A new job.

At the end of 2025, I was given the opportunity to join the IDW editorial team as Assistant Editor for IDW Dark, where I’m working on horror comics. It’s been great so far, being able to learn more about publishing for the direct market, and you can check out the start of my IDW career with A Quiet Place: Storm Warning (with Phil Hester, Ryan Kelly, Lee Loughridge, & Heather Antos), issue #1 is out now. A bunch of other incredible things are in the works, but I can’t talk about them yet.

A new anthology.

Last week I launched Hallowed Ground with Deathline Comics on Kickstarter. It’s a 100+ page horror comic anthology about the afterlife, from an all LGBTQIA+ creative team. Edited and curated by me, and published by the grace of the Lifeline Comics team (Kat and Phil).

You can check out more about the creators and their stories rooted in religious trauma here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deathline/afterlife1

The last anthology with open submissions I worked on (Witching Season) had over 530 entries, 10 story slots were for creators we invited to participate, and we planned to pick 10 additional stories to fill out the book. In the end, we ended up going to print with 28 stories because of the amount of incredible stories that were submitted. I’m so happy with the book we made, it really all came down to curation and putting together a collection that made sense as a single entity.

If you can do math even a little bit (I really can’t, I’ve moved on mostly) but 530-18… thats a lot rejection emails we had to send out…A LOT of people who had great ideas, wonderful artwork, and important things to say…we had to say “no thanks”, not everyone accepted it graciously, and (to make it all about me lol) I genuinely disliked disappointing 500+ people all at once. That’s part of the job, sure, but I decided it was a piece of freelance editing that I could do without.

Which leads me to my next point…

Hallowed Ground is my last indie anthology.

RIP
Color of Always (2021-2022)
Sharp Wit and the Company of Women (2022)
Sapphic Pulp (2023)
When I Was Young (2023-2024)
The Comic Shop (2025)
Witching Season (2025)
Hallowed Ground (2026)

I’ve outlasted most, no regrets (eh, maybe some regrets honestly).

I hope that if you read this far, you’ll consider supporting my last try at the indie anthology jump quest. I really want to end on a win, for me and for the incredible team of creators who have put so much of themselves into their stories.

I am writing an intro story with art from Jessica Fong, can’t wait for everyone to read it!

See y’all in like 4-5 months or something.
-Michele

"In everything that you do, pause and ask yourself if death is a dreadful thing because it deprives you of this." - Marcus Aurelius

Here’s a look at the cover art for Hallowed Ground:

Fell Hound and I would love it if you would consider nominating our book FUNeral Home for some Ringo Awards. Hop over to www.RingoAwards.com to make that happen.