The Hopeless Vendetta launched some years ago as an accompaniment to the Hopeless Maine webcomic. We had time to spare, and the idea of a weekly newspaper for the Island of Hopeless Maine, running alongside the webcomic, appealed. Of course with the webcomic uploading at a rate of 2 pages a week, the time didn’t always match up very well, but no one minded.

A thing happened, and it was a thing we had not anticipated. People started joining in. They gave themselves Hopeless-style names and characters and started posting comments. Island life expanded, and we were very excited about this.

Then work pressures, and life pressures, and living on a boat and having no electricity or internet most of the time pressures took over, and that extra post and extra drawing per week became too difficult, and we left the Hopeless Vendetta to languish.

Times change… the webcomic has gone, we’re published by Sloth Comics, and the Hopeless Vendetta stirs and shifts in a way that may cause some people to think of dead and dreaming elder gods…

One of the things that hasn’t changed, is the way in which people are moved to create Hopeless things of their own. It’s one of the things I love most about this project – I came in as a collaborator, so I know all too well the lure of the island, its strange inhabitants and moody possibilities. I love it that other people respond as I did and want to get involved.

And so, the Vendetta shuffles a bit, dust falls from its ungainly form. Life, or something that resembles life, returns.

We’re going to be using this space once again to explore the life of Hopeless Maine beyond the graphic novel series. We’re throwing it open to anyone who wants to share – art, music, stories, poems, cosplay, creations of any sort and shape that capture something of life on a haunted, troubled sort of island in a cold, cold sea.

Wave your tentacles if you want to get involved.