Deadworld moving?

It's official so now I can at least talk about it. Desperado Publishing has moved to IDW where it will become an imprint of that company. That gives Joe Pruett the autonomy he wanted and yet still be part of the growing IDW Publishing. I'm not exactly sure how that will be in regards to MY stuff but I'll worry about it as it comes up. Joe did tell me that IDW was interested in printing the Deadworld material. It appears that the Slaughterhouse hardcover will be coming out from Desperado at the beginning of the year. The delay was due to negotiations going on as it was supposed to be out in October. Sami Makkonen finished the book a long time ago and in fact, finished his following project, The Looking Glass Wars with Frank Beddor. A real fantastic looking book (as an aside, see Frank being interviewed about that on Good Morning America here). It's kinda funny as I still regard IDW as a "new" company but I see that they're celebrating their ten year anniversary. When I look back on it, that's about how long Caliber was around although at the time, it certainly seemed longer than that. Maybe because it just consumed my life so much at that time. I put in an awful lot of hours, which I'm sure most people do who own their own business, but I was always careful to be home and spend time with the kids. I'd mostly work when they were not at home or in bed. Even though Caliber ended, I don't feel like it was a waste of time or anything. I mean, one bad break here or there cost the company and most of it was sort of out of our control. I don't dwell on what could have been but sometimes when I discuss things with some old "Caliber" people, it does come up. Mainly it was the Power Cardz situation and the graphic novels that fell apart. I recently got a link to an article sent to me about a creator who worked for Caliber and he said in an interview that Caliber did the bad binding on purpose. I mean, just how idiotic is that? With the end of the year coming up, it's time to make plans for the convention season. I don't do many shows. I will be at the new Chicago convention (C2E2) and looking at the Traverse City show again. Not sure about Motor City even though its in the neighborhood and I'd still like to do Heroes Con one of these days. I may even do San Diego this year...still a bit early to decide for sure. I'm looking at a couple of horror shows as it seems I do better at those but shows are not a necessity for me and though I enjoy them once I'm there, I usually dread thinking about attending them. As an update on the movie. Things are moving along as they need to so that's good. So far, happy with the script and just have to wait and see how things play out. One thing about Hollywood, it does not move at a breakneck speed...

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Time...never enough

Well, it's been awhile. Mainly it due to keeping so busy that is just not that high of a priority. I think that's why you see the sites like facebook and twitter doing so well. Comments can just be throw out there without consideration of trying to construct almost a column which is how many of the blogs, including this one started. I find that I have all these informational sources to attend to and frankly, I just can't keep up. It seems easy but like most people, I'm just inundated with so much activity dealing with family, school, publishing, writing, and whatever else comes along. It seems I'm always trying to catch up. I guess its better than not being busy. It seems everyone has the same complaints about time in today's world. I am quite shocked though, when I read people discussing various TV shows. How do people have the time to watch all of those shows. I have a DVR so I end up recording most of the stuff but the only show I really try to get to is MadMen. I will "tape" Heroes but find I can only follow its plodding plot by speeding through it (and it seems I never really miss anything important). If I miss a show, I don't worry about it. In fact, I may have missed all but two of this season. I don't think that bodes well for my interest in the show. The carnival people are what hold my attention for this season and I detest any of the Hiro scenes. Most of my other recording are for shows on Discovery, History Channel, etc. I'm not trying to portray myself as a snob or anything but I love history and science is my profession (teaching biology) and I find myself increasingly becoming much more interested in all the aspects of science to the exclusion of almost everything else. But I have shows going all the way back to January that I still haven't watched yet. My family feels I'm clogging up the DVR with all these unwatched shows. I try to keep up on Facebook and obviously, am much more frequent there than here. If you're interested, and the Facebook link is now hooked up to the right. I also have an Amazon page (Gary Reed) but I don't keep on that as much as I should. I keep up to date more with the stuff happening with Transfuzion and do a regular column for ComicRelated here. I also have a myspace page but seldom use it. I think most people have moved on from myspace to facebook. I do have a twitter page but after signing up for it and finding I didn't want to be posting all the time, I haven't used it. In fact, I don't even remember the login or password for it so I will probably never get back to it. I did the Pittsburgh Comic Con for the first time. It was okay. I was in a separate room from the dealer's room with some other guests and the traffic wasn't as heavy there. It was amazing to see the turnout for Stan Lee. I can see why fans and guests like the con so much...everything was well organized and well run. I will be doing a signing at Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, MI. Sort of a homecoming for me as that was originally my store (called Comics Plus) but Katie and Dan Merritt not only changed the name but moved it down the street. One of the best stores I've been to, if you're in the area on October 28 at 5:00...stop in. I'll be giving out free copies of Deadworld comics and I think there's going to be a zombie drawing contest. Speaking of Deadworld, the next steps are moving along as far as the movie goes. Still a long way to go as nothing is certain until you see it on the screen but all the right pieces are being put in all the right holes so far...looking good. I think that Sin Eternal, the revamping and collected version of Sinergy, will be out in November. This is a retelling of Dante's Inferno but updated for more modern times. Galen Showman (who I worked with on Renfield) is the continuity artist and he does a fantastic job of keeping a semi-unified look as each level of Hell is drawn by a different artists. Over 25 artists including Guy Davis, Mark Bloodworth, Vince Locke, David Mack, Michael Lark, Dalibor Talajic, Jim Calafiore, and many others. As for the Deadworld printed stuff such as the reprint of the sold out Deadworld: Requeim for the World and the Slaughterhouse hard cover, there is some news coming out about that shortly, but at this time, I can't say anything about it. Enjoy your Halloween.

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New Talent from New Places

When I was publishing Caliber, one of the aspects that it accomplished, and almost inadvertently, was the introduction of new talent into the comics medium. I say inadvertent because being a small publisher, I had to rely on creator owned titles simply because I wasn't paying a page rate. Of course, that wasn't the whole reason as I also thought that creator owned books were just so much more interesting. There were a lot of creators known today that got their start at Caliber, and there were others, who may not have started off at Caliber but they honed their skills to get themselves to the next level. Guy Davis, Vince Locke, Mark Bloodworth, David Mack, Patrick Zircher, Mike Perkins, Michael Gaydos, Ed Brubaker, Jim Calafiore, Philip Hester, Ande Parks, Mike Carey, Jacen Burrows, Michael Allred, Dave Cooper, Jimmy Gownley, Brandon Peterson, James O'Barr, Don Kramer, Jason Lutes, Brian Bendis, Paul Sizer, Mark Ricketts, Troy Nixey, and many others did all or part of their "apprenticeship" at Caliber. It seemed for awhile that there was no longer a spot for the "new" creators to go through the process of going beyond creation of a title and actually producing it. However, that has changed with the incredible growth...and acceptability of material posted online. But sometimes I wonder if that access that is available to everyone, even more than it was with the explosion of publishers and titles in the 80's and 90's, is limiting the growth of artists. It seems some artist have latched onto a successful gig and it continues. In the past, with the printed material, it was a constant climb for most artists to get better. Maybe it was having an actual printed comic that could be looked that propelled artists to strive to get better. I mean, on the web, it's out of site, out of mind but when you have the physical artwork in front of you...well, that's a bit tougher to just look away from. There is a sense of permanence even though in actuality, it appears the web will be the key to posterity rather than random back issues stuffed into long white boxes. I started thinking about that as I was looking at some of Vince Locke's original Deadworld work. We're going to be doing a collection of all his old work and it is very interesting to compare and contrast not only Vince artwork with himself but with his friend, Guy Davis. Both of them started at about the same time at Arrow and moved to Caliber at the same time and almost immediately, these young guys moved onto other material and left their original books...Deadworld and Realm respectively at about the same time. If you look at Vince's art in the early Deadworld, you have to remember that he was a teenager. Yes, a teenager. He was obviously influenced by the strong line work of some artists but even in the early issues, he was experimenting...sometimes loosening up, sometimes tightening up, occasionally going into an almost cartoony style and then the next issue, playing with negative space. Deadworld was his training ground and he played in a lot of different directions. By the time he left Deadworld, he had already settled into his style which is apparent on American Freak, A History of Violence, and what I think was his best work, Saint Germaine (of course, I'm a bit biased on that one...). I also loved his work on The Plague, a historical fiction chronicle I did with him. Guy, on the other hand, did a lot less overt experimentation on The Realm. He definitely grew as an artist but he stayed in the same uh, realm. I believe Guy was also in his teens when he started this D&D fantasy book. He gave it a slight anime look as that was his influence at the time. Being a series based strongly around characters, Guy kept a much more consistent look for the 15 issues he did and looking back now, it must have been a chore for him at that time towards the end. He also was looking to move beyond what he was doing with the Realm and it was evident with his next project, Baker Street. It is incredible when you look at the Realm and realize that he moved from that to Baker Street. It's two different worlds. Of course, he also developed his own style evident in his long run on Sandman Mystery Theatre, The Marquis, and BRPD (which he just won an Eisner for as best penciller). The same could be said for Patrick Zircher and Michael Lark as it was easy to see them growing by leaps and bounds with each issue they did. I look back at The Verdict graphic novel that Caliber published that was written by Martin Powell. The artists were Dean Haspiel and Josh Neufeld and now their work has spun in a whole new direction, virtually unrecognizable from their early days. I have no idea how much a lot of these web artists are evolving simply because I'm not familiar enough with their older work. It's ironic in that all of the older work is stored on some server someplace and a lot easier to pull up than searching for back issues but it today's world of immediacy, it just doesn't seem like something people search for. Don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that today's artists are not getting better, it just isn't as apparent. Actually, I think that nowadays, there is more talent out there doing their own books then there was in the past, pre-web. A wealth of diversity, not possible back then, has spun stories into all new directions with completely different looks that are accepted by a lot of the audience that wanted nothing to do with it back then. Even though the market is considered weak by a lot of people in terms of sales of comics and books, it seems actually stronger and more likely to take advantage of the new avenues opening up. In fact, it seems almost that there is too much good stuff out there, even if the "normal" comics market doesn't recognize it all yet. The next collection I have coming out is SIN ETERNAL: A RETURN TO DANTE'S INFERNO which collects the Sinergy series that updates Dante's Inferno I did at Caliber. Galen Showman, who worked with me on Renfield, is the continuity artist. For each level of Hell, it is drawn by a different artist and I think there are 30 in all. some of the levels that originally appeared have been replaced by new ones. It is scheduled for a late October, early November release. I have a new column running up at Comicrelated.com which deals with my publishing house, Transfuzion Publishing. The column, Talking Transfuzion (okay, not the most original name) deals, of course, with what's happening with Transfuzion and also spotlights a creator adn a title each week. There is also a short 5 question interview with the creators behind Transfuzion's titles. I posted some pictures of one of the conventions, King Kon, I put together a very long time ago. Guests included Harvey Kurtzman, Carol Kalish, Max Collins, Terry Beatty, Larry Marder, Al Milgrom, Don Simpson, Dan Mishkin, Deni Loubert, Richard Pini, and many others. there's a pix of Harvey on the left. I will be a guest at the Cherry Capital Convention on August 29-30 and then will appear at the Pittsburgh Comic Con on Sept. 11-13. I will also be a guest at the Motor City Nightmares Convention in Novi, Mich on October 23-25 and then I'll close out with a signing at Green Brain Comics on October 28. (and congrats to them for being picked as The Best Comic Store in the Detroit area by Metro Times...again. That's going to be it for awhile as I have a full load of teaching this semester.

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