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News Archives: Orange Junk


Issue #023, and Happy Birthday to ME!

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sparklermag-june2015Hi Sparkler Fans,

Guess what?! It’s my birthday this month! And guess who just completely coincidentally made all my birthday wishes come true? Jen Lee Quick, that’s who! Returning to Off*Beat for a little encore, this month features a brand new chapter, set in the middle of Volume 3. Cut from the original release of the series, we thought it’d be fun to bring it out now, and give all you fans a taste of this little missing interlude. It’s so great to see the old gang back together again… I couldn’t have asked for a better present. *sob*  You get a little sample this week in Sparkler Monthly Issue #023, with the rest of the chapter going live on June 15th. Hooray!

In other Jen-Quick-related news, Gatesmith is going on a hiatus for a bit so that Jen can return to drawing Witch’s Quarry–we’ll be updating with new pages starting in August, so from now until then we’ll be blitzing through the chapters that were previously posted on Inkblazers and SmackJeeves, getting all you Sparkler readers caught up and ready for the latest and greatest! There’s lots of excitement in store, starting with a drakkun fight in Chapter 4! It’s awesome to see Vee in action doing knight-ly things…

And speaking of knights, things get a little rough for poor Wilfrid in Knights-Errant this month. Ouch…  Plus, the modeling competition reaches its final stage in Orange Junk, all hell breaks loose in Tokyo Demons, and the healing begins and gets very interrupted in Skyglass! Not to mention our Membership Exclusive of the month is a Sparkler School from Lianne, author and English-adaptation-expert extraordinaire about writing dialogue. You don’t want to miss it!

<3

The Sparkler Team



May the Fourth (er…Fifth…) Be With You!

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(I’m not just a manga nerd! I’m an all-around nerd! :-D )

Ah, I’m so excited about our May issue!! After folding the first 40 pages of Jennifer Doyle’s amazing political drama Knights-Errant into the magazine last month, we finally get to update with new pages!! I’m super psyched to be working with Jen, and even more psyched to bring you all the next phase of this fantastic story. And in honor of the new start, this month’s Member Exclusive is a behind-the-scenes podcast chat with me (and Becca) and Jen—listen in as we basically shoot the breeze for an hour, revealing both my internet lurker tendencies, and Jen and my respective overly-educated liberal arts backgrounds! Yesss…

But that’s not all we’ve got on the comics front. “For Peace” wraps up its mini-series run this month, with a lovely and charming conclusion (lady truckers are so sweet to each other!), and volume 1 of Windrose ends in a seriously epic, classic manga fashion! You’re going to love this amazing finish! Plus there’s a hilarious new installment of Orange Junk and the latest thrilling chapter of Skyglass.

So when do you get to read all this great stuff? Well, paid members can download either high-rez PDFs or ebook files of the full issue right away—not to mention get access to our Membership exclusive, which is the above-mentioned podcast with Jennifer Doyle. For folks reading for free, comics update either Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or Tuesday and Thursday, depending on the series. So you’ll get to read everything, it’ll just take a little patience!

The flip side is that this means we still have a bunch of amazing comics continuing from last month as well—from the eerie finale of the first volume of Gatesmith to the mind-blowing magical battle of Mahou Josei Chimaka, our ongoing comics are not to be missed! And that’s not even counting Lettera and Witch’s Quarry which are still going strong!

In other news, most of the Sparkler team, plus several Sparkler creators will all be at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival the weekend of May 10th and 11th—stop by, say hi, and pick up some Sparkler goodies, including print copies of The Ring of Saturn, hot off the presses! Exciting!!

In other, other news, we passed 200 members last week in our Membership Drive, but we’re still a long way from where we want to be in order to keep the company stable, let alone growing—the thing we need the most now, though, is just more awareness. So if you like what we do here, recommend us to a friend! Tell them about your favorite comic, get them to try out one of our awesome audio dramas, sit on them and read them the first chapter of one of our fabulous prose series… We hope they’ll find something that they love about Sparkler too, and then pass it along to the next future fan!

<3

The Sparkler Team



A little spring cleaning!

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sparkler-april2015Hi, Sparkler fans! We hope you enjoy our delightfully orange color this month to celebrate Orange Junk‘s debut in our magazine with the all-new Chapter 8, available in this month’s issue! And welcome to the digital pages of our magazine, Heldrad. <3

We figured it was time to do a little spring cleaning around here. Hope you like the new look of the site as much as we all do! This is the last in a long string of site updates that have been in progress since the start of this year—but I think we’re finally done for a while! Whew!

While the front page obviously looks different, hopefully your overall experience continues to be as good, if not better than ever. A lot of the changes were done behind the scenes, as we streamline the back end of the site to make maintenance easier, but the most important thing is that you readers can find what you’re looking for, enjoy it, and then share it with others!

But probably the most exciting thing about this update is that we wound up with nearly 100 pages of new comics for you all to enjoy in Issue #021 this month! No wonder I’m so tired. :) Between the end of Gatesmith vol. 1, the magical finale of “Mahou Josei Chimaka,” a silly and sexy Dead Endings side story (our Membership Exclusive of the month), the hilarious new chapter of Orange Junk, plus ongoing updates of Lettera and Witch’s Quarry, we’ve got more amazing comics than you can shake a mop at! And that’s not counting the finale of Dusk in Kalevia on the light novels front, plus a new installment of The Cat Lover’s Circumstances!

The best part, too, is that now we’re in countdown mode to new pages from Knights-Errant as well! Our next issue goes up on May 4th, and in addition to our regular stellar line-up, we’ll be starting the new and ongoing serialization of Jennifer Doyle’s dark historical drama. I, for one, am super stoked!

Anyway, we’re gearing up to head into Year 3 of the magazine this summer, and we couldn’t have made it this far without your enthusiastic support. We hope that you continue to enjoy what our teams are creating, and that you help spread the word about Sparkler and the great work our artists and writers have been producing! This can’t happen without you all, and we’re eager to start Year 3 off strong!

-Lillian (head of comics)



Issue 21 coming soon…

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Hello, beloved readers!

We hope you’ve enjoyed the last six weeks, as we announced the bulk of our spring comics line-up and released a ton of free back pages on our site. For those of you who haven’t been around, these are the series that have joined us in 2015:

Witch’s Quarry by Jen Lee Quick (formerly of Inkblazers)
Orange Junk by Heldrad (formerly of Inkblazers)
Lêttera by Kosen (formerly published in Spain)
Knights Errant by Jennifer Doyle (formerly of SmackJeeves)

We’re also preparing one more site redesign to better fit our new “freemium” model, in the hopes of making your Sparkler experience more enjoyable. Things have been changing drastically since January; thank you for your patience as we shift to a more comfortable fit!

We’ve decided to hold Issue 21 until the site redesign is ready, to avoid confusion. Issue 21 will be released next week. We’re aiming for Monday, but it may be a few days later if we run into last-minute technical issues. In addition, sparklermonthly.com may experience some downtime before Issue 21, but don’t be alarmed – it’s only us fixing this place up. :D

Thank you for your patience! We think you’ll enjoy the leaner, meaner Sparkler Monthly to usher in your spring. *fist-bump*



Alisha Jade joins Sparkler Distro!

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BIG updates to the Sparkler Shop this week!

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Alisha Jade of Oh My! Comics has joined the Sparkler Distro program! We’re now selling three adorable, romantic mini comics (or a complete set, both physical and digital) of this Australia-based artist’s work. They’re totally squee and in some cases, totally hot as well! For both GL (lady x lady) and straight tastes, ho ho~. We’re proud to welcome Alisha, and we hope you’ll enjoy her work as much as we have.

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And what’s this? The Orange Junk Vol 2 ebook (Chap 5-7, covering all pages released so far) is now in our store? For only $6? Indeed!

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In addition, we’re excited to announce a game-changer in the Sparkler Shop: now all orders of $60 and up can get free USA shipping. YOU HEARD ME. Put $60+ of stuff in your cart, input your USA address, and the FREE SHIPPING option will pop up automatically for you to choose. And that applies to every product in our store, be it Sparkler Distro books, weird-shaped posters, or ebooks you throw into the cart last-minute to get you over $60. Now that we’re carrying the products of so many awesome webcomics people, you can nab enough stuff to overload your bookshelf no problem, ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!