Great day in the morning! The website returns.

The official Teddy and the Yeti website has been absent from the Internets for a fairly inexcusable amount of time, but I'm happy to say that as of last Friday, the site is back up and running with a few small tweaks and upgrades.  At first glance, it doesn't look too drastically different from what came before, but I like to think that things are a little more streamlined this time around, and that I've cut out some of the fat that was there before.

One page I added was an interview page, which compiles the interviews that I've done here on the blog and in the printed comic.  It serves as an archive of sorts, I suppose, and should make the search engines happy.

The store has seen probably the most changes over the previous iteration, hopefully all of them for the better.  Most notably I've added both the trading cards and the crochet Yetis as items to purchase; all of the categories should be easy to navigate.

I've also added a section with webcomics and updated the comic preview section.  Scrolling through these sections, though, tells me that I still have some work to do on the site.  It's not perfect by any means and browsing though these pages will tell you why.  Some pages (like the above "Eye of the Beholder" image) are easy to read, but others are not, and that's something I've got to remedy before I'm happy with it.

Overall, I'm thrilled just to have a damn website back up and running, especially with the Baltimore Comic-Con coming up this weekend.  There are certainly still some bugs with the new design, some of which I've found out for myself already, but there are others I'm sure I'm still missing.  I hope that if you, faithful reader, do decide to check out the new site and find something you don't like or think should be changed, you'll do me the favor of leaving me a comment right here on the blog or e-mail me you thoughts at wagonwheelcomics@gmail.com.

And in case anyone's forgotten (it's been a while, I know...), the address for the main webpage is www.teddyandtheyeti.com.

Oh, Superman.

Poor Superman.  Hey, Superman, you know this is why DC is relaunching your book, don't you?  I mean...you do, right?  Right?  Superman?

Public Financing

I recently got a message promoting the upcoming miniseries "War of the Independents" (a play on words, I get it!), which is a big crossover event featuring lots of independent creations.  If you look at the image above you'll see some fairly big names on the independent circuit: Savage Dragon, Zot!, Hack/Slash, Kade...oh, and hey!  Ms. Monster in the top right.  I'm not quite sure how this all came together (or how many permissions the people working on this had to get), but it seems like a pretty cool idea.

The message included a link to the website Kickstarter, which allows people to raise money for various causes - in this case, the creators are looking for funding to create the project and are asking the Internet comic community at large.  I'm not sure how I feel about something like this.  I mean, if someone wants to ask for money for a project, then he or she is more than welcome, and if someone is willing to drop a few dollars in the cyber hat, then all the better.  But I don't think it's something I'd ever do with Teddy and the Yeti.  Maybe I just want to keep the creation process as simple as I can, or maybe I just want to focus on putting the book out and not asking for donations.

In any case, there's a tiered structure that awards several "prizes" based on how much one donates.  Donations start at $5.00 and go all the way to $350, which gets you a bunch of things including the miniseries, a page or original art from the series and - oh yeah - a cameo appearance by characters of the donor's creation.  It's a unique concept.  I'd be happy - naturally - to get Teddy and the Yeti in this book (hell, almost any book), but it's not something I want to spend $350 on.  For that price I could get a top-rate cover for the book or a bunch of other production work.  Now, if I could talk the people putting this together down to, say, $100 for just the cameo, well, that might be a bit different.  Ah hem.

"War of the Independents" debuts at the New York Comic-Con in October.  The Kickstarter donation page is here.

Coolsville

My good friend Mario Wytch just sent me a link to his all-new webcomic, Coolsville.  Coolsville is about a world where being a superhero is a 9-5 job, complete with all of the office drama contained therein.  Coolsville is also about a world where dogs can talk, apparently, as you can read in the above installment just released today!

The site updates twice a week, so I look forward to reading about the adventures of Devon Cole (didn't he play for the Pirates back in the day and also wear goggles?  Oh wait, a quick trip to MLB.com reveals that that was Alex Cole, member of the 1992 NL East champions who then got taken by the Colorado Rockies in the expansion draft, if memory serves) and I hope you check it out, too.  Heck, I may try and convince Mario to let me write a few strips every now and then.

Check out the series synopsis here, and read the comics here!  And be sure to check out the fan page on Facebook, too.

Dr. Horrible and other notes

If you're a self-respecting Firefly fan (and who isn't?) and you live in or reasonably close to Wilmington, North Carolina, you've got to check out the Brown Coat Pub & Theatre.  It's a Firefly/Serentiy themed bar/restaurant that also puts on plays and musicals.  This month's play just happens to be another Joss Whedon brainchild, Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, which is just like combining chocolate and peanut butter.

I took the show in last week and it was a lot of fun - and unbeknownst to me, the role of Penny is being performed by my friend June Bunce, so that's even more reason to go...I guess.  This is the last weekend for Dr. Horrible at the Brown Coat, so if you're able, check it out!

- June Gilbank of PlanetJune wrote about the crochet Yeti doll she made at my behest on her website, and soon a thousand or so other sites picked up on it.  Apparently amigurumi yetis are big news on the Internet(s).  News of the crochet pattern soon sprung up on Facebook, Amazon, a bunch of blogs, and my favorite, a website titled "Bigfoot Lunch Club".

In addition to the Yeti, June also created a crochet Sasquatch, which, really, makes a lot of sense (and also looks adorable).  She's working on the book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amigurumi, due out in October, and if she really twists my arm about including the Yeti in the book...I suppose I'd have to let her.  And by that I mean hoooooly crap would that be awesome.

- Fanboy Comics recently held a drawing for free Avengers stuff as a promotion for the new Avengers series (not to be confused with the new New Avengers series that will also be out soon).  Fanboy does a lot of great things to advertise their store, but I've never won anything from them...until now.  My name got picked and I got this nifty-looking Mighty Avengers: Assemble hardcover that you can see below:

To this, I say..."hey-ooo!"  I look forward to reading it, as I didn't pick up all of the individual issues when this series launched a few years ago.  I wonder if it'll seem better because it was free.

- Who else wasted hours of their lives by playing Google's Pac-Man from last weekend?  Okay, "wasted" isn't accurate - I enjoyed the heck out of it.  And, wonder upon wonders, Google has left it online at www.google.com/pacman.

Did you know that if you hit the "insert coin" button twice, you can play a two-player game with Ms. Pac-Man?  Her controls are the WASD buttons.

- Lastly, as always, here's a new episode of Franks and Beans.  This one is titled "Kill Switch", and I think you'll like it.  If you don't, you might just be a communist.

The Second Hundred Years

I stumbled upon a copy of America's Best TV Comics recently and snatched it up because it is relatively rare and features an original Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four story.  This 1967 oddity was produced primarily by the ABC television network to promote their Saturday morning cartoon lineup, which featured Marvel properties like the FF and Spider-Man along with other cartoon classics like George of the Jungle and Casper, the Friendly Ghost.

The short stories were all fairly simplistic and rather pointless, but I'm sure they served their marketing purpose at the time.  What interested me more than the actual content of the book was some of the advertisements included promoting some of the network's prime time broadcasts.  These shows ranged from ones that are still fairly recognizable, like the Flying Nun (really?  Someone thought this was a good idea?) and the Adam West Batman show, to shows that I had never heard of before.  Of these, one stood out, and I scanned the ad to post below:

The Second Hundred Years, according to those cagey geniuses at the Internet Movie Database, as well as...well, this ad in front of you, is about a prospector who gets frozen in ice, only to be revived 67 years later, and - get this! - he has to ADJUST TO MODERN SOCIETY!  Holy crap, what a concept!

Okay, okay...I'll admit that this isn't the worst idea I've ever heard for a television show, and the concept of the man's son being older than he is is kind of funny...I guess.  What I don't get from the ad is this - why would you let your recently returned grandfather who has been obviously traumatized and absent from the world for two-thirds of a century carry a gun around the house?  And better yet, why would he just randomly decide to shoot the television?  You'd think that, rather than remarking that we're gonna have to teach grandpa about "modern miracles" (we apparently have low standards for how we define miracles), we might have given him the tour before we left him alone?  Absurdity, I tell you!

Monte Markham, who played both grandfather and grandson in this one-season series, has acted fairly regularly since 1966, but unless I'm mistaken, this show is STILL the most work he's done on any one production other than - get this - Baywatch.  A jack of all trades, it seems.

Government records

Ever just decide to go an search through the United States Copyright Office's files?  Sounds like fun, huh?  Well, it's not, and shame on you for thinking so - unless you have a copyright on file, in which case it becomes LOTS OF FUN (trust me on this).

The above screenshot is from the Copyright Office's website, where it lists Teddy and the Yeti and lots of information regarding it - publication type, concept title, print date, creator history, date of birth, my (former) address...holy crap, should all that stuff be on the Internets for anyone to see?  Apparently so, says the government.  Oh well, says I: now I have a record that says I existed on file in a governmental office.  And I think that's just swell.

Passive aggressiveness: just one more service the Internet has to offer!

The Internet(s) is full of glorious, wonderful intellectual and social advances for all to enjoy.  It's also a place to make fun of other people endlessly without fear of recourse.  Franks and Beans has spoofed this idea (quite masterfully!), yet people STILL haven't been shamed out of some of the baser instincts the Internet seems to bring forth.

The newest example of this comes from the recent reaction to Captain America #602, in which an angry crowd similar to the "Tea Party" faction getting so much attention lately is portrayed.  In this issue, Cap and the Falcon point out that the people protesting in this movement are extremists, and those involved and (gasp!) others at Fox News, assuming the two aren't one and the same, have taken umbrage with this depiction.

Ignoring my own feelings toward these crazies fellow Americans, I was quite amused by a quote from Tea Party founder Judson Phillips, who lamented that "When I was a child in the '60s, Captain America was my favorite superhero.  It's really sad to see what has traditionally been a pro-America figure being used to advance a political agenda."

I can appreciate the nostalgia one can feel when a childhood hero grows up, but I appreciate even more the passive aggressiveness of the statement.  One of the best ways to angrily shout at people across the Internet(s) is to pretend that something makes you sad.  "It's sad but true that the Steelers are keeping their offensive coordinator even though they couldn't run the ball on third downs this year."  Oh, ho hum.  Woe is me!  But wait!  I'm actually making a calculated dig at a football coach - DISGUISED as a genuine lament!  How clever!

Oh, Internet(s).  You never fail to disappoint me.

The idea that Captain America never promoted some kind of agenda is, of course, ridiculously false.  How many World War II-era covers featured Steve Rogers beating up some Japanese stereotype?  The cover to the first issue featured Captain America punching Hitler in the face!!

Naturally, as popular comic books have become institutions, there has been less risky behavior in their pages - we knew that Steve Rogers would eventually return after being shot to death by Sharon Carter, if for no other reason than because he's got a movie coming out soon.  But to say that Captain America should never be controversial or take some kind of political stand is a bit outrageous.  I'm sure Marvel isn't minding the publicity - no news is bad news, after all - but I wish that the company hadn't backed away from the book's statements so quickly.

Look at me - I've been on some rants lately...and I genuinely try to steer clear of that in this context.  I guess virtual space is getting the best of me.  Anyway, tomorrow I'm off to the comic shop to see if there are any copies of Captain America #602 left, because they're selling on eBay for like twenty bucks a piece.  I invite others to do the same (LARRY), but hurry up, because these things don't last long!

Pretend it's Friday, then go here.

Brian Michael Bendis, along with being a prolific and popular comic book writer, has also developed a pretty strong Internet following on his website, www.jinxworld.com.  From this site you can go over to his message board, which is teeming with the usual message board stuff - good and bad.  I can't say that I've been an active member of any message board community for years now (I guess they just lost their appeal after a while), but I still manage to head over there once a week for a posting titled "Weird images I found while surfing this week".

I don't know the person who tirelessly scours the Internet(s) every week for the dozens of strange and funny pictures found within this posting, but I want to shake his hand.  He's continued to bring me something to look forward to, week after week, for years now.

There's a lot of comic book related jokes, but there's plenty of stuff there even if you've never read a comic in your life.  Not all of the pictures are as PG-rated as the examples I'm posting here (uploaded of my own right, not hotlinked...which would be a jerk thing to do), so please don't go there with the wrong impression - some of the pictures aren't for everyone (it's mostly language that some might find offensive).  But if you need a laugh every Friday, hop over to that site, click on the "search" function, and type in the aforementioned "Weird images I found while surfing this week".

If your sense of humor is anywhere close to mine, you'll be glad you did.

Teddy and the Yeti gets its (Google) due

My good friend Larry sent me this picture on Monday - it appears that Teddy and the Yeti has become so (Internet) famous that search engine benchmark Google has added it to its auto-complete function.  I'm really not sure how this comes to pass - perhaps enough people have to search for a term for it to be included, or perhaps it's the number of online references.  Regardless, it's nice to see Teddy and the Yeti getting its due in this manner, if for no other reason than it was frustrating to type in "Teddy and the Yet" and STILL get no Google suggestion.

Now it's time to sneak up on stalwarts such as 60s rock group Teddy and the Pandas, teddy and the bear mechanical bank - a coin bank featuring the US President KILLING A BEAR - and Teddy and the Frat Girls, named after mass murderer Ted Bundy.  It's a tough road to the top.

Thank goodness for YouTube.

My good friend Larry (yes, he of Franks and Beans fame) recently added to my Thing collection (there are weirder things to collect...I think) when he found the object in the center of the above picture at a used toy shop somewhere in the magical land of Pittsburgh.  The bottom is made from a hard plastic, but from the waist up it's built from a flexible, hollow rubbery substance, and to top it off, there's a medium sized straw-like protrusion sticking out of its back.  This was, of course, rather perplexing to both of us, but a little bit of research shed some light on this strange figure.

This Thing was made in 1978 by the Funstuf company, and it seems I have an incomplete version of the toy (though, obviously, I have the most important piece).  The complete version comes with a pump, clasps to hold the arms down, and a...well, a box to put it in.  Check out this 1970s commercial to get a better idea of the hours and hours of fun you can have with this toy:

Just think!  If I had the pump and the box, I could do things like put the thing in the box, pump twice, and see him break out!  Then I could...uh...put him in the box again, pump a couple more times, and...see him break out.  After that, I could...well...put it back on the shelf.

What a bizarre figure.  As Larry pointed out, though, you'd be hard pressed to get a toy that did ANYTHING back in 1978, so perhaps I'm being too critical.  I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this is the ugliest Thing in my collection - but I love it for just that reason.  Now to look for that box...

To think, if this were twenty years ago (and I was just a wee lad at eight years old), I would probably be beating my head against a wall trying to figure out what in the world this toy was and what its purpose could possibly be.  But thanks to the wonder that is the Internets, all it took was the copyright information on the bottom of the Thing's foot, about ten minutes and a Google link to YouTube to come to this satisfactory conclusion.  Thank goodness for it.

Teddy and the Yeti - scourge of the Internets

Perhaps "scourge" isn't the right word, but it sounded so cool when I was writing the title, I kept it. We all live with disappointments.

One of the most satisfying things about slowly introducing Teddy and the Yeti to the outside world - and by "outside world" I mean "now more than three people potentially know about it" - is witnessing people I've never met discuss the book and characters. It lends a bit of relevance to them...or at least it's fun to find when I, once a day at least, type "Teddy and the Yeti" (using the quotes) into Google's search engine. Below are some of the results I've found, and they are each very exciting in their own ways.

Badger Comics, an online retailer, was to my knowledge the first site to offer Teddy and the Yeti #1 as a pre-order. In fact, it's listed first on the list of Google's results, even before the actual homepage. Why www.teddyandtheyeti.com isn't listed first is confounding - the website is the EXACT name you're typing in...but oh well. Perhaps that means that lots of people are going to Badger Comics and pre-ordering the book.

Exclamation Comics is a retailer based out of the Netherlands (the Netherlands!). For reasons unknown, they've "hand picked"(?) the first issue of Teddy and the Yeti as a title they think you, the discerning reader, will enjoy. They've even given me my own hyperlinked name that leads to a list of books I've worked on...which currently includes one book. Someone (ahem) should set them straight and let them know that I have two or three books out. Come on, Netherlands! Get it together!

On a Comic Book Resources blog about books coming out in December, my new best friend Josh B. asks "What about Teddy and the Yeti #1? It's right at the back of the comic section and easy to miss, but it's got a Phil Hester cover and the promise of at least one yeti!" Well, Josh, I hope I don't disappoint you when I reveal that the book only has one Yeti. It sounds like you were hoping for me. I swear that I do not know who "Josh B." is. The "Larry" who posts later on...yeah, I know him, so that one doesn't count.

Lastly, I just about fell out of my hypothetical chair when I learned that HOH Comics is taking pre-orders of the first issue on eighth wonder of the world eBay! I have no idea if anyone is ordering the book or not (the information on the site says that they have 100 available), but just having something of mine on eBay...it fills me with emotions that possibly amount to pride. Hopefully not of the "seven deadly sins" variety, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

Other stuff, part 1 - The Protector

There are lots of things keeping me busy right now - getting Teddy and the Yeti off to the printer (things are finally squared away in that regard), preparing for my five classes this semester, aimlessly looking at pictures of cats on the Internet(s) - so I will take some time and show off a few of the other comic book-related concepts I'm working on right now. And by "take some time" I mean "slap up a picture and get back to work on looking at pictures of cats".

Well, okay - I can't say I look at lots of pictures of cats, but I've been known to wander online without realizing it.

In any case, this first image is from a project I'm working on with Mike Adams and Jorge Correa titled "The Protector". We're basing the series around the question, "what happens when the world's only superhero is killed?" Take a peek.

I sure did use a lot of quotation marks today.