coming this year. Yeah, 2022 is going to be the year of you guys finally getting a chance to hold physical copies of all these books that you've been seeing all these sneak peeks of. It's coming, I think, if we haven't said it already, I think we're looking at like a summer, kind of a block release, of like maybe June, July, August or July, August, September, something like that for all the titles that we've done. So that's going to be great. I think it's been great. It's been a very stressful year. We all kind of thought like, "oh, well if we can just get through 2020, everything will be okay". And then 2021 was just as equally stressful because COVID was over just enough for us to be put back on the road, and go to shows and stuff, and so it was crazy. I'm happy for it to be over, I--

Ryan: Is it over? I wasn't aware of that.

Donny: No, the year.

Ryan: Oh. (Laughs)

Donny: I'm happy that 2021 is over, looking forward to 2022, and looking forward to providing more content and cool shit for you guys. Give us your feedback in the comments here, and tell us what you've enjoyed of this past year. And what you want to see more of, or less of.

Ryan: What's your New Year's resolution for KLC? Mine is to get more shredded and look great on camera. I mean, I'm pretty shredded already, but...

Donny: You're pretty shredded already. Mine is to do less work. That's been my New Year's resolution for about a decade running now. Slow down, do less stuff, have less panic attacks. You know. Yeah, but I will say this: The thing I am very proud of this last year is: 2021 saw the last of me on Twitter. I'm very, very happy to be off--

Ryan: Your resolution is to stay off Twitter.

Donny: To stay off of it. Yeah.

Ryan: I think mine is to find new ways to bring in new people to what I think is an awesome community on Substack. I'm now being serious. I was joking all along, saying stupid things. But seriously, I feel like we've started to create a real community. And I'm really enjoying that. And the livestreams and all that are great. And the people that show up and we talk to kind of feel like they're actual friends now. And I'd like to have more of that. So, hopefully we can continue to make people feel comfortable enough to do that, to join us and chat with us and win drawings and all that stuff.

Donny: Yeah. And I think that next year, Ryan and I have some really cool plans.

Ryan: Oh, that's true. Yeah.

Donny: We're gonna be doing a lot more of that kind of stuff, of interacting with you guys. And we have a lot of plans. But I think the one that I'm the most excited about is that we are, you know, we're in the prelim kind of talks about it right now, but at a Comic Con in the near future, next year, probably to celebrate the physical release of all of our books, we're gonna throw a big Kids Love Chains party. So you can only get into this party if you're signed up and you have a QR code, and there'll be all kinds of cool things. So look forward to that. In the meantime, we'll be here. And I hope you had a great year, and we'll see you then!

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Kids Love Chains. And we love you.