FUBAR: Empire of the Rising Dead Diamond order code

I've known that FUBAR: Empire of the Rising Dead would be in this month's Previews catalogue for a while, but now I've got an order code to pass along.  Volume two in this WWII epic has the following order code: OCT11 0764.

I've got a few stories that will appear in this volume - "Life Preserves" with Mario Wytch, Amy Corbin and Jeff McComsey, the second instillation of "FDArrrgh" with Leonardo Pietro, and "Run Silent, Run Dead", which I lettered, with Daniel Thollin and Stephen Lindsay.  So that's three reasons right off the bat to give this book a try - but there are dozens more as anyone who's seen the preview edition that appeared at the Baltimore Comic-Con can attest to.  This is going to be a huge book - 256 pages! - and there'll be lots of stories to read from some incredible creators, topped off by Danilo Beyruth's awesome cover, also the second in the series.

The clock is ticking - pre-orders are being taken this month.  I hope that if you've enjoyed my writing and/or volume one of FUBAR, you'll take a chance and give this book a try.

Google Images has been kind, FUBAR v.2 cover, stats and more!

- Blogger is kind enough to save viewing statistics for this blog, and I am obsessive enough to check them all the time; the stats tell me nothing other than how many views specific posts have in a given time period and what countries the views come from, which is juuuust unintrusive enough for me to be okay with.  These page views, for the most part, seem to follow a predictable trend, with new posts getting the majority share (but fading away after a week or so) with a few time-tested posts continually getting hits.  Sometimes, though, a post from three months ago will all of a sudden pop back up on the radar and top the list in a given week.  This is thoroughly confusing.

Case in point: I've had, what, seven different posts with art from my Thing sketchbook; one entry (the third, I think?) keeps getting more hits than any other.  I think the big reason for this is because, as someone else pointed out to me, some of the sketches show up pretty early on in Google Images searches, which I think is extra cool.  The wording is sometimes tricky, but I've found that searching for images of the Thing with the keyword "cigar" somewhere in there brings a bundle of familiar sketches, like the one above from Chuck BB.  I've seen images from the sketchbook as high as on the sixth page of results, which, when considering how many thousands of images of the Thing there are out there, is fairly surprising.

- Speaking of statistics (YOUR FAVORITE SUBJECT!), the month of June still has a few days left in it, and it already is my most-viewed month since Blogger started keeping record of such things (according to this graph, it looks like a total of zero people viewed it in May of 2009).  November, 2010, directly after the New York Comic Con, held the previous high, but woo!  No more.  Thanks, everyone, for reading my stupid ramblings!

- One of the big reasons for this jump is because of the "Accordion Theory" comic strip, which has quickly become one of my most-viewed posts.  It seems that Yahoo! Images is bringing the strip up very early when people search for "Weird Al" Yankovic, which is great - especially since the man is getting a lot of publicity lately for his brand new album, "Alpocalypse", which came out on Tuesday.  It's a tremendous album, and you should totally buy several copies of it.  My goodness, look at the cover!

And holy crap, buy it buy it buy it!  And marvel and how incredible it is.

- You know what other cover is cool?  The just-released cover to the much-anticipated FUBAR volume 2, due out this fall.  Danilo Beyruth drew this one just as he did the cover for volume 1, and as with that one he knocked this out of the park.  Really, how awesome is this cover?  Very awesome.  That's the answer.  It is.

- Your friend (and mine) Paul Tucker is hard at work on a new story featuring John Watkins, Phantom for Hire!  Here's some thumbnails...see if you can guess what's happening!  I can, but...I wrote the script.

- Lastly, happy birthday to friend and Franks and Beans co-creator Larry, whose exact date of birth I always manage to forget, but hey, it's around here some time.  I hope he enjoys the Dukes of Hazzard parody porno DVD that I bought for him, which is sure to bring laughs and laughs.  And boobs.

Oh, hey, we (and I think eight other people) went to Kennywood amusement park last week, and I filmed the Thunderbolt roller coaster while riding it.  Watch it, and hold your hands up when the car goes down the hill.

Notes from the Motor City Comic Con, new Franks and Beans, and more!

- Day #2 has just ended at the Motor City Comic Con, and so far it's been a very interesting trip.  I'd say that this show has been different from any other convention where I've ever exhibited, and it's all a good learning experience.  I've met some cool people and, hey, I've got Teddy and the Yeti out in front of a lot of new readers.  Oh, yeah...and there was this horrifying (but very well done) Superbaby guy there, too. I'll put up more pictures and write more about this show in the next few days.

- I watched the final episode of Smallville last night - it was the first time I caught the show in more than five years, but it was still pretty easy for me to follow.  I don't know if that's because the show's producers really made an effort to make everything accessable or if it really hadn't changed that much over its history.  In any case, I thought that it was fine - nothing spectacular, but okay.  The show's love affair with the Richard Donner-era Superman is still burning bright, and the glimpses of Clark in the suit were pretty cool.  But wow!  The show certainly hasn't lost any of its angst over the years.

I thought it was strange, though (and hey, spoiler alert), that throughout the entire episode the impending arrival of Darkseid and Apokalypse was built up and built up and built up...and then at the end of the episode, Clark just takes ten seconds, throws the planet back out into space, and everyone's happy.  Really, that was the big confrontation?  Oh well.  The show had a nice long run and it's good that it got to end how those who cared for it wanted.

- As the above flyer shows, FUBAR's second print is in the May edition of Diamond's Previews with an order code of MAY110785.  Check out that new cover!  Good stuff.  And check out a clip from a story of mine from the second volume, due out in the fall, with art by Mario Wytch:

- There's a new episode of Franks and Beans that's just been released, and you can watch it below.  If anyone's just stumbling on this site because of the cards I handed out at the convention this weekend, do yourself (and, well, me) a favor and check out all of the F&B videos and other stuff at www.franksandbeansonline.com!

- And lastly, I've been getting some nice comments on yesterday's "Accordion Theory" strip, and I appreciate all the kind things that have been said.  If you haven't seen it, well...here it is again.  So...read it.

FUBAR: 2nd print!

I mentioned some time ago that the WWII zombie epic FUBAR had sold well enough to warrant a second printing: the image you see above is the cover to that print, which will be available to order soon. This cover is by the great Danilo Beyruth, whose website (with tons of great art) can be found here.  It's easy to see that he nailed the image.  If I were in charge of such things (I'm not), I'd have this piece be the first of three interlocking covers, one for each planned volume.  Heck, I'd chip in some money to make that happen if it were a possibility (hint hint!).

Speaking of further volumes of the book, below is an ad from Jeff McComsey for this fall's volume 2 release.  I'll have some more work in this book, and as I posted about recently, it's looking good.

I've still got some copies of the first print to take with me to next month's Motor City Comic Con, so if you're going to be attending that show, be sure to check it out!  Since that print run is basically sold out, perhaps you could buy it and then turn it around for...100 times the cover price.  Perhaps.