News Blog Archives

September 27, 2005

SPX report and pictures!

Beware! Loads O' Pix below. Will take a while to load. Best go get a sammitch and come back.

Paul mugs with two of our favoritest comics-store owners in the world: Dan and Katie Merritt.

After an exhausting Friday of sales, sock hunting and looking snappy, Matt Feazell falls asleep.

Here's a closeup. Paul says this is the first time he's ever seen Matt without his glasses.

While Matt slept, we defaced his socks. Y'see, Matt ran out of socks, or something. He brought back three pairs of white socks from the CVS across the street, and the gauntlet was thrown.

White socks and sharpie markers -- the temptation was too great. One pair even got auctioned off for the CBLDF.

One of Paul's fans brought a complete run of the Little White Mouse issues for Paul to sign, even the obscure, hard-to-find Caliber issues. Yay, fans!

Jim O gets surly if you try to take his orange juice.

Paul wears his size with pride.

Here's about half the crew at the Mongolian Barbecue, Saturday night.

Here's the other half.

Sean Bieri's so used to putting his pencils behind his ears that he stuck his chopsticks there for safekeeping.

Ah, Love. To celebrate our First Anniversary being married, Paul shows some restraint in his public displays of affection towards me.

Sunday was time for the big annual picnic and Softball game; Diamond Comics Distributors versus us Artists. Big guess as to who wins every year. I think this game's score was something like six hundred and eighty-five to three. Still, very fun to watch!

Suzanne Baumann, lookin' all cute. But watch out -- she's wily! Just when you think you're safe...

BOOGA!

Softball? What softball? This here comic was made overnight, DURING THE CON!

A steep hillside makes for strange lapfellows.

"Timespell" and "Zoomies" creator, Rich Henn takes a turn at bat. My Diamond Rep, Robert Randle, is playing catcher.

Rafer "Plastic Farm" Roberts! Swing anna miss!

Dunno who this guy was, but he sure could hit. He nailed one of our two home runs. Too bad there was nobody on base.

Karon Flage, one of the ubercool organizers of SPX, snaps pictures of the game.

JimO tries not to slide down the hillside. Matt Feazell shows off his red Chuck Taylors.

Neil "Ninety Candles" Kleid, in his outdoor habitat. Please do not feed the Neil.

A, Dave! How come we didn't get a shortstop? Poor Lewis here had to play both third base and shortstop for nine innings.

Rich "Three Fingers" Koslowski may hold his bat like a sissy, but he hit the other home run of the day. KPOW! This dude can hit!

Dean "Take my shirt off again?!" Haspiel at bat.

Now Dean's takin' pictures of his own.

Jackie Estrada, one of the nicest folks in comics, snaps some pix for posterity.

Awww, Denise and Lisa, yew so cuuuute.

Michelangelo Cicerone takes a look at Suzanne Baumann's supacool sketchbook. Suzanne took a bunch of descriptions out of an old 1950's entertaining cookbook and let people draw their own illustrations to go with them. Everyone's favorite seemed to be "Twirlin' Turkey for a Crowd".

After the game, Sean Bieri, Paul and I took the Metro to the Mall in DC to do some sightseeing. The first sight was this cool "Giant Squid versus Sperm Whale" Mosaic, located about 100 yards from our hotel.

Number one in my series of Guys Posing with Big Phallic Monuments in Our Nation's Capitol.

Number two.

Shaun crushes the horseman's head. Crush! Crush! Didn't get close enough to see who the subject of the statue was.

A cool dragon on the carousel near the Smithsonian. If I were ten, I'da totally jumped the fence to ride this thing, even though the carousel was closed.

Here's the new WW2 monument, which is on the Washington Monument side of the reflecting pool.

"Man... all of a sudden I really have to go."

As big and expensive as this memorial was, and as gorgeous as all the bronze bas-relief panels were, I really didn't like it. It felt all cold-war and Stalinesque, with a dash of Orwellian nationalism thrown in for good measure. Not too terribly surprising, considering it was approved and completed under pResident George W Bush.

It really had that, I dunno, Triumph of the Will feel to it.

Still, it definitely had the majesty points going for it. It was pretty overwhelming.

My God... It's full of Stars... each one of those little yellow dots is a fist-sized gold star.

Lincoln Memorial, seen over the waterfall.

See what I mean? Here's the big bronze medallion. Almost feels like the standing woman should be holding a hammer and sickle. Captured the WW2 era feeling of ultra-nationalism very well.

View from the "Pacific" arch. Each of the smaller pillars is carved with the name of a state or territory, and carries a huge, cast-bronze wreath.

View of the Washington Monument, back across the reflecting pool. The pool itself was pretty gross, actually; green with algae and choked with molted feathers, it smelled of sewage. Wish I were kidding.

Now, this is my kinda memorial.

The Lincoln Memorial was very moving. Seriously. I actually got choked up while I was in there. It made me feel, for a brief moment, the way I used to feel about my nation. Faith and courage and hope that even after a great disaster we may be able to get our act back together -- not because we're this huge aggressive monolith of a country -- but because we're humble enough to learn from our great mistakes and become better for it. This wasn't a memorial that celebrated the glories of war and victory; it was a memorial that talked about the long period of tragedy and humility that comes after the horrors of war.

Ah, would that we heard words the likes of these, more often.

Thanks for everything, Abe. You rule.

September 21, 2005

Press Release!

Here's the press release for those three Manga sites that Paul and I built. Paul did all three designs, and I did the HTML coding and Movable Type wrangling. MT rules, by the way.

The folks at Random House were a complete treat to work with. We're sure hoping that quote about what'll happen if these previews do well will come true.

DEL REY LAUNCHES MANGA "PREVIEW" WEBSITES

(New York, NY; September 20, 2005)-Del Rey Manga, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, announced today the launch of new title-specific websites, each of which will allow manga readers to preview thirty pages from the first volume of a new manga title-before the official publication date-in an innovative page-a-day' approach.

Cited as the fastest growing category in bookstores today, the graphic novel market has doubled each year for the past two years, leading to an estimated $100 million market today. The vast majority of the growth in the market has
been due to the increased popularity of Japanese comics, known as manga, a genre that Del Rey jumped on in the summer of 2003; Del Rey now has well over one million manga in print in the United States.

Although other large manga publishers have offered preview content on their websites, Del Rey's approach is unique in that each day for thirty days, a new page of manga content will be added for each individual title. In this way, Del Rey hopes to encourage readers to come back every day, and to build buzz for their hottest new properties.

"Our page-a-day concept goes beyond what the other large manga publishers have offered on their sites," said Betsy Mitchell, VP & Editor-in-Chief of Del Rey. "We wanted to give our fans an opportunity-absolutely free-to sample Del Rey's new series before laying down hard cash. There's a lot of manga on the shelves these days, and this is one way readers can decide whether our titles are the ones they want to spend money on. Obviously, we think we've got the right stuff."

"If this promotion is as successful as we anticipate it to be, we hope to be able to provide preview websites-well in advance of publication-for as many forthcoming new series as possible," added Del Rey's Manga Director Dallas Middaugh.

The first three titles to be featured on the title-specific sites - all Kodansha properties - are GACHA GACHA by Hiroyuki Tamakoshi (on sale September 20, 2005; ages 16+), GHOST HUNT by Fuyumi Ono and Shiho Inada (on
sale September 27, 2005; ages 13+), and SUGAR SUGAR RUNE by Moyoco Anno (on sale September 27, 2005; ages 10+).

The URLs for the first three title-specific sites are http://www.delreymanga.com/gachagacha, http://www.delreymanga.com/ghosthunt and http://www.delreymanga.com/sugar.

About Del Rey:

Del Rey Books (http://www.delreybooks.com) was founded in 1977 as a division of Ballantine Books under the guidance of the renowned Judy-Lynn del Rey and her husband, Lester del Rey. Del Rey publishes the best of modern fantasy, science fiction, alternate history and manga. Ballantine Books is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, which is a publishing group of Random House, Inc, the U.S. publishing company of Random House, the trade book publishing division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the world's leading international media companies. In the summer of 2003, Random House joined together with Kodansha in a creative partnership to bring some of Kodansha's top properties to the United States, making Random House the first major trade book publisher in the United States to do so.

About Kodansha Ltd., Publishers :

Kodansha is the largest trade and magazine book publisher in Japan. Founded in 1909, the company by virtue of its long history, the quality of its publishing, and its established network of sales and marketing is regarded as the trade book market leader in the publishing business in Japan. Moreover, Kodansha has been recognized as the leading publisher with a mission to introduce Japan through its publishing business.

September 20, 2005

Spx prep

Thanks to the Best Husband Ever, we got all 100 minicomics folded last night. The minicomics were printed for me by the lovely and talented Wendi Strang-Frost of Strang-Frost Productions -- thanks Wendi! You Rock! Tonight we staple, and I put in a hail-mary to try and get my Mucha drawing painted in time for SPX.

I had a minor catastrophy Sunday night. I went to paint the beautiful inks, which probably constitute the most beautiful drawing I've ever done -- and the board completely flipped out on me. When I started the drawing on the Mucha piece, I picked that board because I thought it was some of the last of my dwindling reserve of Strathmore 500 cold-press 3-ply -- you know, the really good stuff. It felt the same, was the correct weight, the tooth was how I remembered it, and it had initially been marked up with blue pencil for use as a page in the first series. However, the minute I set wet brush to paper, something went horribly awry. The board turned a mottled grey and instantly sucked up the water. It was like painting with a Q-tip on a piece of shirt cardboard. I tried to salvage it but no-go. It would take longer for me to thick-paint it on the questionable Mystery Board From Hell (which is probably not archival) than it would be for me to retrace it on to actual Strathmore 500 and have another go at it. So that's what's on the plate tonight. Wish me luck.

Either way, see you on Friday and Saturday at the Bethesda Holiday Inn!

September 7, 2005

They're here! They're here!

Paul Sizer's new book, Moped Army is here at last! You can read Paul's press release, buy it from your local comic stores this Wednesday, or meet Paul in the flesh at one of his many signings over the next month! Yay!

Design news!

Since Paul Sizer has posted about it on his blog, I guess it's safe for me to do the same. We didn't want to jinx it by telling the news too soon, but we both got a gig to design some new Manga websites for Del Rey Manga!

It seems that Del Rey is buying manga properties and wants to create one-chapter previews for each new book, kind of like what you see over at Tokyopop. The new books getting previews are for Gacha Gacha, book 1, Sugar Sugar Rune, book 1, and Ghost Hunt, book 1.

Paul's doing the design, and I'm code-wrangling. Links to follow -- very soon! -- as soon as they're public. Yay Team Clockwerk Haus!