Archive for the ‘cownt’ Category
Filed Under blog, cownt, holidays, jesse james vs machine gun kelly, kill all monsters, marketing, superman, writing is hard, writing projects
Happy New Year!
So… 2009.
Again, these aren’t resolutions; they’re just plans. And vague ones at that.
Kill All Monsters and The Cownt are priorities on the comics front. Kill All Monsters just needs a publisher, so I need to be more diligent about that. We’re just about ready to submit to a couple of more companies who needed a little more in their pitches than some of the others required. Not that we’ve heard back from everyone we initially sent it to, so there may be some following up to do if I can figure out how not to be a pest about it.
I want to get the Cownt one-shot finished and pitched by the end of the year. I’d love to see it in stores by then, and I think that’s possible, but let’s not get ahead ourselves just yet. Finishing the novel is another writing focus. Being smarter about business and marketing in general. Seeing if we can get Jesse vs. Machine Gun going again.
I think that’s enough writing goals.
Except that I’m very excited about the new digs that the old Blogarama crew have staked out. It’s going to be fun. And I’m changing the focus of my column over there slightly so that I can talk more about the kinds of comics I like most. There should be announcements by the end of the week. Maybe as soon as tomorrow.
As for this blog, I’m gonna keep on keeping on. I promised myself I wouldn’t make any more Announcements about the direction, so I won’t except to say that as my interests fluctuate, Adventureblog content probably will too.
On a personal level, I’m hoping to take Diane and David to Tallahassee this year. That’s where I grew up, but I haven’t been back in about 20 years. Yikes. Doesn’t seem that long. It’s way past time I introduced my family to those folks.
That should do it, eh? Like I said yesterday, 2008 had some disappointments and I’m still feeling that a bit. I don’t want to load 2009 up with too many expectations right away. If we keep things reasonable and just strive to make a little more progress, it’ll be a good year.
Filed Under cownt, jessica hickman
I meant to mention this a long time ago, but pal o’ mine (and Cownt artist) Jess Hickman illustrated a story by Chris Arrant in the No Formula anthology. Is good.
Filed Under amber atoms, atomic robo, courtney crumrin, cownt, kitty hawk, lost, resident evil, space girls, ted naifeh
The Hathor Legacy
Paul Taylor, one of the artists on The Cownt, was recently interviewed for the Hathor Legacy site about his popular webcomic Wapsi Square. It’s a cool article with some great insight into Paul and his work, but I’m also linking to it because it introduced me to the Hathor Legacy site itself.
I haven’t browsed much yet to see how much our specific tastes and opinions align, but I love the concept and the tag-line, “the search for good female characters.” You can read their mission statement here and catch up on the conversation here. What I can’t seem to find there is any mention of who Hathor is, but a quick Google tells me that she was the Egyptian goddess of love, music, and beauty.
The Bechdel Rule
One of the things the Hathor Legacy mentions is Alison Bechdel’s famous movie test. It’s an easy test to remember and sets up some great criteria that more writers should implement. To pass it, a movie just needs to have 1) at least two women in it who 2) talk to each other about 3) something besides a man. The Hathor Legacy adds that the women should be named characters, which I suppose is an okay amendment, but it’s worth noting that it’s not in the original comic strip that the Rule came from.
Also not in the original strip is any sort of suggestion about what this Rule should be used for. It’s in the context of one woman sharing her personal preferences with another woman and it’s never said that all movies should have these elements. I don’t see that suggestion in my initial look-over of the Hathor Legacy either. What I’m getting – and what I totally agree with – is simply that more movies should be that way. The Hathor Legacy also includes TV shows, books, and comics, but admits that this is less of a problem in those formats.
I’m looking forward to finding out what the Hathor Legacy writers are into and what they think should be better. In the meantime, NPR also recently had this discussion and came up with its own, short list of shows that meet the Rule’s criteria (giving special mention to The Middleman, yay!).
Did you know NPR had a pop culture blog? How have I been missing that?
Okay, on to other stuff that may or may not meet the Bechdel Rule, but that’s okay too…
Kitty Hawk
I started reading this webcomic expecting a typical action/adventure story, but it’s a lot more than just that. Sure there are jet packs and robot pilots and mysteries, but there’s also a beautiful, quiet story about a young woman trying to figure out where she fits into the world around her. And the art’s amazing. Start here and click Next.
Atomic Robo and the Sparrow
I’ll have more to say about Atomic Robo’s awesome Sparrow character later, but for now, you can see what her creators have to say about her here, including how she was initially going to be a dude until it became apparent that a lot of Atomic Robo readers are girls. Very cool.
Miss America
Pappy’s got a Golden Age story about everyone’s favorite teen super-heroine from the ’40s.
Lost: Season Five
Gettin’ excited! (Thanks, /Film!)
Courtney Crumrin and the Prince of Nowhere
Newsarama talks with Ted Naifeh about the latest installment in his awesome series of charmingly spooky graphic novels.
Resident Evil 4
It’s coming. I’m nervous about it, but I liked the first two enough that I’m still excited to see more. (The third one was okay.)
Amber Atoms
Coming in February from Image Comics.
AMBER ATOMS #1
story, art & cover KELLY YATES
colors MICHAEL E. WIGGAM
“CHAPTER ONE”
Blast-off with the newest sci-fi adventure heroine Amber Atoms! Follow the ongoing adventures of this modern day “Flash Gordon” as Amber dreams of leaving her mundane life, but not exactly how she imagined. Mercenaries and aliens suddenly invade Amber’s world as she learns that her family history could decide the fate of the galaxy.
FEBRUARY 18 – 32 PAGES – FC – $3.50
CBR has more info here.
Filed Under cownt, gavin spence, jessica hickman, paul taylor
I hope another writing update is okay, because I’m resurrecting the Cownt and want to talk about it. Tomorrow we’ll go back to talking about other people’s stories.
If you’ve known me for a while, you know that I’ve got this vampire cow character called the Cownt that I created with my brother-in-law. Yes, there’s a superficial similarity to Hell Cow from that Howard the Duck story, but I swear that Dave and I didn’t read Howard the Duck (thanks to George Lucas) and anyway, the “vampire cow” concept is where the likeness ends. With all respect to Steve Gerber, the Cownt is much, much cooler. And anyway, Gerber wasn’t the first to come up with the idea either.
The lead story in Tales from the Inner Sanctum #1 is actually a Cownt story. The artist on that one is Scotland’s own Gavin Spence who’s responsible for most of the visual look of the bovamp (though the version above has evolved dramatically from the Inner Sanctum version).
Anyway, for various reasons, Gav and I have never been able to get a Cownt comic off the ground, but we love the character and everyone we talk to loves the character, so we’ve brought in some assistance to help us get a book going.
Jess Hickman came up with the idea for a Cownt anthology a FallCon or two ago. She’s always been the Cownt’s biggest fan and my strongest encouragement to do something with him. Witness, for example, the Halloween card she and Grant sent me this year.
For whatever reason, I was dead set on getting a full, 22-page one-shot done before I wanted to start thinking about short stories. A large part of it was because I was still trying to figure out just what kind of character the Cownt ought to be.
But then Warren Ellis came up with that idea about forming a band and I really wanted to try it. Pretty much as soon as the idea of an anthology comic written by me with three different artists hit my head, I knew it had to be a Cownt book.
It wouldn’t be a Cownt book without Gav, so he obviously needed to be on board. And he is.
Jess was the easy second choice. She showed me her design of the Cownt at FallCon.
No wait. That’s a picture Jess took of me at my table during FallCon. Here are her sketches.
Jess and I spent a lot of time at FallCon hashing out ideas for the Cownt book. I said before that I struggled with what kind of character I wanted the Cownt to be. I waffled between a Casper-esque kids’ character, a dark homage to Hammer films and Marvel’s Tomb of Dracula comic, or some kind of weird combination of the two. What Jess (and Jason and Darla and others who were hanging out at FallCon) helped me work through was that the Cownt isn’t any of those. You can’t compare him to other properties, because he’s unique. Trying to tie him to those characters in my head was stifling me and making me try to change the character. They convinced me to just let the Cownt be the Cownt.
It all sounds so obvious now, but what I needed to do was come up with ideas based on reactions (mine as well as fans’) to the Cownt drawings. People were laughing, but they were mostly adults and they were mostly giggling over his udders (and asking the inevitable question: how can he be a “he” if he has udders?). I could go on pulling this apart and thinking about it all night, but I’m already dangerously close to ruining the joke by explaining it, so I’ll shut up. The point is that we’ve got the Cownt figured out now and he’s ready to make his debut.
The third artist in our band is none other than the one-and-only Paul Taylor from Wapsi Square. I’m thrilled (and somewhat stunned and disbelieving) that Paul’s interested in contributing. He’s a wonderful cartoonist with an equally wonderful webcomic and he’ll be perfect for Tales of the Cownt (or The Dark Cownt of Forbidden Love or whatever we end up calling it). I’ve actually got a Cownt drawing Paul did for me a year or so ago, but I’ll save that for another time. Expect to hear a lot more about the Cownt as we progress.
Filed Under conventions, cownt, kill all monsters, tales from the inner sanctum
Well, MicroCon was a blast as always. I got to catch up with a bunch of other local comics creators whom I only see a couple of times a year, and that’s a huge benefit of the show. Got to talk to Tyler Page for a bit about his recent Xeric award and what that means for his upcoming print edition of Nothing Better. Sam Hiti and I chatted about his Fist-a-Cuffs blog and how cool it is that everyone’s suddenly paying attention to it. Bought a copy of the new Spider Chronicles anthology off contributor Martin Powell. I know I’m forgetting people, so I apologize for that.
I also met some cool new folks.
Joel Vollmer, artist on
Dust to Dust, for one. Joel showed me his portfolio and I couldn’t be more excited that he’s the one illustrating our Jesse James/Machine Gun Kelly gunfight. I also got to re-meet
Sarah Morean whom I’d briefly met at FallCon last year, but didn’t realize that she was a creator, much less someone
whose work I needed to check out. (It’s not surprising, but
Shawn Hoke knew that already.)
The most fun about the local conventions though is hanging out with my usual convention pals:
Grant,
Jess,
Darla, and
Alex.
Paul Taylor and his wife and baby also hung out with us for a while, and new this year to our neck of the convention was
Charles Raymond and his wife Jennifer. I bought some great, oversized Hulk comics from Charles, sketchbooks from Jess and Grant (I already had one of Darla’s), and a copy of
Josh Howard Presents: Sasquatch, which Alex and Grant had both contributed to.
As for my own self: I wasn’t really there to sell this year.
Tales from the Inner Sanctum has pretty much found its audience in the Twin Cities, but I did okay with Cownt prints. My real goal for the show though was to get folks interested in and excited about
Kill All Monsters! Mission accomplished. Everyone who stopped by the table checked out the unlettered pages I had on display and when I’d explain the pitch there was a lot of enthusiasm for the book.
I also had a couple of folks ask me for advice about finding artists or otherwise breaking into the biz, which is happening more and more at shows, but is still flattering and humbling.
Filed Under conventions, cownt, dust to dust, tales from the inner sanctum
Just because I’m not on the website, doesn’t mean I won’t be at MicroCon on April 29th. They take it for granted that I’ll be there. And of course they should. You should too.
I’m an institution I tells ya!
So anyway… yeah, I’ll be there hanging out with Alex Ness and Joel Vollmer, aka the rest of the Dust to Dust team. Also, my perennial convention pals Grant Gould, Jessica Hickman, Darla Ecklund, and Paul Taylor.
I’ve been too busy working on new projects to put together the Art of the Cownt book that I’ve been meaning to do, but I’ll try to have some other Cownt merchandise to sell. Definitely some prints; maybe a mousepad or two. And of course, Tales from the Inner Sanctum. Oh, and I’ll be carrying around the inked pages from Kill All Monsters! #1, so ask to see those. They’re beeyooteefull!
Filed Under cownt
Gav and I are thinking about the Quartet of Crime concept and maybe just focusing on the Cownt. We’re still talking it over, but he’s obviously everyone’s favorite character (including ours) and maybe it’s better to just deal with him.
Not sure how that’s going to affect the Quartet of Crime one-shot that Gav’s currently working on.
Filed Under conventions, cownt, grafika, tales from the inner sanctum
MicroCon was so much fun. I shared a table with Grant Gould and Jessica Hickman again like we did at FallCon last October. I was much better prepared this time though and we had a good looking table, I think. Here’s some pictures of it before the con got started. Click on it or any of the other images to see a full-sized picture.
Since FallCon, Grant was selected to be an official sketch artist for the Revenge of the Sith cards. That’s a collage of some of his sketch cards behind him. I kept forgetting to ask, but I think Jess is working on a page from Three Days the Devil Danced.
Behind the Grafika and Cownt stuff on the table you can see a cool drawing that Grant was nice enough to contribute to my Black Canary sketchbook. One of these days I’ll get the rest of the sketchbook scanned in and posted on my LiveJournal, but for now, here’s Grant sketching and a better shot of the final piece.
Grant had a great idea for attracting people to his side of the table. He’d made up trading-sized cards on which to do personal sketchs for people of whatever Star Wars character they wanted. Or any other character some joker like me wanted to see holding a lightsaber. One guy requested a Scrooge McDuck. I wanted the Cownt.
One of the coolest things about the con was all the kids there with their parents. Grant attracted those guys like Pooh bears to honey.
After a while, fellow Grafika member Darla Ecklund showed up to pretty up my side of the table.
Seeing people is the best part of these things. There’s some folks I only get to see a couple of times a year like Sam Hiti.
This year there were several people whom I’d talked to online, but never met in person. The scurvy rogue known on Steve Niles’s message board as Black Bart stopped by and picked up a copy of Tales from the Inner Sanctum #2. I also finally got to meet inker Barb Schulz after missing her for coffee a week or so ago. There was also indie creator Jennifer Young who’s done some very cool mini-comics and a graphic novel called Cold Summer. I love her work and it was great finally getting to meet her. I don’t know why I’m so serious in the picture. Blech. The camera caught her in mid-gum-smack, but I think it works for her.
What else? Oh, yeah. I got to meet some cool new people too. There was a father and son there with a table who are starting their own publishing business and are looking for creators. We exchanged information and promised to stay in touch. And I talked to lots of comics fans. One fella bought Tales from the Inner Sanctum #1 thanks to the fact that Jess’s original pages were on the table (I bought those from her, which was my coolest purchase of the day). There was also a nice couple named Amanda and Mike with whom I had a very nice, long conversation. And then there was this guy. We never did figure out who he was supposed to be dressed as. That’s green construction paper on his head though.
My brother-in-law and co-Cownt-creator Dave showed up for a while. It’s weird to me how much he and Cownt artist Gav Spence look alike.
And that’s pretty much it. After the show, Grant, Jess, Dave, and I went and got some burgers and called it a day.
The End.
Filed Under conventions, cownt, grafika, tales from the inner sanctum
MicroCon was so much fun. I shared a table with Grant Gould and Jessica Hickman again like we did at FallCon last October. I was much better prepared this time though and we had a good looking table, I think. Here’s some pictures of it before the con got started. Click on it or any of the other images to see a full-sized picture.
Since FallCon, Grant was selected to be an official sketch artist for the Revenge of the Sith cards. That’s a collage of some of his sketch cards behind him. I kept forgetting to ask, but I think Jess is working on a page from Three Days the Devil Danced.
Behind the Grafika and Cownt stuff on the table you can see a cool drawing that Grant was nice enough to contribute to my Black Canary sketchbook. One of these days I’ll get the rest of the sketchbook scanned in and posted on my LiveJournal, but for now, here’s Grant sketching and a better shot of the final piece.
Grant had a great idea for attracting people to his side of the table. He’d made up trading-sized cards on which to do personal sketchs for people of whatever Star Wars character they wanted. Or any other character some joker like me wanted to see holding a lightsaber. One guy requested a Scrooge McDuck. I wanted the Cownt.
One of the coolest things about the con was all the kids there with their parents. Grant attracted those guys like Pooh bears to honey.
After a while, fellow Grafika member Darla Ecklund showed up to pretty up my side of the table.
Seeing people is the best part of these things. There’s some folks I only get to see a couple of times a year like Sam Hiti.
This year there were several people whom I’d talked to online, but never met in person. The scurvy rogue known on Steve Niles’s message board as Black Bart stopped by and picked up a copy of Tales from the Inner Sanctum #2. I also finally got to meet inker Barb Schulz after missing her for coffee a week or so ago. There was also indie creator Jennifer Young who’s done some very cool mini-comics and a graphic novel called Cold Summer. I love her work and it was great finally getting to meet her. I don’t know why I’m so serious in the picture. Blech. The camera caught her in mid-gum-smack, but I think it works for her.
What else? Oh, yeah. I got to meet some cool new people too. There was a father and son there with a table who are starting their own publishing business and are looking for creators. We exchanged information and promised to stay in touch. And I talked to lots of comics fans. One fella bought Tales from the Inner Sanctum #1 thanks to the fact that Jess’s original pages were on the table (I bought those from her, which was my coolest purchase of the day). There was also a nice couple named Amanda and Mike with whom I had a very nice, long conversation. And then there was this guy. We never did figure out who he was supposed to be dressed as. That’s green construction paper on his head though.
My brother-in-law and co-Cownt-creator Dave showed up for a while. It’s weird to me how much he and Cownt artist Gav Spence look alike.
And that’s pretty much it. After the show, Grant, Jess, Dave, and I went and got some burgers and called it a day.
The End.
Filed Under conventions, cownt, grafika
I just made preview books for a couple of upcoming projects, Three Days the Devil Danced and Quartet of Crime. The previews are all nice and big and laminated and bound and pretty. I’m going to have them at MicroCon on Sunday.
Speaking of MicroCon, I had coffee with PopThought’s Alex Ness last Saturday. Well, he had coffee. I had a sissy, coffee-free Strawberry Frappacino. It was tasty though and Alex is a great guy and fun to talk to. A friend of Alex’s named Barb Schulz was going to join us, but circumstances prevented her being there. That relates to MicroCon because Barb’s an artist and comics inker and will be at the convention, so my list of people to see just got longer by one.
