Comic Book Christmas Cards

Ah, the bounty of Google is plenty.  It's almost Christmas once again, and comic books have a long tradition of celebrating the holiday in their own way.  Here are some of the better comic book Christmas cards/greetings from over the years!

Marry Christmas!

Merry Beast Wars Christmas!

Beast Wars, without question the greatest Transformers cartoon of all time (trust me), has been off the air for quite some time, but it keeps on giving.  Here's David Kaye, the voice of Megatron, who apparently decided to start filming himself around Christmas of last year while using his best Predacon voice.  I have no idea why this exists, but thank all that is holy that it does.  Perhaps it's a Christmas miracle.

FUBAR: Free Comic Book Day 2013 special

A few days ago, I broke the news about the 2013 Tick Free Comic Book day special.  If you took a closer look at Diamond's list of all the FCBD offerings, you'll see another book with my name attached to it.  FUBAR, everyone's favorite zombie war comic, will have a special issue out with all new stories and a new Frank Frazetta-inspired cover by Mike Hawthorne!

This issue will feature four stories that span US history.  My story is in the familiar WWII timeframe and deals with Edward R. Murrow, journalist and patriot in one of his early war assignments.  Other contributors include Jeff McComsey, Steve Becker, Chuck Dixon, Shawn Aldridge and Jason Copland.

May just got a lot bigger for me.  Two books on the same day, with a pretty wide release for both!  It's very exciting.  So if you go to a comic shop on Saturday, May 4th of next year, you can be sure to pick up two books: the Tick and FUBAR, absolutely free!

The Tick: Free Comic Book Day 2013 special

Hello, everyone.  I enjoy this blog because it allows me to:

a) talk to no one in particular (and often times to no one)
b) discuss the Thing
c) endlessly self promote

In general, this is a comic book blog, and I'm always happy to talk about my current or upcoming projects (or past glories...), but I've never been in the situation before where I've had to hold off to any great degree on talking about a project.  So it was tough for me to keep this current news under wraps for the several months that I've known about it, but today I'm happy that I can finally let the cat out of the bag, so to speak.

Diamond released its full list of 2013 Free Comic Book Day titles earlier today, and if you scroll down far enough, to the New England Comics section, you'll see that I'm writing this year's Tick FCBD selection!

This is, of course, big news, and if I can say so, it's a privilege and a responsibility to be able to get this opportunity.  I have been a fan of the Tick for about 20 years, and to be able to put some words in the character's mouth and to contribute to the history in some small way is an honor that is not lost on me.

If you're not familiar with the character, do yourself a favor and start at the beginning with Ben Edlund's masterful 12-issue run.  If you're not reading the book currently, do yourself another favor and take a look at what Benito Cereno and Les McClaine are doing with it.  Benito (I've gotta get myself a Moby Dick pen name, too) and Les are not going anywhere, as they are still contributing to the main title in their usual manner, so there's no confusion as to any of the creators involved with the characters.

Providing the art on this story is none other than my Teddy and the Yeti counterpart, Duane Redhead.  The cover above is by Duane and art director Bob Polio.  I've seen some of the interior pages that Duane's worked on and they look just fantastic.  Leonardo Pietro, T&Y and FUBAR contributor, is drawing some backup stories that are just incredible to see.  It's equally exciting to be able to bring along Duane and Pietro for this project, because if the comic creation process isn't about working with friends, I don't know what it is.

I'm sure to write much, much more on this subject in the future, and if I'm able to, I'll show off some previews when the time comes.  But for now, it's enough that I get to announce this news here on the blog.  I'm extremely fortunate to have this opportunity, and I'll do my best to live up to the high expectations that Tick fans are right to possess.

God bless the creator of this Thing Halloween pumpkin creature

I saw this marvel of humanity when it first appeared on the Internets around Halloween of this year.  Why it's taken me this long to mention it is beyond reasoning.  Simply put, good work should be praised, and this is some of the good-est work involving a pumpkin that I've ever seen.  It's a pumpkin Halloween statue, nay, shrine!, to Ben Grimm, the Fantastic Four's Thing.

This monstrosity was created by the Reddit user wizardtig using bits and pieces of 11 pumpkins, including the head, a wooden framework and chicken wire.  The effort and determination were well worth it, in my opinion, as the final product in nothing shy of incredible!

The person behind this has gained a special place in my heart.  My hat is off to you, wizardtig, for creating a lasting tribute to the Thing.  And by "lasting" I mean "until you had to tear it down".  I hope that, at the very least, when you had to tear this apart, you at least once yelled "It's clobberin' time!" between sobs of dismay.

Click here to see more pictures of the process, click here to see the original Reddit page with comments, and click here to see the short writeup io9 made for the project.

Teddy and the Yeti #4!

Here's something that showed up in my mailbox a couple of days ago.  It's everyone's favorite book, Teddy and the Yeti!  It's the fourth issue!  Here at last.

This issue has been completed for a while, but there have been a few snafus that have kept it from seeing print until now.  One of the biggest delays was caused by Hurricane Sandy - I had hoped to have the book on display at last month's small Pittsburgh Comics & Collectibles show, but the extreme weather caused the printer to lose power for more than a week and the backlog began after that.  But the book is now in my hands and, in my biased opinion, I think it looks great.  Above you can see both covers for the book, on the left with art by Pat Olliffe and Karin Rindevall and on the right with art by Ron Frenz.

Here's a shot of some interior pages with some fine artwork by Duane Redhead!

Since I was planning on having this book out for the show, I only printed out a handful and most of them have been sent out as creator copies.  Now that I've gotten these back and have given them the once over, I'll put in a larger order that I can actually sell a few and list them in the website store.  So if you've been waiting in desperation for Teddy and the Yeti #4, well...it's here.  But you still gotta wait a little bit longer.

The backup story for this issue is "Big Red Rex" with art by Paul Tucker.  It's a story that I've wanted to print for what seems like forever, and I'm happy to finally...FINALLY...get the chance!

In other very important news, this is the 500th post to the Teddy and the Yeti blog.  I'm happy that this one actually deals with Teddy and the Yeti.  Woo!