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rynlingReimena Yee began posting a Victorian supernatural mystery comic called The World in Deeper Inspection on Tumblr in May 2011. Although The World in Deeper Inspection currently remains unfinished, Yee continued to share her work on Tumblr. One of the artist’s main projects was The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya, which follows the transcontinental travels of a devout Muslim man who maintains his faith despite having been transformed into a vampire. As Yee serialized The Carpet Merchant online during the 2010s, it attracted attention from comics websites such as Farrago (in 2016) and The Comics Beat (in 2018) before its publication as a print graphic novel was funded through the book-specific crowdfunding website Unbound in 2019.
Yee published the second and final volume of The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya in 2022, also through a crowdfunding campaign assisted by Unbound. Both volumes of the graphic novel are available from major retailers such as Amazon, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble in inexpensive hardcover and digital editions. Despite the book’s readily accessible commercial availability, Yee has made it free to download on Itch.io. This embrace of accessibility reflects the prevailing creative ethos on Tumblr, which encourages the free and open sharing of artistic creations and resources.
Many people on the creative side of Tumblr consider the platform as not simply a marketing platform, but a collaborative space. Perhaps the best illustration of this ethos in action can be seen in Yee’s short comic “The God of Arepo,” which began as a writing prompt posted on Tumblr by @/writing-prompt-s in April 2018 that reads: “Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.” Three users responded to this prompt, cumulatively creating a short story about the value of small kindnesses. Yee created a short comic adaptation and posted it on Tumblr on November 2, 2022. This adaptation was expanded for inclusion in the 2023 Short Box Comics Fair, which describes itself as an “online comics fair debuting all-new digital comics from independent artists around the world” on Twitter, where the event’s account has cover 111,000 subscribers.
“The God of Arepo” won the 2023 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic, an open-ballot audience choice award voted on by the attendees of the Small Press Expo, an annual indie comics event held in early fall in the Washington DC suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. After winning the Ignatz, Yee proposed to break up the physical award (a literal brick) and distribute it between the original authors in a celebration of their collaborative efforts. Later, when the Short Box Comics Fair closed for the year, Yee made the full extended version of “The God of Arepo” available on Itch.io so that it may be freely accessible to other writers and artists as a source of inspiration not bounded by national borders or region-specific publication agreements.
This artist is a legitimately good and kind person, and I am in platonic love with them and their work. Again, it's weird to summarize someone's career in 500 words, especially since the entirety of their work is online. I collected much more information than I've included here, and I think perhaps I might like to write a Wikipedia entry for this artist over the summer.
Yee published the second and final volume of The Carpet Merchant of Konstantiniyya in 2022, also through a crowdfunding campaign assisted by Unbound. Both volumes of the graphic novel are available from major retailers such as Amazon, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble in inexpensive hardcover and digital editions. Despite the book’s readily accessible commercial availability, Yee has made it free to download on Itch.io. This embrace of accessibility reflects the prevailing creative ethos on Tumblr, which encourages the free and open sharing of artistic creations and resources.
Many people on the creative side of Tumblr consider the platform as not simply a marketing platform, but a collaborative space. Perhaps the best illustration of this ethos in action can be seen in Yee’s short comic “The God of Arepo,” which began as a writing prompt posted on Tumblr by @/writing-prompt-s in April 2018 that reads: “Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.” Three users responded to this prompt, cumulatively creating a short story about the value of small kindnesses. Yee created a short comic adaptation and posted it on Tumblr on November 2, 2022. This adaptation was expanded for inclusion in the 2023 Short Box Comics Fair, which describes itself as an “online comics fair debuting all-new digital comics from independent artists around the world” on Twitter, where the event’s account has cover 111,000 subscribers.
“The God of Arepo” won the 2023 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Online Comic, an open-ballot audience choice award voted on by the attendees of the Small Press Expo, an annual indie comics event held in early fall in the Washington DC suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. After winning the Ignatz, Yee proposed to break up the physical award (a literal brick) and distribute it between the original authors in a celebration of their collaborative efforts. Later, when the Short Box Comics Fair closed for the year, Yee made the full extended version of “The God of Arepo” available on Itch.io so that it may be freely accessible to other writers and artists as a source of inspiration not bounded by national borders or region-specific publication agreements.
This artist is a legitimately good and kind person, and I am in platonic love with them and their work. Again, it's weird to summarize someone's career in 500 words, especially since the entirety of their work is online. I collected much more information than I've included here, and I think perhaps I might like to write a Wikipedia entry for this artist over the summer.
