Zubby Newsletter #142: Thanks For All The Fish

Posted by Jim Zub on January 12, 2026 Leave a comment (0) Go to comments

Some New Year’s house cleaning-

I’m no longer on Twitter. Last week, I downloaded my archive and deactivated my account. If you used that platform to contact me or follow along with my work, check my website for other options or just reach out to me here instead.

Looking through 15 years worth of photos over the weekend was nostalgic and wistful. So many incredible memories and a reminder that I benefited from a distinct uptick in visibility and excitement around my work thanks to the chatter and shareability Twitter helped generate in its heyday. The enshittification algorithms (now focused on enforcing a walled garden, boosting illegal material, and echoing dangerous rhetoric) haven’t allowed for that kind of positive communication and empowerment for quite some time…and I knew that, but the sunk cost fallacy of sticking around and expecting the rot to be swept out finally became too much. Frankly, I’m thankful to lose what had become such a potent anchor of negativity pulling my brain down.

I’ve mentioned it several times, but having my own website and this newsletter as direct outlets has been key to maintaining a sane online presence capable of riding out rising and crashing tides of the internet. If someone gets this in their inbox and deletes it without even reading it, that’s okay – At least they chose that rather than systems out of their control deciding they should never see or be able to interact with it in the first place.

Some of you may be angry I left, other people may be angry I didn’t leave many months ago, and still others won’t give a damn at all – Welcome to the internet.

*A nerdy reference on the way out the door? Shocking, I know.*

Dude, You Didn’t Write That

Speaking of people not giving a damn, just before X-mas an old high school friend popped up on social media and announced that he’d finished his first novel. I didn’t know he had aspirations to write so it was surprising, but in that good way where you realize someone has other sides to them and it’s intriguing.

(But wait~)

Self published on Amazon, which makes sense since he has no previous creative track record. I grab the free Kindle preview. Two chapters. The cover looks grim, but also a bit weird…Weird…and uncredited…

Oh fuck, this is all AI-generated, isn’t it?

Deep sigh as I read the sample. Ironically, it’s dystopian, about enclaves of humanity holding on after technology simultaneously saved and damned the world. Plant life overtaking skyscrapers, people musing on technology VS nature, etc. etc.

Some of the sentences come across as ‘profound’ in isolation, but the telltale slop is too distracting to ignore. Paragraphs repeat concepts and visuals in subtly different ways, making you question whether you’re getting any new information. A deer glimpsed on abandoned streets 3-4 times because it’s symbolic.

Chapter Two is a different character in the same city with similar musings about how the world crumbled and the impact of technology on our shared humanity. Getting AI to slop about how it will wreck us would almost be witty if the whole thing wasn’t taken so seriously and sold as his genuine work.

The sentences are readable and in isolation there are some poetic turns of a phrase, but when the sample ended nothing stuck in my mind because it’s aggressively filling its word count rather than engaging me with a voice or anything unexpected.

Have I read worse? Absolutely.
Did I want more of this? Not even a bit.

No insight into my friend or maybe too much – He thinks this is what writing and creativity are all about and that’s just incredibly sad to me.

Ordering a pizza and calling yourself the chef.

And, showcasing how little value any of it has to him, that one post where he announced the novel is the only time he’s mentioned it 3 weeks after its debut. Some family and friends hit ‘Like’, a couple dozen people congratulated him, and that’s that.

Nothing earned, nothing gained.
Utterly hollow.

I still remember the excitement and fear I had when I launched my webcomic 25 years ago. In an instant, I can recall how proud I was holding my first book. I can close my eyes and remember some of the tales we created together at the gaming table because they were ridiculous, energetic…and real.

Dude, are you proud of this?

Creative projects aren’t just “content”. They’re time capsules, glimpses into who we are and what we value at that moment in time – Choices made and time spent.

Even the bad ones.
(Especially the bad ones.)

Congrats. This book is the milestone of your shitty shortcuts and stolen valor.

Genuinely Okay

Daaamn~ That’s two negative posts in a row there, Jim. You better stop typing in third person and mention some positive stuff!

Honestly? Like I mentioned in my Year in Review post, on a personal level I am doing well, and I’m not saying that in some kind of sarcastic tone while power stapling my arm to the table next to me or anything.

“I’m…fine! Everything is…FINE!”

I’m more thankful than ever to be where I’m at, working on projects I’m passionate about, and able to chart the course of this stuff with Stacy at my side. We’ve had a good couple weeks easing into the new year – Getting reorganized and back into the work groove. Appreciating what we have and trying not to endlessly get stuck on things we cannot control.

But Wait-

Why aren’t you mentioning Conan? You talk about Conan every single time!

Okay, self-imposed straw man. Calm down.

He’s fine. Readers seem happy with Scourge of the Serpent #4 and I’m happy they’re happy but, even more important than that, I’m satisfied with the work and excited for what comes next.

Doug Braithwaite sent in new inked artwork the other day and every page is soul-stirring stuff. His deep skill for posing, staging, light and shadow, and texture is just off the charts. I mean, look-

Doug turns ‘guy inspecting a campsite’ into a goddamn masterpiece!

FREE SCRIPT!

Speaking of the Cimmerian, I shook a bit of dust off my Patreon and have been updating it weekly since the holidays. In addition, my first post of 2026 is absolutely FREE so people can read the script for the CONAN: BATTLE OF THE BLACK STONE Prelude issue and get a feel for how plot-style scripting works.

My Patreon has an archive of over 300 scripts I’ve written for a variety of different comic publishers over the past 20+ years – Learn how comics are made for the price of a fancy coffee.