Just recovered from my 2-day trip to the eastern most lands of Wa. Spokane was a fine city and the convention center was a good host. There was a lot of extra room though. Way too much elbow space, as if they were trying to make up for the lack of vendors and artists.
Anyway I had a good time with the guy and met some new folks. I also ran into Miss Haley’s bombshell Boutique folks and they knew how to party like it was 1999. We even made a little jaunt over to Idaho to get some Turkish food. I didn’t take nearly enough pictures especially with those that bought the book, but I do have a few that I’ll add here.
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Crowsong
These little beauties are our handmade stickers and bookmarks that we put together before the Con.
This is the gorgeous “Greg” cover. Drawn by Antonio Brandao and colored by Eleonora Dala Rosa
I’ve always loved this 2-page spread.
This is me keepin’ my hair game tight and clean. Love the smell of pomade on convention day.
So, this is the 1/3rd table layout.
Me and the infamous gunslinger Drew “the shrew” Pierce.
The fellows were tired after that first day. 5-hour drive, little sleep and then tabling for 9hrs takes it outta ya.
Me and my new pal Eamon.
There was an hour-long back-up on 1-90 because of a wildfire.
More of the wildfire smoke.
Waiting for the firefighters to do their job. Me and Miles.
Smoke from the cavern below crawling across the roadway.
It’s been awhile, but not as long as before. Just celebrated another Santa Claus holiday. Lots of goodies for lots of good boys and girls. I was pretty proud of some of my gifts too. I got Kris a keychain with a scorpion inside because she’s a scorpio. I also ended up picking her out some magical healing crystals. Boy was that a funny story. I got a pretty sweet Israeli paratrooper messenger bag and a blue tooth lamp that has sound! I did TOO need it! You don’t know me at all.
Lost 3 dear people this past few days. George Michael, Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. So many others this year.
What’s next?
In addition to finishing Vile, and getting ready for the next project “Ded-Head, Made of Lead”, I’ve been working on my coloring and drawing skills. I’d love to be a good flatter and save a colorist time. I draw well enough, but not good enough for comics, so I’m trying to go from being able to plan-out a rough storyboard, but I want to help conceptualize and better relay what’s in my head to the fine readers. What about coloring though?
Living Colour
I started flatting Kirby pages a couple months ago. I started by inking and then coloring a Blackbolt pinup, and now this week I’ve decided I need something more complicated. I decided I’d find an old Mcfarlane Spidey page and give it a shot. Let me just say-holy crap he liked drawing birds. In one page of Spider-man there were like, 12 birds. And that beautiful webbing that he changed. Oh goodness, it is magnificent. Until you have to color it however…(my grumpy face here). Love the way it looks once it’s done, but Todd’s pages are SO full of information. The dude must never sleep.
Pretty proud of this little bad boy. Jack Kirby drew this for Thor 158 and these are my flats.
Dr. Feelgood
We’re running a kickstarter starting January 3rd to raise a few more dollars for printing. As it stands now, we are clear to print 3000 copies and have that revenue from publisher. If we can raise 2000 more though, we can get a better deal with the printer and get the price down to less than a dollar. Anyone that knows anything about business can understand the cost and margins concepts. It’s creative and it’s artistic… but it’s still a business. I want to find a way to tell more of my stories because I think they help and people like them. Anything we raise over $2000.00 will go to paying back the expenses of creating the comic itself. Anyway, I hate hocking my stuff, but that is coming up.
So, a little bit about process. My little Post Script area I just conceived of. So, with any comic book, or book, or work of literature, there is a long and arduous and on-going process known as editing. Or proofing. Or checking. Or all of those. We check and test and read and let others read. It helps to catch mistakes and to round the edges so to speak. When I decided to finish Vile, and get a new team together, I wanted to say FUCK it and do things punk rock. I was paying to have it made anyway, so why not do it how I want?
This is a great example of what I meant. The colored bubbles look fine to me, as do some of the sound effects, but seeing it all cleaned up, I am happy with the results.
I’m the fucking boss, ain’t I?
I made some decisions early on to be edgy and experiment with speech and text and SFX. I wanted to be full of shit is what I wanted, HAHA. I found a partner in Dyan Johnson who decided to experiment. Anyway, I got a list of changes from the editor, and it included all my edgy ideas. Ugh. What an ego hit. So, anyway, knowing how close I was to this thing, know what I decided to do?
Sendin’ out an S.O.S.
I decided to ask someone for help. Anyone close to me, within arm’s reach, knows that I don’t take critique as well as I should. So, knowing myself and knowing that I needed to breathe, to do things the right way and to stop sabotaging: I reached out to two of my comic book friends. I asked them to look at the edits and the story and to give me their honest opinions. They both did and it was so helpful. Thanks so much Frank Mula and Miles Greb. Anyway, I made sure that we would make the deadline of November and I’m proud to say that. I didn’t want to potentially delay the book, but in the interest of it, I was willing to do that if it were the right thing. My point here? …
… Is that I am awesome. Yeah, I have some swagger and confidence. I should. I’ve fought and lost and won a couple times too. I finished up a 2-month training regimen, and I killed it. I was beating myself of over not making better progress, but that’s just silly. You can’t beat yourself up because it wasn’t. You can be proud for what it wasn’t and then became. Yeah contemplate THAT one kiddos. Talk soon.
Folks, I am too sorry to even be here typing. It seems as though every time I type here, or post something, it’s been forever, so I won’t apologize anymore and we can all agree that I’ll be better about being a good friend. Awesome, moving on.
A few things, house cleaning, announcement stuff etc.
Vile is complete. The story of Hard Pants and Clem Styles has been told in graphic novel form. It was arduous, but it is finally complete. The team was up late into the night filing and editing and shifting and coloring. I wish I could say I was one of those people-my parts were done, and I was playing the role of oaf and being hard to get a hold of on the last day of deadline. Sorry again my dear friends Eleonora and Dyan.
PLEASE and pretty please preorder and tell your local comic store to carry Vile: Legends of Thunder Valley. It’s as independent as it gets and comics aren’t cheap to make. Indie Comics are never easy easy in any way. The finished book is 60+ pages of western-fantasy goodness.
If you want to read the comic that started it all, it’s available here at Comixology and print on demand here. I’ll be posting some teaser pictures here over the coming days and getting ready for a couple of comic conventions, so, stay tuned. I promise to write more. Oh, speaking of teaser art, the featured image here is a western style scene from Vile. It features a character named Masterson Kline from the story. Antonio Brandao did an amazing job bringing his character to life and helping to define him and the other characters in the story. Anyway! Anyone is welcome to use it for non commercial uses. If anyone is interested in using art form the book as wallpaper for their computers, or home :).
Eleonora Dalla Rosa did the amazing colors on the previously described art too.
Oh, and we have prints coming today as well as a revised updated edition of Vile coming tomorrow, which is the amazing Black Sparrow’s B-Day. Happy Birthday love.
So, thanks to my new pal Miles Greb, of ‘After the Gold Rush’ fame, I’ll be attending Central City Comic-Con in Yakima, WA. October 14th-16th.
I’ll have some of the first issue of Vile: Legends of Thunder Valley, so great cards and some other goodies. Help support indie Comics and come see me.
Miles will be there and I’m sure it will be a great time. SO thankful for the opportunity to do my first con as a creator. Remember that we’re booth 307
Have a look at some teaser art for the finished One-shot tale that is releasing on Rats and Crows publishing in January 2017.
We’ve had so much success with the one article we’ve done on Gotham, a review by Hank Van Hawkins that can be found here, that we decided to focus on the show on our podcast. You can find the podcast here. We start discussing the show about 22-23 minutes in, so if you’re not interested in baseball very much, go ahead and fast forward to that time. We also discuss Arrow, Terry Moore’s ‘Rachel Rising,’ Vile: The Legend of Thunder Valley, Batman and a few other things like Richard’s upcoming interview on November 22nd with Ed Brisson from ‘The Field’ by Image Comics. Thanks for reading, and please enjoy the show. You can find the link below.
CrowSong Productions 