Buggin' Out With Summer Dale
And the conclusion to last week's Bugtime Story...
We’ve got a jam-packed newsletter this week with two of our “mostly popular” segments!
SCOTT WILKE: Hey, Summer! You know, you’re the first artist I’ve interviewed on this series. Super stoked to pick your brain! Before we jump into it, tell our audience real quick where they might have seen your work in the past.
SUMMER DALE: Hey, there. Glad for the opportunity to do this. Since the beginning of my freelancing career I’ve been doing fantasy art, mostly for independent comics, so you might have seen my work on the covers of stuff for fantasy author Dani Julian and I did stuff for Scattered Comics but jumped in pretty early with Bad Bug Media and that’s been the bulk of my commission work thus far.
SCOTT: And what a bulk it is! Your covers are some of my favorite Bad Bug pieces! So, tell us the weirdest thing about you. Don’t worry, we don’t judge. Not out loud at least…
SUMMER: Gross story: I bit my tongue off in a trampoline accident when I was like 12 and stayed awake several days holding it on until it mended. “Why didn’t you go to the hospital, Summer?” Yeah, we weren’t really that type of family. I think the only time my mother took me to a hospital was to get a tetanus shot after a 3” nail went through the middle of my foot.
SCOTT: I have to bite my tongue all the time with Mike, so I have almost been in the same boat! Tell us more about your younger days. What was little Summer like? What was she into? Was she a troublemaker? Honor roll?
SUMMER: Well, you already know I’m accident prone. Besides that, I was a quiet, shy, clepto, sociopathic imp. I did horribly in school due to adhd and a lack of consistency in every aspect of my life. Being neurodivergent in a rough childhood stripped me of a lot of potentially cute personality traits which took a while to crawl out from. But with heart, passion and my belief that better things were ahead, I think I turned out alright. Always striving for self improvement.
SCOTT: Love that! So, while we’re hanging out in the past, tell us at what point you decided you wanted to be an artist. What was the first drawing where you said to yourself…”Hey, I’m good at this.”
SUMMER: This brings up a warm memory of my mother who played a lot of racquetball when I was very young. In 3rd grade I started drawing pretty ladies all the time and while I was at the courts with her I noticed there were these chalky rocks lying around everywhere and at least two full racquetball courts worth of blank canvas! So I used the rocks to draw a giant mermaid with a curling tail while mom played. I put the finishing touches on the scales and flowing hair while she got done kicking her partner's ass (as she was wont to do). We both looked upon my expansive work and knew. This was only the beginning.
SCOTT: That’s an awesome story, such humble beginnings! Let’s talk about everyone’s favorite thing…failures! I love seeing how people have rebounded from them to find success. Tell us about a failure in your life, how did you bounce back?
SUMMER: I’ll stick with the art theme here and tell about the time I gave up on it. From about the age of 22 to 35 I maybe did one doodle a year. At 22 I was still struggling with adhd and couldn’t break through the barrier of learning how to study something according to my strengths. My focus was garbage and I had a breakdown in the middle of my living room floor after several attempts to render a drawing that didn’t satisfy me. I basically gave up and vowed to move away from art.
One day in my 35th? 34th? year I had an epiphany after stumbling upon YouTube videos of digital art; I don’t have to spend millions on art supplies, I don’t have to stress over every stroke because “undo button”, I don’t have to get distracted and never return to a piece because I had to wait for paint or ink to dry. I can do digital!
The rest is history.
SCOTT: Nice! I’m so glad you didn’t give up! I’ve always been immediately drawn to your art. (Pun intended.) You have this really unique style that is vivid, haunting, and macabre (in the best ways possible). I gotta know, how did you land on this style? Who are your inspirations?
SUMMER: Long answer: Again, I’ll start from the beginning. Time Life books had this series called the Enchanted World and I found a few at my local thrift shop. Although I didn’t have the focus to read them (and man, I wish I still had them as I’m an avid reader now!) the illustrations blew my mind. So many different styles of fantasy art that inspired me and fueled me were thrown together in those magical books. I’ll find them again someday.
Nowadays I try not to look at a lot of other people's work for inspo. I have a weird thing about not wanting to be influenced by others. It’s ok to pick things up here and there but I have a tendency, since my style is pretty fluid and changes from one piece to the next, to take on too much of others' styles when I’m still trying so desperately to find my own. Neurotic nonsense? Maybe :)
Short answer: Boris Vallejo was big for me as a kid and Jamie Hewlett later on. I can kinda see my work as an amalgamation of those two if I squint really hard.
SCOTT: That all really does inform your work! So, what’s a typical creative session look like for you? Do you need a specific chair? What’s the room temp need to be? When’s your magic hour? Set the stage for us.
SUMMER: The only constant during work hours is that I need to be reclining while I work because of Ankylosing Spondylitis which is a genetic degenerative inflammatory disease. “Oh swell, more fun answers” Sorry lol but, yeah, I need that and I need a light weight art monitor so I use the iPad right now with Procreate app. The iPad is very mobile so I can work anytime of the day no matter where I am.
SCOTT: Let’s jump ahead in time to when they open the Summer Dale art exhibit. You’re your own curator, tell us which piece of yours is getting center stage? Which one are you relegating to be restroom art?
SUMMER: A few years back I did a personal piece of a Valkyrie taking the arm of the spirit of a fallen soldier and it’s by far my front runner.
There is no restroom art lol I’d say the stuff I created early on but it only makes sense that those pieces wouldn’t be as good.
SCOTT: Creating is hard and can easily lead to burn out. We’ve all felt it from time to time. What keeps you going? What keeps you putting a pen to paper (or drawing tablet)?
SUMMER: My desperate need for attention? lol I like to stay in the shadows but someone needs to peek in at me once in a while. I love to create for myself and to entertain others.
SCOTT: Samesies! So, what does Summer nerd out on these days? Shows, podcasts, books…give us some recommendations to check out!
SUMMER: Believe it or not, I’m not really into the fantasy genre, even though that’s my entire career, but I do make exceptions for juicy stuff that DOES catch my attention like the author Hugh Howey. His Silo Trilogy was captivating. My favorite reading material is historical non-fiction and the suggestion list for that would be way too long so I’ll just recommend one author: Hampton Sides
Shows: I’d say 95% of the shows I watch are British, mostly panel shows. I love QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, Escape to the Country, any comedy by Graham Linehan.
Still trying to find a good podcast that I can hang on to.
SCOTT: Our good friend, Editor John (John MacLeod) likes for me to ask this question with every guest. What is the Summer Dale Drawing Session Soundtrack?
SUMMER: I put on everything from Vivaldi to Slipknot but it all gets sucked into the void of laser focused concentration. I finish up a session and I realize that an entire album has played and I didn’t hear any of it because I was too “in the zone”.
SCOTT: Eclectic taste. I love it. Appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat! Why don’t you take this time to tell everyone what you got going on right now. What’s in the pipeline for Summer Dale?
SUMMER: If you’ve read this far, congratulations, you’re now probably crying or at least grimacing a bit at the things you’ve read. I apologize.
I just moved from Tennessee to Florida to be with new people in a brand new situation so I don’t really have much going on in the way of work, other than doing some loose pieces for an online rgb game called the Contract, but I’m sure Bad Bug will load my schedule book soon. Right, BB? ………right?
And now, for the exciting conclusion to last week’s story that you voted on:
After a split second of pondering my options, I finally decided to ignore my instinct to secure the bag as it were and go check on the bodies first. I had to know if I was losing my mind, or if this new drug was actually making the dead rise.
An eerie silence had fallen over the warehouse again, which I suppose was a good sign—better than hearing those fuckers shambling around moaning in any case. I reloaded my Glock and crept through the shadows that pooled outside the range of the hanging shop lights. I didn’t know if these things—the thought of calling them zombies made me feel like some kind of nerdy bitch—even operated by sight, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
I pushed my way through the hanging tarp that served as the makeshift wall, behind which the three dead bodies would hopefully still be lying. The light swish of the tarp was answered by a guttural rattle from a rotting throat. I dropped to a crouch and started shooting in the direction of the noise before I even saw what was making it.
My ears were ringing making the clatter of spent shells seem like a distant clang. On the floor in front of me were two of the three bodies. Both were now leaking that same black shit as before. One of them, likely the source of the sound, was looking up at me with a slightly lifted head. It was grinding its teeth and trying to lift itself into a seated position. I adjusted my aim and squeezed the trigger one more time, snapping the head back to the floor with a squelch.
“Cocksucker,” I whispered.
Standing, I walked through the mess of fluids until I was standing over the other corpse. It was still immobile, eyes staring at me with the lifeless gaze of a corpse. Then the eyes seemed to shift, and the mouth went slack. Without hesitating I pulled the trigger again and it was a corpse once more.
“That leaves one more to deal with and the drugs are mine,” I thought.
I pushed my way back through the tarp and started heading back to the table with all of the product. Whatever this shit was, I wasn’t going to leave it behind for some other junkie to stumble onto. So far, there was no sign of my final obstacle.
At the table I noticed a duffel bag stashed beside one of the legs. I grabbed the bag and brushed everything inside together. Then I—carefully this time—pulled the needle from my pocket and tossed it in with the rest of the score. That was when I noticed my finger throbbing again for the first time. There was a slight tingling across the rest of my body that I had until now attributed to adrenaline, but now I worried that it was something else. Looking closer, I could see that the spot where the needle had pricked my finger was black.
“Jesus Christ,” I said aloud. “Too loud,” I thought.
The last motherfucker came barreling out of the darkness toward, arms outstretched like he planned to hug me to death. Without giving my finger a second thought I slung the duffel over my arm and raised my pistol.
Click!
“Fuck!” I exclaimed.
I had wasted my clip when I started blindly firing at the others. I dropped my Glock and swung the duffel bag at the last moment, knocking the stumbling thing to floor. I could hear the sound of the glass inside breaking against the things heard. I swallowed hard and ran back out towards the safety of the door. When I reached the outside I saw the silhouette of the last corpse shambling toward me. I slammed the door and jumped back into my car, throwing the now wet bag onto the seat beside me and I got the fuck out of there.
By now the body high was taking over. Everywhere tingled and my limbs felt sluggish. No worries, I could still make it somewhere to wait this out, I was a pro at driving while fucked up.
“Not even zombies can shtop me,” I slurred.
Then I was flying through my windshield and skidding along the glass and pavement, most of my skin peeling off in what felt like slow motion. Somewhere between the car and the road I registered that I had in fact slammed into another car. Lying there as the world started to grow dark around me, I noticed that my blood was black instead of red.
THANK YOU FOR READING. TUNE IN FOR OUR NEXT INSTALLMENT OF BUGTIME STORIES LATER THIS MONTH.
Coming Soon to Kickstarter
The sugar-coated clusterfuck of a murder mystery continues in this second issue writer Scott Wilke (Periwinkle, Bobby Jo) and Kit Wallis (High on Life, Good Boy).
The excitingly erotic tale of two women discovering their superpowers as well as their lust for each other continues in this second issue, written by the massively successful writing team of Kat Calamia and Phil Falco from Lifeline Comics, the brains behind some of the sexiest series on Kickstarter like Beast and Snow, Witches of Oz, and Nightmare in Wonderland.
That’s it for this week! If you enjoyed these segments, sound off in the comments!
Bugs and Kisses,
Kris, Scott, and the Bad Bug Crew
