The first issue of Crozonia is now available on WOWIO. The coolest thing, for me, about it is that my name is up in lights along with Jim Su and Peter Kostka. Jim has been a true pleasure to work with thus far, and he’s an extremely talented guy to boot. Anybody interested in reading the full, edited (by yours truly) first issue of Crozonia need only follow the link provided below.

CROZONIA #1

I have now completely finished my editing and co-writing duties for the first issue of Beach Creative Studios’ Crozonia title. I didn’t notice it before, but there’s actually a brief news post announcing that I’m the copy editor for the title on the Crozonia blog. So that’s kind of cool. Jim Su, creator o’ Crozonia, was really pleased with the grammar corrections and suggestions for dialogue changes I made throughout the first issue. There’s a whopping 17-page(!) preview of the first issue available HERE. If you find any misplaced punctuation, misspelled words or dialogue that just isn’t working for you it’s all my fault. So try to ignore it. I had a lot of fun working on the issue. The next step for Crozonia #1 is for Jim to get it showcased on WOWIO. Once that happens I’ll probably be returning to pimp it a little more.

I’ve written the first few pages of BANANA GANG. The idea is to make it funny, and I think I’m doing an… okay job. Unfortunately for me, pretty much anything will make me laugh, so I’m probably not the best judge. I’m waiting to hear from Dario about a title logo for the webcomic. He said he knew a guy that was cheap and could get it done quick, but so far there have been no updates. I’ve sent three scripts to Fernando, but he hasn’t sent me back anything yet either. I’m trying to finish all the scripts for the first week and start on the next by Friday before I start harassing anybody. I’ll probably give it ’til Monday.

I sent a script I wrote for a concept called UNDEAD WAR a while back to an artist pal of mine named Claudio (link to the right)… and he loved it. He’s done some designs for a few of the characters that I really like, but I’m not going to show them off yet. We’re probably going to do a pitch together, but I want to read through the script a few more times to make sure it’s where I’d like it to be. I wrote it quite a while ago.

More to come…

Before I say anything else, I’d first like to say… VOTE!

Okay, so with that out of the way I can tell you a bit more about Banana Gang. Talking about the story that I wrote for the Comics for a Cause anthology got me thinking more and more about the the potential of the series. Kongo and Bud were a lot of fun to write, and I’d developed quite a few enemies and supporting characters that I hated to see go to waste.

Well, I recently received an email message from an artist named Fernando Sosa asking if I had anything available for him to work on. It’s always pleasant to receive emails like this because it validates your ability as a writer when an artist wants to work with you. I passed Fernando a few notes about Banana Gang including the promotional art Dario Carrasco had done, and he agreed to take up the reins. So now Banana Gang is back!

My tentative plan is to introduce it as a webcomic using the model D.J. Coffman introduced not too long ago in a blog post titled Host your own Friggin Webcomic! I think updating the webcomic with a page a week would be the best idea for now. I’ve already started working on the first storyline, and Fernando has done quite a few character sketches. I’m showing a few of them off below. Enjoy!

Oops! Sorry about that, folks. I didn’t realize I hadn’t posted on this bad boy in a while. But I’m back now, so no worries.

Yes, I realize that I never get comments on this blog so I’m probably only writing this for an audience of one. But that won’t stop me from talking to, uh… myself!

Anyway, speaking of gorillas… I wrote a story quite a while ago featuring a gorilla named Kongo and his miniature (seriously… the dude is tiny) human sidekick Bud. Kongo and Bud are the protectors of a metropolis called Jungle City. An artist, and pretty good pal of mine, named Dario Carrasco designed the duo and asked me to write a story about them that we could potentially turn into a webcomic called Banana Gang. Unfortunately, Dario wasn’t able to do the art for the concept, and the artist we did find for it eventually had to pull out for a variety of complicated reasons. Another half-finished project that is pretty much the story of my comics career.

Not that I’m bitter about that or anything…

Heh.

So ANYWAY… here’s the original design Dario did:

Pretty cool, no? Kongo and Bud are basically like Batman and Robin. They swing around Jungle City righting wrongs and battling the forces of evil. Kongo is the muscle and Bud is the brains of this particular outfit. The series was designed to have elements of fantastic action and comedy. Jungle City was created as a place where humans and animals with human-level intelligence live and work together in harmony.

I wrote a few strips featuring the cast of Banana Gang. I planned to start off the webcomic by having Kongo interview for his sidekick position, so I went with that. Hilarity and tomfoolery ensued. Again, the webcomic never went anywhere due to lack of artist, but Dario did ask me to write a 6-page preview story of Banana Gang to potentially entice artists and perhaps bring new life to Kongo and Bud. This was back in the early half of 2006 so, as you can imagine, it never amounted to much. However, Dario did find an artist to bring the 6-page preview story to life and I’ve been told that it will see print in an upcoming anthology put out by Dario Carrasco called Comics for a Cause.

It will most likely be released at some point in 2009. The announcement featuring my name in lights is HERE. Yeah, I know it says 2008, but due to the challenges inherent with independent publishing, I’d say 2009 was a much safer bet.

It’s an honor to have my story included in Comics for a Cause. The proceeds from this latest edition are being donated to a Children’s Hospital in Calgary. When the book is actually made available I’ll be pimping the living heck out of it. Expect to hear more about this as soon as I have anything else to share.

El Gorgo! is a comic inspired by the wonderful comics produced during the Silver Age. The story is about a super-intelligent gorilla luchador that also plays in the world’s greatest surf rock band “Gorgo-A-Go-Go” when he’s not battling the forces of evil and going on sweeping cosmic adventures.

This is a comic created by friends of mine named Mike McGee and Tamas (Tom) Jakab. They’ve created a magnificent character that is a true homage to the types of comics Jack “King” Kirby developed throughout his amazing career. Mike and Tom are a real inspiration to me because they’re doing this book for the sheer, simple love of it. They’re providing it for free on their website along with making it available in printed form. And the best part of all is that they’re finding an audience.

Mike and Tom both imagined there would be minimal interest in the book. Not because it deserved minimal interest (because it doesn’t… it’s amazing), but just because comics is a tough business, and printing a full-color comic book is so expensive that the price of purchasing El Gorgo! (for potential readers) seemed to indicate they’d have a hard time unloading the copies they did print. But that has NOT been the case. They’re nearly sold out of their first issue, and it’s happened at such a rapid pace that they’re strongly considering a re-print. It’s hard to convey how impressive something like that is, but Mike and Tom have been going about El Gorgo! in the perfect way. They’ve provided it for free on a very entertaining, user-friendly website to build a strong buzz for the comic, and now that it is available to order they’re reaping the benefits. I really couldn’t be happier for these guys.

You can find out more about El Gorgo! (and read the first issue of the comic for free!!!) here: El Gorgo!

Please take a look and lend your support to this fantastic creation.

From the website:

El Gorgo is the world’s greatest Luchador. He is a gorilla. He also is the world’s greatest surf-guitarist. And he writes historical fiction. And he’s a scientist. And he fights crime. And he goes on adventures. Sometimes he sleeps for a few seconds.

I haven’t written anything on here for a while. I blame Fantasy Football. And that isn’t a joke. I am an unabashed fanatic when it comes to American football. There’s one particular team I root for, but I’m supremely interested in the goings-on of each and every franchise. I’m always visiting Yahoo! Sports, SI.com or ESPN.com to gain bits of information about players, teams and coaches. I visit blogs, much like this one, dedicated to football. It’s actually quite ridiculous when you think about it.

But I love it just the same. I can’t get enough of football. I love everything about the sport–except perhaps the amount of money the men playing it receive. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with an athlete earning millions of dollars to play the sport I love and they excel at. I only have a problem with them making tens of millions of dollars.

But I digress, a huge part of my football jones is playing fantasy football every year. I think of myself as a fairly knowledgeable person when it comes to sports of any kind, but Fantasy Football has brought my knowledge of football to skyscraper-level heights. I know more about the third string wide receivers of a team I have no rooting interest in whatsoever than I know about my family tree. And that’s no exaggeration! I’m not one of those types of people that starts dozens of fantasy football teams every year, but when I do get my two teams started (two is the ABSOLUTE limit after a six team fiasco years ago) I dedicate massive amounts of time to scouring the internet for news about the players I have, the players my opponents have, and even the players that NEITHER of us have because if some obscure player breaks out and has a nice season (statistically speaking) you want to be the guy that picked him up and used him to claim victory.

During football season I probably dedicate nearly as much time to fantasy football as I do to the craft of writing. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s undoubtedly true. I also dedicate copious amounts of time to watching football and sports news programs on television. It all adds up to create my least productive time of the year writing-wise.

The problem is that this year–as I’ve mentioned–is going to be my most productive year yet as far as getting my work out there for people to see. I have writing assignments lined up at this moment, and I’ve found myself putting them off from time to time as I minimize the Word document so I can spend a few more minutes tweaking my fantasy football rosters. This is a serious problem.

However, I think the first step in solving any problem is realizing it’s there. At times in the past I’d put everything I was doing with my writing on the backburner whenever an interesting or enjoyable distraction crossed my path and thought nothing of it. Fantasy football is something I really enjoy participating in, but I know that to be a successful writer I need to take a step out of the fantasy world and move back into reality.

As hard as that might be…

In the past I’d usually answer with the second option. Even though I’m pretty much a nobody when it comes to the world of comic books (or fiction writing in general) I’d still find excuses not to write on a daily basis. I think I’ve always realized that the only way to make yourself a successful writer is to, y’know… write stuff. Even if it isn’t anything particularly great, at least you’re practicing your craft. And if you have the opportunity to showcase that work, even if it’s rejected, you’re still getting (hopefully) valuable feedback that you can use to improve.

But as I said, I’d still find excuses to put it off.

But that is not the case now. I am now officially in the “working hard” camp. It’s not that I’m doing anything all that groundbreaking either. I’m just actively pursuing my goals now. I think in the not-so-recent past I was always looking for something to distract me from what I wanted. But I’ve recently discovered that that’s no way to live your life. If I want something I have to go for it and I have to be relentless in my pursuit.

I’ve made some small progress towards my goal of writing comics over the years. I’ve been published, I’ve established relationships with proven creators, I’ve worked hand-in-hand with upcoming talent with goals similar to mine. I haven’t broken through the glass ceiling yet, but I’m chipping away at it. I think I was content for a long time with rapping gently on the glass with my knuckles in the hopes that somebody would be a pal and offer to let me in. But now I know I have to throw myself at the ceiling as hard as I can. I have to sacrifice my body to break the glass. It hurts throwing everything you have into something that has no guarantee of working out the way you’d like it to. It hurts like hell. I’ve experienced my fair share of disappointments while I struggle to make my mark on the comics industry.

But this year will be a banner year for me. I’m slated to be published three times this year. I’m sure some of you (if anybody reads this) are thinking that’s not very impressive. And you could very well be right about that, but the simple fact is that I’ve never been published more than once in any calendar year. So it is a big deal to me, and I think that’s the whole point. I’m making progress a little bit at a time and I’m starting to see the results. My goal is to progress a little more each year until I’m finally able to do what I’ve always wanted. I want to write for a living, and I’m going to work as hard as I can to accomplish that goal.

No, it’s not the name of some new story I’m writing…

Remember the television show “Kung Fu”? Okay, you probably don’t, but there was a scene where the main character Caine (played by David Carradine) tried to take this pebble out of the palm of his master’s hand. The master was called Master Kan, and he basically told Caine that when he could take the pebble he’d be ready for the outside world. Caine had to prove he was skilled enough to take it. He had to earn it.

I feel like Caine, and comics is my Master Kan. And I’m still too slow.

I talked a while back about getting the amazing opportunity to pitch ideas to Jim Valentino and Kris Simon at Image Comics’ Shadowline. I’ve put together quite a few pitches in the past with full art that cost me an arm and a leg, so the opportunity was the most welcome one of my fledgling career. It gave me the prospect of getting an idea at least partially approved before hiring any artists to develop it. This is a big deal because, trust me, approaching an artist (whether penciller, inker, colorist or otherwise) with a guarantee to get something published is a lot better incentive than approaching an artist with the hope of getting something published. It also means being published at Image Comics. And getting published at Image Comics is my dream. It’s why I do what I do.

I pitched five ideas, Jim had a basic interest in two of them. I worked on them for a couple months. I re-pitched them…

And Jim didn’t like either of them.

Yeah, so that’s a little more lighthearted than I felt at the time. Instead of snatching the pebble from Jim’s hand, he snatched the heart right out of my body. I felt really discouraged when I heard back from Jim about the pitches. I think it’s only natural to feel that way. You put a lot of time and effort into creating something that you think has merit, and when it doesn’t work out you feel… drained.

And at first all I could really see was my disappointment. It flooded my senses so that everything I looked at had an aura of dullness around it. Everything I touched had less substance and every smell was tinged with it. I’m not writing this because I’m expecting pity, but because it’s the truth behind how I felt. Failure is a powerful thing. It can make you feel like you’re not good enough. Not just unable to do what you attempted, but not good enough to do anything.

But after a while that sense of failure started to fade. And when I looked at the email Jim sent in response I started to understand the advice he was giving me. So much so that it’s given me new insight into my writing and what I hope to accomplish with it. I think I’ve always regarded my comics writing as important to me, but when I tried to think of the best stories to submit to comic book publishers like Image I was always looking for the flashiest, most action-packed story I could find by default. There was no real substance behind it. Instead of writing something that was important to me, instead of using my voice and my individual intelligence and personality to bring life to my characters, I simply tried to write what I thought might make the most impact on a reader, editor, publisher, etc. And that’s not the right way to go about it.

So I’m learning. A bit at a time, I’m learning. Breaking into the world of comics isn’t easy, but it truly is what I want to do with my life. If I can continue to grow and improve, I’ll snatch that pebble yet.

I’ve been watching quite a bit more than I thought I would. When they first started I thought I might watch a little bit of the swimming because I was vaguely interested in Michael Phelps and his pursuit of the most gold medals ever (a mark he’s already reached and surpassed) and I figured I’d try to catch a few of the “Redeem Team’s” games for USA basketball. But NBC is doing a great job of switching things up and giving viewers a glimpse of multiple events. Immediately following a Michael Phelps race, we cut to the Chinese national men’s gymnastics team doing their routine on the rings or the parallel bars, or a clip of Togo winning their first ever Olympic medal (a bronze in Canoe/Kayak), and I find myself drawn in.

Not because I have a vested interest in Togo or Chinese men’s gymnastics, but because watching these amazing athletes strive for their dreams is riveting television. And they really are amazing athletes. I see the American basketball team all the time in the States, and I’ve seen and heard enough about Michael Phelps to realize he’s one of a kind. But the Chinese men’s gymnastics team did things I didn’t think were humanly possible during their routine. I literally couldn’t tear my eyes from the screen. And then, by extension, NBC did a terrific job of incorporating the slim chances the American team had to beat these juggernauts of gymnastics by cutting to the team preparing for their next event. So by the time swimming was over and the network went to gymnastics for the duration, I wanted to keep watching.

And I guess there’s also the fact that I love an underdog. The Chinese are apparently some kind of gymnastics gods walking among mere mortals. And when I look at the medal count online, the Chinese are also dominating the field when it comes to earning gold medals (although the US has a slight lead in total medals). So when faced with odds like that, it was easy for me to root for the United States gymnastics team to beat the Chinese. They didn’t, of course (had the lead and lost it), but for a team that wasn’t expected to medal, earning a bronze was a nice accomplishment. And even though the US team was disappointed in their inability to beat the Chinese, they were gracious and still pleased to earn another piece of hardware for their country.

What those guys do is incredible, by the way. I keep thinking of Batman and Robin training in the Batcave. Batman and Robin are always listed as “world class gymnasts” in their “list of powers”. Now I finally know what that means. And it is awesome. Is it realistic to let go of a bar, flip and twist three times over in midair and then grab the bar again at the last possible second all without losing any shred of momentum? Not for you or me, no. But for these guys it’s possible. They do it all the time.

So basically, I like what I’ve seen so far. Michael Phelps has me watching more swimming. Men’s gymnastics has me watching women’s gymnastics (USA placed silver in that, second again to the Chinese). And the events I wanted to watch are so good that they’re allowing me to find hidden gems I had no interest in before. And I still haven’t been able to catch USA basketball yet.