Too Funny Not To Share

I was scanning a new batch of reference for the third round of Wonderlost stories and I came across this gem. I left for Japan a year before this was taken, clean-shaven and with short hair. I flew back into NYC looking like this. I walked up to my mom at the airport and looked right at her, expecting a shocked, but warm welcome. Her reply was "Excuse me, sir, but could you step aside. I'm looking for my son."

This made me laugh for hours...

From Tony Fleecs, writer/artist of the amazing comic In My Lifetime, and Wonderlost 2 contributor...

Compass at Summer Comiket

So pre-order sales of Compass 0 have been kicking ass in dojin shops across Japan, and Ryusuke debuted our preview issue at Comiket in Tokyo this past weekend. We were hoping for a warm reception and brisk sales as it's a new title by a rather unknown creative team, but I just got the report back now from Aki that the book sold out on Friday in two hours!! The show opened at 10AM and by noon he had sold clean through the 500 copies he brought!! Wow!! This bodes very well for the future of the book...

Bat For Lashes

Doreen Mulryan was kind enough to pass on the link for the cool new Bat For Lashes video. You can check out their creepy new "Donnie Darko-esque" clip here!

Slacking TV Execs?

I just tried to watch the new ABC animated series Slacker Cats. I like cats, I like animation and I'm a slacker, so I'm their target audience, right? Holy shit, was it horrendous! Pitiful! So bad I couldn't even watch past the first 5 minutes!

How the hell did a piece of garbage like this get greenlit? What are studio executives thinking? How could anyone have watched this and approved it? If it was for kids, I would understand, but it was on at 10PM and had adult overtones, so I don't think it was for the Disney or Nick kid crowds.

Watching Clyde and Lotto sleep was more interesting than suffering through that piece of crap.

Custom Ricochet

I was out in Chicago at Wizard World this past weekend and had the please of meeting LONERS fan John Coffey at the show. Besides being a huge comic fan with good taste, John customizes action figures and informed me he'd made his very own Ricochet figure recently. After exchanging e-mail addresses, he was kind enough to send over the following pics of the high-flying Loner...




Pretty cool, huh?! You can check out more of John's cool custom figures at his site here!

Books Without Pictures

A Loners fan I met at SDCC recently dropped me a line and asked me if I could provide him with the names of some novels that influenced me and the way I write. Two came to mind right away and I thought I would share...





Murakami and Yoshimoto both craft characters that are so genuine and relatable that you can't help but fall in love with them. They make their emotions so tactile that feel what they feel as you turn every page. And there's an eccentricity to both their work that makes each story a pure pleasure to read. I would recommend reading anything they write!

Open Wide

I usually don't make it a habit of taking pictures in the mens room, but in this case I just had to make an exception...

There were two cool things...

...I saw at San Diego Comic Con from artists who came for portfolio reviews.

First was an artist who printed an actual blank blueline comic page on the back of his business card. Before he gave it to you, he asked you who your favorite comic character was and then did a quick little sketch of that character on the back of his card. Yes, it was a little time-consuming, but it sure as hell made an impression on me.

The second was the portfolio of a kid whose samples were about an artist coming to San Diego to show editors his portfolio. It was cute and well done and got editors talking.

Both pretty original ideas and left their mark on all who saw them. Nice job, guys!

In case you missed it...

Nuno Plati and I had a short story in Ivan Brandon's incredible 24seven Anthology, on sale in comic chops everywhere now!

Back to regular posting...

I'm back from SDCC. Summer is half over. Where did the time go? I feel like I've accomplished nothing these past few months. I had all kinds of grand plans for stuff I wanted to do, but a lot of it simply fell to the wayside. Life gets in the way of life sometimes, you know...

I went out to my parents this past weekend for a small pool party/BBQ and got to relax a little and clear my head. I've fallen into kind of a rut with work recently and decided I need to start getting some of my thoughts and feelings out a bit more, open up and write less about comics and more about myself. So not that any of you want to read my psycho-babble, but I'm gonna try and use this blog for more self-expression going forward. It's time to make it a bit more personal again. But no worries, I'll be posting the usual work updates and drunken pics from time to time as well...

So let me start by sharing a bit of advice I got from Robert Downey Jr. himself at Comic Con that got me thinking. It's nothing you haven't heard before, but considering who said it and the manner in which he told it to me, it got me thinking:

"It's better to beg for forgiveness than regret never having taken the chance in the first place."