Black Friday Sale (To Help Ernest Saves Christmas's Harmony Star)

Noelle Parker needs help, and I want to use fandom to do it.

Hey Vern!

Okay, I promise that’s the only time I’ll do that, but I have a kind of Ernest Saves Christmas-themed Black Friday sale going on.

Noelle Parker, the actor who played the character of Harmony Star in Ernest Saves Christmas, recently had a medical emergency, and she is still trying to dig out financially. You can see (and contribute to) her GoFundMe page here.

As I recently outlined, part of the plan for 2025 is for ECV Analog, my self-publishing endeavor, to pick up the pace of our production, as well as working with other writers to broaden the company’s output. Underwriting that will be, in part, a crowdfunding campaign that will allow readers to buy a membership to ECV — something that gives you DRM-free and downloadable digital copies of all the stuff we publish, in addition to a discount on physical media purchases and other perks.

I’ll be laying out the specifics of the program soon, but for now, I’m offering readers of this blog an opportunity to get in early, and donate some of your membership fee to a good cause.

For $50, you’re guaranteed digital copies of next year’s books Time To Be Heroes and The VelociGospel, as well as a feature-length documentary film (the details of which will be revealed imminently). You’ll also get access to my back catalogue (including Best Movie Ever, The Gold Exchange, and Getting the Fin Right) and a quarterly zine that will be published here at my Substack and available in all its cheapo, black-and-white glory in print. The zine will include interviews with comic book, TV, and film personalities as well as reviews of physical media releases, comic strips, and sneak peeks at upcoming ECV Analog projects.

That $50 membership will cover you until December 31st, 2025 — and best of all, the first $20 out of every $50 will be donated to Noelle’s GoFundMe campaign, from now until December 5th. After all, she stars in a Christmas classic. This seems like the perfect time of year to show her some love.

To join, you can subscribe here and choose the $50 ECV Analog Subscription option (formerly the Founding Plan or the Legends of DuJour plan). Current members of both the standard and founding plan for ECV Analog will be comped an ECV Membership plan until the end of your current plan, so you’ll get all the discounts and exclusives too.

If you don’t want to subscribe here on Substack, you can also check out my Gumroad Store, where the subscription is an option. There are also other books and things for sale there, and I’ll honor the same idea over at Gumroad: for every $50 you spend between now and Monday, I’ll donate $20 to Noelle. If you spend $50 and it isn’t on a membership, please comment here or email me to let me know you saw this.

For new subscribers (or any Ernest fans who find their way here from the Ernest Goes to Comics Discord group), here’s a very brief rundown of my aforementioned projects:

Best Movie Ever is a 2021, unauthorized oral history of the 2001 movie Josie and the Pussycats. Featuring conversations with the filmmakers, actors, and musicians who made the film, Best Movie Ever is arguably the most in-depthy look at the cult classic movie ever assembled.

The Gold Exchange is an unofficial companion to Booster Gold, vol. 2, a comic book series which ran from 2006 until 2011. The book features dozens of interviews with comic book writers and artists, as well as other media figures who are tied closely to the character of Booster Gold.

Getting the Fin Right, vol. 1 is a collection of over 20 interviews with Erik Larsen, the creator, writer, and artist of the long-running Image Comics series The Savage Dragon. In the book, Erik and I (along with series editor Gavin Higginbotham) dig into the nuts and bolts of one of the comic’s best-reviewed and most-beloved eras, ranging from 2008 until 2011.

Time To Be Heroes is an upcoming, unofficial oral history of the TV series DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, exploring how The CW’s “Arrowverse” became home to one of the weirdest, funniest, and most progressive superhero adaptations ever made.

The VelociGospel is an upcoming, official companion to The VelociPastor 2. It features cast and crew interviews and delves into both the original cult classic The VelociPastor and its 2025 sequel.

Untitled Documentary Film. Directed by Zach D. Roberts (Vigilantes Inc.), this film will feature writing and interviews by myself, and will delve into the stories behind one of American comics’ best creators, focusing primarily on the blockbuster story that made them a household name.

…That’s really it. I wasn’t going to do a Black Friday thing this year since my actual plan isn’t fully set up yet, but I really wanted to do something to help Noelle and since I’m out of work, this seems like the best/only way to manage that right now.

Be back here by noon for more ECV, and always remember to rewind your cassettes.