Comics: September 2007 Archives

New page, and that's the end of The Mob Goes Wild. An intermission begins next week, And then chapter three.

New vote sketches too, of course. Two fairly sensible, one damned weird. I love the weird ones.

I thought yesterday was special because of an eBay auction I won, where I snagged this book at less than half the price than the cheapest reseller was offering on Amazon. I didn't know the half of it, though.

First, I finally heard back from Diamond. "Templar, Arizona: The Great Outdoors" has been accepted for distribution to comic shops, and it'll be listed in the December issue of Previews for February delivery.

This is sort of a big deal. It means selling hundreds of books at once to sit on the shelves of comic shops all over the country. And with this as an official Sure Thing, as long as I meet my benchmark (~250 copies ordered through Previews), financing for chapter two's print run is completely assured, even if no one pre-orders a single copy.

Silly as it sounds, this really makes me feel legitimate. Like, I'm making comics for real, now. Like I couldn't take myself seriously until THIS went down. And it finally did. So... I guess I make comic books. Officially. Professionally. Wow.

And that wasn't even the end of yesterday. Or Super Yesterday, as it shall evermore be known.

I also heard back from a publisher I harassed at the San Diego con this year, prompting me to get in touch with an artist friend for a possible proposal. This is also a big deal, and the first project where I'll be just writing instead of writing and drawing. This is obviously a lot less of a sure thing, but I truly didn't expect it to happen at all.

Double Wow.

And as if I weren't happy enough, one of you lunatics ferreted out my Amazon Wishlist, skipped over the ten and twelve-dollar paperbacks, and dropped some serious cash on a pair of out-of-print and collector's edition books I do not deserve in any way. I'm always completely shocked when this happens, but an act this unbelievably generous had me speechless.

Hey, you. You know who you are. Thank you. Thank you a hundred thousand times. I was overwhelmed.

I love everyone and everything.

Back to work.

I have to be better about these blog posts.

New page, new sketches, and a discovery: Sketchcast!

I made an account there and doodled this.

The drawing interface is a little bare-bones, but since it launched five days ago, I'm willing to cut it some slack. I figure it can only get better, so I'm early-adopting the crap out of it. You guys should sign up and be stupid with me! I might wanna make this a regular thing.

He's not exactly wrong, after all.

Also, MissusHow from the previous entry's comments must be recognized as predicting this particular line of reasoning. Yup, Scip considers Reagan a bit of a lunatic. But then, there are very few people in the cast who will ever escape his frowny, prim disapproval.

I'm with 'im on Sunny, though. Yeow.

New votes sketches are up t'go with the new page, and I feel the need to tell you guys that all of those requests were specific ones, not "Just do whatevers." Someone asked for each one of those in detail.

You guys are weird.

My goals for this week: Update the cast page, ship a TON of books, build up a buffer, stick another drawing on Etsy, and get ready for Fallcon. Also, answer my email. Because good LORD.

A little late, but here all the same. And now, questions are answered!

- Yes, this chapter, which will end next week, will be followed by an Intermission. It will take place in The Oarlock (Templar's brothel district), and touch on the city's poorest-of-the-poor, Templar's sizable and understandably powerful whores' lobby, and what Reclamation's really like behind all the rallies and rhetoric. It will also feature people we've seen and before, although you might not remember them. Like all intermissions, it will be short, less than ten pages.

- I have to reiterate, because the emails have been coming in inexplicably fast and furious: I am, truly and sincerely, not currently open for commissions. The commissions I mention from time to time in the blog were reserved a VERY long time ago, during the Pre-Order Project that paid for Templar's initial print run. I may offer commissions again when the time comes to print the new collection, but definitely not until my current orders are filled. I'm sorry.

...

Meme.

...

Okay, where were we?

Oh, Q&A. Right.

- I've been sent this two or three times now, and someone's even posted it in my forum, so the answer is yes, I've seen it: Apparently, Sincerists are real. More or less, anyway. Reality's version of what I originally thought was me being silly is called Radical Honesty, and it's a self-help thing. Very weird.

- Nah, I don't think any writers for "Weeds" read my comics. That gag about the beer-can dick was a coincidence, not a reference. These things happen, y'know?

And I think that about covers it.

Have a good weekend, guys.

For reals, you guys are always stealing my thunder and ruining my surprises and whatnot.

This chapter of Templar should be over in three or so pages. Yup. That close. So hang in there, I'm almost through.

Anyway: New vote sketches (more book sketches), new page, and a NEW RECOMMENDATION!

It's barely started, but I am already into Magnolia Pearl's The Good Crook. So yeah, you should check it out. And bookmark it. Maybe subscribe to the feed.

Gotta go.

That probably means something.

Today was special, because my dog Harvey was absolutely destroyed for the entire evening after witnessing a flashlight in use. He only just recently unglued himself from my calf to dare curling up on his doggy bed about a foot away.

For the uninitiated.

This is a Harvey. Yes, I dress him in little clothes. I'm one of those people. But in my defense, he needs them. We live in Chicago, and he has no fur. If you had to sit there and watch him shiver, you'd shell out for a lil' dog-sized hoodie, too.

He's not shaved, he's one of these. And bless his tiny soul, he's a natural born coward.

He's actually gotten a lot better, though. Nowadays, when he's scared, he runs in a few circles, groans as if being tortured, and dashes for the safety of my shadow. He used to just poop.

Anyway: New sketches are up to go with the new page: Three more "Do whatever!" requests that wound up themed (What can I say, I'm excited! They're filming the prequel RIGHT NOW) and a new portrait of Benny on his bio page. Handsome devil.

Enjoy!

...

Oh, and a scarificator is a 19th century bloodletting device. Sort of an automated leech. It could be considered a bit quacky, but really, it was just more horribly misguided than anything.

Ben keeps some good company.

Scip, despite being mildly oddball himself, has a very low tolerance level for the unusual. Even less if the aforementioned unusual thing might give him cancer.

Okay, new page, new sketches (more book sketches), and NEW LINKS! Check out my button collection for brand spankin' new nods to the likes of Schlock Mercenary and Wapsi Square. I met the creators at SDCC this year, and they're both really great guys who were only too happy to listen to my fawning and babbling. They deserve a look.

At this point, I don't think Scip would be shocked to find a reanimated corpse squirreled away in Bash's broom closet.

New page, new sketches: More commissioned book sketches. Click-n-see! Might as well make 'em pull double duty, right?

And in case you didn't know, with Gene's nosiness, Dr. Bash's belongings have just taken a turn for the quacky.

Not so very long ago, there was an age when radiation was touted as a miracle cure-all, sort of the same way colloidal silver or shark cartilage are sold today. Like a lot of medical quackery, the patent medicine people took a grain of truth... the fact that extremely low levels of radioactivity, in the form of naturally emanating radon gas, were common in "health springs" thought to have curative properties... and ran with it. "Radioactive" was the "organic" of its day, and touted as imparting vigor and well-being. Radium was put into chocolate, toothpaste, contraceptives, suppositories, and beauty aids.

Special jugs were also sold to help irradiate your drinking water.

The doses of radiation a reasonable person could ingest from homemade irradiated water was ultimately harmless. But too much of the strong stuff, like Radithor, could rot your face off and turn your bones into brandy snaps. Fortunately, this eventually happened to someone important enough to annoy the general public, bringing about the end of the irradiated patent medicine boom and the sudden empowerment of a previously toothless little government office known as the FDA.

"Alternative medicine." Gotta love it.

Yeah, Wood, who posts in the blog comments!

Damn him.

I once described Scip in a promo post to a LJ community as "equal parts Eagle Scout, maiden auntie and Kung Fu movie miniboss." It was an off-the-cuff sort of thing, but it's probably the most accurate description I've ever given for any one of my characters ever. Poor guy.

New page, naturally. And new vote sketches!

I'm plowing my way through the sketch commissions right now, and a surprising number of them are "Just do whatever!" That is a terrible, terrible freedom to grant me. But a good proportion of them are specific, too. Specific, but very weird.

Weird is not bad. It is not bad at all.

Try and guess which of this update's sketches are requests, and which are do-whatevers. You probably can.

And remember: My podcast with KC, Josh, and Chris is tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern! Tune in and listen to us drone on importantly!

Scented candles, maybe?

Hi again, guys. This page took a little longer to get out the door than usual, but here it is all the same. The site's main page has also been re-designed (again), and so far the consensus is that it's preferable to the previous new page, so good. Also, new vote sketches of those middle school-era minicomic characters I just can't seem to let go of. Urk.

Most of this update's work was done with the BBC's series on ice mummies streaming in the background. I especially recommend watching the third episode, "Frozen in Heaven," about Incan child sacrifices.

ALSO: I will be a guest, along with Josh Lesnick and KC Green, on the 2nd First Annual BSS Webcomic Summit, a podcast being hosted by Chris Hastings! (Yes, the title of the podcast is correct.) It's gonna be Tuesday, September 11th, 8:00 PM Eastern, and we are all opinionated loudmouths, except for KC, who asks people to kill him when he's sad.

Good times.

Enjoy the weekend!

Ben certainly is an astute little fella. He'd make a good homicide detective on a primetime cop show. The kind that gets blindsided by insight into an investigation while dabbing ketchup on his sandwich, which inspires him to re-examine the blood-spatter patterns from the crime scene.

Speaking of cop shows: Oh Good lord The Wire. Wow. Wow again. You should probably be watching this show.

This series has writing and dialog I want to spread on toast with a spoon, it's so good. I don't keep track of TV and movie awards, but if The Wire hasn't won anything, the votes are all rigged.

When you're dealing with cops-n-robbers television, it's easy to stamp everyone flat and walk them around the plot with enough jargon and violence to make it all seem sincere. But right now, my favorite characters ever? A gay, shotgun-toting sociopath and two crooked cops. And I'm not being edgy; I sincerely like them. They say and do completely realistic, completely believable things. They're fallible and motivated and get off some great lines, and I'm beginning to suspect one of the cops is genuinely stupid. Every one of these characters is entirely alive. Every time I watch an episode, I feel like I should be taking notes.

Give it a chance. I'm really enjoying it.

Anyway, in case it somehow escaped you: I've changed the layout of Templar's homepage a little, to include links to various RSS feeds and the comic's chapters. Looks a little weird, might tweak it summore, but it'll do for now.

Subscribe to the feeds, I measure my self-worth by them.

Oh, and click the vote sketches! I got a lot of work out of Dr. Sketchy's Chicago, that monthly burlesque life drawing event I previously mentioned.

Bye!

It makes sense, really. If Scip had a kitten every time a drunk said something weird to him, he couldn't do his job.

This comic is filled with scenes I absolutely live in agonies of anticipation for. Conversations I'm dying to let happen, faces and comments I'm dying to let characters make, that sort of thing. This page was one of the scenes.

Ahhhh.

Also: This update's sketches are old scribbles I threw on Etsy (one's sold, one hasn't) and an ancient digital painting I can't imagine finishing. I'm a damned lazy woman.

Back to work. Lotsa books left to mail out, commissions to be done. Hope everyone had a great Labor Day.

And oh, before I forget: If you have a Hotmail email address, you can now register for my forums. I banned 'em previously, because the spambots loved Hotmail so. But screw it, I'll deal. Come join us!

The son every mother wishes for, the boyfriend every woman dreads.

By the way, you really can't listen to Nick Cave for like fifteen minutes, and then try to listen to a bunch of pre-Rollins Black Flag. It's like brushing your teeth, and then drinking a big glass of orange juice. They're fine on their own, but try to line 'em up and go down the row? Blech.

And hey, VOTE SKETCHES ARE BACK! Sorry for the downtime, folks, but we're back in business. Click the thumbnails over the comic to see the new art. Two of this update's sketches are pictures of the lovely Sasha Darling, the model for Dr. Skecthy's Chicago, a monthly burlesque life drawing event I can personally recommend.

And finally, congratulations are in order for Dirk Tiede, creator of the paranormal cop thriller Paradigm Shift. He'll be spending the day getting all kinds of hitched to physicist and concertina mistress Emily Peterson, and I'm invited to their wedding, which is totally going down barbecue-and-picnic style! And if that isn't cool, I dunno what is.