Children of All Ages

Chris Butcher is wise. I might quibble a little with some of his points--I think there are successful "All Ages" books when you step outside the superhero paradigm, like Bone--but I am not a man who has made a living as a comics retailer at one of the best comic book stores in the world, so feel free to ignore me and listen to him.

And It's Volume THREE, Dammit

As usual, comics bear the brunt of small-minded douchebags who would like to control everything we say, read and hear. But cheers to the Kentucky Library Association.

A Fiery Shower of Pixels Storming the Shore of Your Eyeballs

Lemuria issue #1, all 32 pages of it (including some that aren't online), is now available for download at DriveThru Comics, in both PDF and CBZ format. The cost is a mere 75 cents...just like comics used to be back in the good old days, when there were only four colours and the paper was all yellowy and rough, the way God intended. So for those of you who've always wanted to read Lemuria while curled up around the fire with a snifter of port, you can now do so.

Also, there's a Very nice four-star review from featured reviewer Brian LeTendre, which is kind of amazing, since it went up within 8 hours of the PDF file being uploaded. Efficient!

I'm hoping to have more downloadable stuff up at that site before the year is out. Will I let you know? Oh dear heavens yes.

I Want 15 Minutes of Internet Fame Every 15 Minutes

Hey whoa!

I kicked back this weekend and spent a goodish chunk of it reconnecting with "friends" and "family"--you know, those things that interfere with making webcomics. But before I took my little hiatus from cyberspace, I read Chris Sim's Invincible Super-Blog, as I do pretty much every day. I'm sure anyone reading this knows of Chris, and he doesn't need my pathetic pimpage, but he truly is one of the most hilarious and enthusastic comics bloggers around. There are a whole ton of great comics bloggers out there--I should probably do a post linking to my favourites--and many of them are intellectually invigorating and funny, there's a certain collective sense of grimness hanging over them, a despair at how far the noble comics medium has sunk. Chris, along with Bully The Little Stuffed Bull, provides the vital service of keeping the comics blogosphere fun and engaging, and quite possibly prevents most of us who are still devoted to comics from slitting our wrists.

Anyway, while I'm sometimes a bit shy about pimping my stuff elsewhere, when Chris posted this, it struck me as a perfect opportunity to link to The Archon, not expecting more than a nod or two. To my surprise, I got a bunch of glowing praise in the ISB thread and a ton of hits, leading to a post on Johanna Draper Carlson's Comics Worth Reading blog. Which is another really excellent blog that I do read a lot. Sheesh, maybe I won't make a new post, this one has plenty of links.

It's not like I set the internet on fire or anything, but it was really gratifying to see something I've done get that much attention. A lot of the time I feel like I'm labouring in the trenches a bit, not making much of a splash out there in the comics world, so even a little thing like this means a lot to me.

Enough narcissism. The long and the short of this is that I'd been mulling over doing another, similar project--also featuring Dan DeCarlo style vs.comic-book SF--and this has made me determined to do it. More to come...


though I do find it a bit depressing how many intelligent, engaged feminist comics bloggers are



Which also means, incidentally, that traffic on this forum probably spiked heavily this weekend, for whatever that's worth...

Something Cool Is Coming...

...hopefully by early next week, or sooner. I'm going to start in with a series of downloadable comics, some of which will be tied to my existing strips, and some of which may be totally original. This is going to be through DriveThru Comics, in PDF and (hopefully) CBR formats, for a teensy fee--under 50 cents for the first two.

The first is going to be a downloadable version of Lemuria, issue #1, including pages that aren't on the internet yet. The second is going to be the bonus material from Freak U. Book One, which has so far only been available in print form; it's a history of Omega House detailing many of the members who have existed over the years (Yes, Kalinar is in there) since the frat was founded in the 50s. There'll also be bonus material, art 'n' pinups and maybe a short new comic. Freak U. fans should definitely grab this if you haven't picked up the print edition. (Which is still available, by the way.)

I've been wanting to tell spinoff tales of the earlier members of Freak U. for a while now, this may be the best venue for that. I have an idea for a story starring Kalinar, since he's proven to be a popular character, and there are other iterations of Omega House I'd like to write about (the '69 and '86 groups in particular).

On top of that, I think this is going to be the venue in which I produce more Critterville stories. It's been praised in a few corners of the net, and I've got a ton of ideas for the characters, moving the whole strip more in a Carl Barks action-adventure kind of direction. Consider that 12 page story a warmup and an introduction to the world.

And there's even more brewing, including a couple of potential collaborations with very talented artists.

So yeah...I'm not exactly taking it easy here.

Halloween '09

You can't really tell, but I'm not just a cowboy, I'm a STEAMPUNK cowboy. With, like, gears and widgets on my lapels and stuff (which are made out of metal).

...Yeah, you had to be there.

Really, you should have been there. Best Halloween ever.

EDITED TO ADD photo in which I don't look like a jackass:



Well, mostly...