Trading links with MDMacro, crochet yetis galore, Comic-Con and more RAAANDOM NOTES!

It's time again for some random notes that YOU need to read!  Yes, all of this directly affects your life, so pay attention.  Case in point, the screenshot above.

- Back in 2010, I wrote a short post about musician MDMacro, who placed ads in Marvel and DC books for a while, emblazoned with the phrase "beats for reading comic books to".  Obsessively checking my stats recently revealed that I was getting a few click-throughs from the MDMacro homepage, which was interesting.  A quick trip to the page and I found the reason: the post is linked under the heading of a "press release":

I don't know that I'd call what I wrote a press release, but whatever.  It's curious that the post was linked at all.  I'm still not sure just what MDMacro is trying to accomplish with his music or his advertising, so I'd like to publicly offer to interview MDMacro for this blog.  MD, I'm sure that a lot of people would like to know more about you.  How about taking a few questions?  I'd love it if you took me up on it.

- I voted online for the Eisner Awards.  Hooray!  I'm fulfilling my duty to the comic book community!  The ceremony will take place at Comic-Con, which is officially one month away.  I found this picture online of the crowd lined up outside for a previous years show:

Oh, man.  I am doing my best to get ready for the show, and that has meant a lot of late nights recently. My wife is helping out as well.  Here's a bag full of crochet yetis:

Wow!  That's a lot of crochet yetis.  And there are lots more here at home, too.  We're gonna sell the heck out of them at Comic-Con.

Also, here's a box full of blank shirts.  What could I possibly have these many blank shirts for?  All will be revealed...shortly.

- New England Comics had an online sale in the last few weeks that I took full advantage of.  It was a great sale!  I got a bunch of books that I had been on the lookout for, and I got them super cheap.  Included in this lot is a first edition Tick #1 (wooo!), a logo-less Tick #8, and the first issue of Tales Too Terrible to Tell, which has a four-page Tick story in it.  If I'm remembering correctly, the story hasn't been reprinted anywhere at all.

Flipping thought the 20th Anniversary book (top left) had the added benefit of helping me identify one of the mystery artists in my Thing sketchbook.  I was a familiar signature, and I grabbed my sketchbook to compare...and as luck would have it, the signatures were one and the same.  I got the following sketch at the Pittsburgh Comicon in 2003, and I had since forgotten the name of the artist:

Thanks to the Tick, I was able to identify the artist as Mark Wheatley!  I'm pretty happy that I was able to find this out.  This is something that irked me for years.

- War of the Independents #3 came out this month, and I mentioned that Teddy and the Yeti had a small role in the book.  The above picture is from the issue in question.  You can see the Yeti getting zapped with the rest of the indy heroes - I almost missed this one as I flipped thought the book.

- Issue #5 of the Magic Bullet is set to come out in September, and I should have another one-page story between the covers.  The folks involved in publishing the title have a Kickstarter fundraiser going on for the next 10 days or so, and there are a lot of great rewards to anyone who is inclined to donate.  Check it out here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2104849681/magic-bullet-5?ref=live

- Colorist and good friend Mike Adams has been working on his creation Kung Fu Bean for a while now, and he was just involved with the release of the Kung Fu Bean mobile game!  I downloaded it to my iPhone and I will say this about it...it's hard.  As a player, you've got to avoid being hit by your enemies by jumping over or ducking under them, and what sounds like a simple task ends up being very challenging.  I hope that the game designers put out some updates soon as I think this could be a really cool download.  Regardless, it's an awesome thing to have and I wish Mike the best of luck with it!

Mike also recently came to the rescue and colored some Teddy and the Yeti pages for me at the last minute.  Thanks for the assist, Mike!

- That's it for now.  Back to the grind.  Oh, heck, here's a picture of Franks and Beans!  Yeah!

Kung Fu Bean

Mike Adams is a familiar name around these parts (I've always wanted to say "around these parts") as a colorist and co-creator of Ultimate Hero and the Protector.  In addition to those two properties, I've been lucky enough to collaborate with Mike on a few other projects in the past as well: he colored Mario Wytch's pinup in Teddy and the Yeti #2 and a Mr. Massive pitch as well.  Mike is much more than a colorist, though - he's always brimming with new and exciting ideas for comic plots, and he's great with design work to boot.

I got some good news the other day that Mike was bringing a long-time favorite concept of his (and mine...I'm a big fan), "Kung Fu Bean", to Viper Comics (publisher of Josh Howard Presents: Sasquatch) as an exclusive webcomic, and lo and behold (I've also always wanted to say "lo and behold"...dreams do come true!!), the Viper-hosted site seems to be up and running.

Kung Fu Bean is a tongue-in-cheek comic about a baked bean imbued with both sentience and a martial arts background after falling from space through the broadcast signal of an all kung fu television channel.  As crazy as that plot seems, I think it really works and it sets up a lot of the laughs that follow.  At one point I had written something resembling a KFB comic with Mike - I have no idea if any of that plot will be used in this webcomic, but I'm excited to see where it goes.

You can check out the KFB webcomic here.  The site is updated with new pages every Monday!  Best of luck to Mike in his new endeavor.  The only negative thing to come out of this is that Mike now has the martial arts vegetable market cornered.  So much for my new comic, "Tai Chi Broccoli".