the magic of Photoshop

The Teddy and the Yeti ad machine is in full swing. The October issue of Previews is here as of today, complete with a nice half page ad to do with its listing. I'll put a picture of that up tomorrow...OR WHENEVER I GET AROUND TO IT!!

Anyway, I cobbled together an animated gif that I'm hoping to use on a few comic-themed websites in the near future. Let me say that if anyone feels an inkling to use this or show it to others, well...*cough*...I certainly won't complain. Unless you preface it with something like "here's something I hate:" and then show the banner ad. That would make me sad.

EDIT: Dammit! It looks like uploading the banner to this site makes the gif lose its animated qualities. It does other things than just sit there, I promise. I'll try to get a link to it or something. Crap, this is just a wasted post without the animation!

Fist of Justice

The folks over at Digital Webbing were kind enough to do an ad swap with me - there's an ad in Teddy and the Yeti #1 for the newly released Fist of Justice #5 (as seen above), and T&Y gets the back cover to THAT book. That's some very generous placement as the back cover is a premium spot on any book, especially one with a built in audience.

Digital Webbing has been publishing comics in one form or another for the last seven years, which is an eternity for a small press company. In comparison, Wagon Wheel Comics has been publishing for ZERO years. What a difference! They've been responsible for giving a lot of creators their start - The Goon was first published in an issue of Digital Webbing Presents.

In any case, digitalwebbing.com is where I met Duane and, now that I think about it, just about everyone associated with the book. If you're looking to put a creative team together, then this is the place to do it. If you see a DW book at your comic shop, pick it up! You can also buy books at their online shop...so check it out. DO IT!

website updates

For the first time in...well, quite a while, I've updated the ol' teddyandtheyeti.com website. It's not a major overhaul or anything, just a few things that have been necessary for while: most notably, I've got a five-page preview of the first issue in the "comics" section, and I've changed the "contact" e-mail address to something that actually sends and receives mail, which is quite a concept.

Jeff@teddyandtheyeti.com was a nice thought, and godaddy does provide an e-mail name when you buy the domain, but I never really thought to activate it/check it, so for all I know there are e-mails from Hollywood executives ready to buy the Teddy and the Yeti screenplay for TEN BILLION DOLLARS floating around in there. Regardless, safe and reliable gmail is now providing (FOR FREE!) a host for all the Yeti mail I'm sure to get. The new e-mail address is wagonwheelcomics@gmail.com...just so we're clear.

Jeff meets Stan Lee!

...for about a second.

As I mentioned in my last post, I went to the Pittsburgh Comicon a few weeks ago - the sole reason for me to go was so that I could meet Stan Lee, one of the most important creators in comic book history (and that's not doing him any justice).

Let me say right away that if this were any other creator still alive or if Stan were about 30 years younger, there's no way I would have gone - the people who run the Pittsburgh con overcharged for just about everything going on at the show (which isn't really anything new), and this was the defining example - $40 for one autograph, and that didn't include admission to the show itself, which was another 18 bucks.

Knowing that I was getting bent over a barrel kept me in the right mindset for this meeting, I think. I feel bad for anyone who was expecting to get to really meet this key figure in comic book lore, to shake his hand and have a conversation with him. I understood coming in that this encounter would be strictly regulated, though I didn't expect the assembly line mentality guests were ultimately greeted with. You gave your book (or whatever you had to get signed) to a convention worker and kept right on moving as Stan signed over and over and over again. You couldn't stop for pictures or anything more than a "hi, Stan", and that itself was a rarity. The entire experience was just...weird. It was a fairly dehumanizing event.

As much as I feel bad for the people who spent a bunch of money to be herded through a line, I think I feel bad for Stan even more. Here he is, a legend in his own right, and people are shuttling him back and forth, making him sign his name as many times as he possibly can. That's not to say he isn't benefiting from this at all - I'm sure he got a nice percentage of the overall cost, and at $40 a pop, there were at least 800 people in line...so you can do that math if you'd like.

Overall, I realized when I bought the tickets that I wouldn't be getting much more than an autograph and a glimpse of "The Man", and that softened the blow of this debacle quite a bit. Stan is 86, and I think it's understood that I might not get another chance to meet him (that's not to say he looked bad; to the contrary, he jogged to and from his booth each time he took a break and seemed his overexcited self throughout) - and I REALLY wanted to meet him...so I took the financial hit and stood in line as they churned out signature after signature.

It's something I'd do again if I had the chance to do it all over; I just wish it didn't feel so parsimonious!

Oh, and for the record, I had Stan sign a copy of Fantastic Four #51, one of my favorite books all around. And I have no idea what Spider-Man was doing at the signing...he just sat there the entire time, looking bored. I wonder if Stan gave him a ride after the show was over.

Marvel Value Stamps are the bane of my existence.

I took a trip home to take in the Pittsburgh Comicon on September 12th - not because the Pittsburgh con is a great con by most definitions (it's remained relatively the same for the past decade or so...just like the Pirates!), but because Stan Lee was making an appearance. As I've always wanted to meet The Man and won't get many more opportunities, I took the 600-mile jaunt and managed to score some home cooking and find a few sought after comics in the mix.

One of the worst comics (as far as the physical condition is concerned) I have out of the thousands I've got stashed away in boxes is a copy of Fantastic Four #150, which features a rare battle with Ultron as well as the wedding of the Inhuman Crystal and Pietro Maximoff, the mutant Quicksilver with the Pinko Commie name. This isn't an uncommon issue or a particularly expensive one - the reason I have such an awful copy is a cautionary tale in and of itself: I rather haphazardly bought it on eBay. I got it for a great price, but I skimmed over the description, which, of course, is a silly thing to do when buying practically anything online.

The book is in such bad shape because whoever previously owned it decided that it'd be fun to draw mustaches on every character in the book - man, woman, child, dog, and robot. Nothing living and not a vegetable was spared. Now, I'm all for a good mustache joke, but come on. Don't draw facial hair or any other kind of hair on my comics!

In any case, I found a few good comics at the con that I thought worth buying - a few early issues of the Sub Mariner Tales to Astonish series, the last issue of the first modern Human Torch series, a recent Avengers issue I was missing, and, lo and behold, a nice looking copy of Fantastic Four #150. I got it at a great price - 50% off what the vendor was originally charging, too! Then I took it home and opened it up - over all, a really spectacular copy.

Except the damn Marvel Value Stamp was cut out.

Marvel put these "stamps" (which were really just pictures of stamps - there was no adhesive backing or anything like that, just the other side of the page) in most of their books for a few years back in the mid 1970s. I'd imagine they were there to give kids another incentive to buy more of their books - what's collecting without getting the complete set?!

I will admit that I like the idea of the stamps. They have, in all honesty, a nostalgic feel about them that I enjoy; they're kind of the precursor of comic book trading cards at any rate, and I like the history behind them.

But dammit! Stop cutting them out of the books I'm paying money for thirty years later, people! Seriously!

Proof.

I got a proof copy in the mail a few days ago from the printer. A proof is, basically, a single copy for me to go over and approve or make changes to. In this case, it is also proof that I haven't been completely wasting my time these past months.

I will make a few changes - the lettering is a bit small in some places. But at least I know that things are coming to a close and the first issue will be out sooner rather than later. Glee!

Other stuff, part 2 - The Partisan

Hey everyone, have you ever thought about killing lots of random people? Well, me too! Wait...that didn't come out right. I meant to say that I've thought about it in a fictitious sense, as in...I'm writing a comic based on the premise of...

okay, I'm going to start over.

Paul Tucker (he who was born to draw western-style comics, and yet is very, very Canadian) and I have been working on "The Partisan", a concept we've been working on for a few years that looks at the last survivors of Judgement Day. The end of the world, in our story, has actually happened, but a few thousand people go unaccounted for. Our main character's job is to kill every person who, for whatever reason, has been left out of the great reckoning. After this, he conveys, the end can go on as scheduled, and Heaven and Hell can finish their struggle.

So, yeah, basically the plot is one guy trying to kill everyone in the world. Or as I like to say: BLOOD! CARNAGE! VIOLENCE!

If we manage to get this book out, I hope it's openly condemned by an ultra right-wing fundamentalist group. Things always sell better after someone labels your product as a menace to society.

The Ad.

Things are coming to a close with the first issue. The files are with the printer, the solicitation information is in and I designed this ad to be included in the October issue of Previews. Black and white was the cheaper option (though, wow...still expensive), and I'm reusing the cover art for this ad, but I hope that it gets people to at least think about putting an order in for the book as opposed to just waiting for it to hit the shelves in December.

If nothing, else, the ad states that the book is "possibly delicious". I tend to like linked phrases to come in threes, and I couldn't think of anything else after "FULL COLOR!!!1!" So I put in something random and, hopefully, not something that can be construed as false advertising. I did say "possibly", after all.