Onto 2010

2009 was a bad year for a lot of people. For me, another year, not necessarily good or bad, but generally okay. I think 2010 will be a better year for most people, including myself, I hope. I mean, one always wants things to get better. It looks to be a year of catchup. Deadworld: Slaughterhouse which was scheduled to come out last year as a mini-series, has just been released as a hardcover. Outside of a few printing snafus which are not major, the book looks really nice. Sami did such a fantastic job with the art that it overwhelms any printing deficiencies. It should be in comic shops any day now. The schedule of Deadworld books coming from IDW has been figured out and the first one up is the Deadworld Classic which is a compendium of all of Vince Locke's artwork. As a writer, I contributed a little to the last portion. There will be additional pages from Vince including some surprises such as the very first Deadworld story he drew that has never seen print until now. The Sin Eternal book, again a supposed 2009 book, is near completion. Dealing with a return to Dante's Inferno, it was a book from hell (pun intended) as far as production goes. There are others but I'll wait until they come together. Of course, there is lots going on with Transfuzion Publishing. I don't know if I mentioned it before or not, but I keep up with the Transfuzion stuff on the Comic Related website in a column called Talking Transfuzion. I use that to discuss what's going on and spotlight creators and books. I expect quite a bit of this year to deal with exploitation of the digital format and there should be some of my books appearing from Kindle shortly. More announcements are expected but again, I'll wait until it's a reality rather than a possibility on most of the stuff. There was one aspect that did bring 2009 out in a downer. Some of the Caliber creators may remember and certainly customers of my Reader's store. Kathy Wolfram, who in addition to being a clerk at the store, handled all the accounting for the first few years of Caliber, died after Christmas of cancer. It was a rare form of cancer as it originated in her appendix. She left behind her husband, Mike, who used to be the store all those years ago, and two children. Her dad was an amateur photographer and he shot all the pictures of the King Kon conventions I used to put on as well as special events at Readers. I hadn't seen Kathy for awhile but of course, remember her well and fondly. Kathy was involved in Caliber mainly in accounting but she did have her opportunity to be part of the creative process. In the first few issues of Baker Street, it was her handwriting that appears as the journal notes of the Sue character. She said her children were impressed that she had actually worked in comics. Just very sad. I hope by the time I put up the next blog, I have some information about the Deadworld movie which is moving ahead even though there isn't much to report. It's just the way the system works.