Comics & Nonsense

Hi, I'm H.L. Deere, aka @viciousvenison just about everywhere — webcomic artist, painter, and general purveyor of comics & nonsense. Welcome to my spot on Neocities! Here you'll find a mirror of my fantasy webcomic FaerieTales and a place to test out new ideas before they go live on the main site at infernalium.net.

You'll also find The Nonsense Part if you scroll down — creator resources geared toward webcomic artists, ranty articles about the corporatization of the internet, and whatever else fits. Still very much under construction, so check back or email me if there's something you'd like to see!

Welcome to FaerieTales

What makes a hero? Or a leader? Who counts as a person? Where does loyalty belong? Is it to family, country, morality..?

Nobody asked Holly if she wanted to be important. Biv just wants to survive the week. But after two decades in exile, royal advisor Puck is desperate enough to drag two very human kids into fae politics, meddling gods, and brewing civil war. Six centuries after the fae fled Earth, Faerie is held up by tired magic, frayed alliances, and bad decisions — and the future is suddenly tangled up with two kids who don't want any part of it.

FaerieTales is a story about magic, memory and mistakes--not necessarily in that order.

Two pages this week!

Two pages again this week! Be back September 2, skipping next week to make up for it, retreating back to my cave now to crank out pages, the end (of the issue) is nigh!

The Nonsense!

So right about here is where this site diverges from the main site right now. The link above leads to the page where I'll be posting links and other stuff that doesn't fit with my main comic's page. Right now, all that's there is a post I wrote about alternatives to Webtoon and other big corporate webcomic sites, but I put it up here because it has links to a lot of more creator-oriented webcomic hosts! I'm hoping to get more up there soon.

Schedule Update: Early Pause & January Surgery Prep

I’ve been planning to make a short break between issues a regular thing… but my body has moved that break up on the schedule. 😅

I have surgery coming up in January (date still pending, likely early in the month), and to make sure FaerieTales doesn’t faceplant during recovery, I’m taking an early pause on new pages on the main site and free Patreon tier.

Like many webcomics, FaerieTales is a solo project — all the drawing, writing, lettering, file prep, accessibility work, mirror uploads, and site upkeep is just me. The tradeoff for that is unlimited creative freedom… but independence takes work.

Once this arc is wrapped and things are a little less medically chaotic, my goal is to have future pauses land between issues, not haphazardly in the middle of one — a short, planned breather to prep the next chapter and keep everything running smoothly. This one is just… arriving early, courtesy of my calendar and my doctor.

Thank you so much for reading, commenting, boosting posts, and generally being patient while I juggle surgery prep on top of everything else. Your support is what lets me keep doing my weird little comic, and I love you for it.

I’ll be back with a new page on December 24th! Until then, I'll be lurking around social media and Discord while I work!

Finally adding an RSS feed for the comic pages! I don't know what took me so long aside from the fact that I don't generally use them, and so forgot they exist. Apparently there's only so much room inside my head! I'll go back and add a cute graphic somewhere on the page eventually, but for now here it is in link form:

I've been quietly doing a lot of behind the scenes work lately, and that's probably going to continue for a few more weeks! Building up the buffer of comic pages so I can keep posting without interruption while I take care of the garden stuff and fall cider making, plus I've got some extra art stuff I want to work on, as well as finishing up the screen reader script and adding a couple of pages to the site. None of this should impact the comic's update schedule, either here or on the free mirrors, but oof it eats up my whole day!

Working on some things, so please forgive weirdness, it's only temporary! Finally buckling down and getting to work adding author commentary, a screen reader friendly version of the script, and READER COMMENTS to every page! YAY!

I keep forgetting to update this page! Not the greatest thing to forget, considering it’s the first thing readers see when they visit. I’ll do better! Here’s what’s going on right now:

Issue 2 is underway! You can follow any of my social media for updates, but the general schedule is once a week on Wednesdays here on the site and on Patreon. Free no matter where you read, although if you want to support the comic it’s always greatly appreciated! Paid members do get extra art and lore bits before anybody else.

You can access the comic from right on Tumblr, too, if you prefer! I post extra art there, too, from time to time and talk a little about the comic, or answer questions that readers ask me.

I put up a page for extra art! It’s right here, I’ll add a permanent link later: Extras

My current project, in between drawing comic pages, is working on a way to make the comic accessible for screen readers. It’s going to take a while, but I’m kind of excited about it. I’m also trying to figure out a method for adding comments to each page, along with author commentary, that doesn’t leave me spending half my waking hours battling bots and spammers! I don’t really want to make it a separate Tumblr group, because then you’d all have to have Tumblr accounts to be a part of it, but secure options are hard to find. We’ll see what I can do! Cross your fingers, pickings are slim for non-corporate websites these days.