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!

A new photo shoot; new Magic Bullet; Thing vs. Hulk; Franks and Beans and more!

- I think I'll just post the above picture to all of my blogs, or on anything I publish, anywhere.  That way when readers see it, I'll create a level of intimacy by virtue of my gentle staring from in front of a wall of comic books.  That's soothing, right?  A picture of Jeff McClelland looking at you from a comic shop?

This image is part of a project being undertaken by my friend Vicki, who is creating a portfolio of images of people doing what they do at work.  Apparently, I stand around reading comics, which is terrifyingly close to real-life truth.  You should all check out Vicki's website here: http://morisuphoto.blogspot.com/

The picture was taken at McMurray's Pittsburgh Comics.  On the wall behind me is a copy of IDW's Hawken by Ben and Tim Truman.  I wish I had a segue for my next item, but, oh well.

- Oh, look!  It's IDW's Hawken by Ben and Tim Truman!  Both gentlemen have contributed to FUBAR at one time or another, and now the crossover runs the other way, too, as Jeff McComsey (layouts, colors), Dominic Vivona (pencils) and Steve Becker (inks) put together the above incentive cover for Hawken #3, which is on sale very soon!  The book is a western horror tale and it's worth picking up.  So pick it up!

- I initially thought that the above strip (of which I'm showing just part) would be appearing in the soon-to-be-released Magic Bullet #4, but it now looks like it instead will be part of issue 5.  It continues with the theme of one page stories that the publication is becoming known for; its title is "The Naked Man at the Edge of Time".  The story deals with a naked time traveler.  And yes, that's Gandhi in panels 2 and 3.  My apologies, India...I know that you can be sensitive about that sometimes.

Art for this story, which was very fun to produce, is by Kurt Belcher (pencils) and Jon Sawyer (inks).  I'll post more once the publication date draws near.

- A little while ago, I posted some initial art from a Charles Atlas ad parody that Duane Redhead and I were working on.  As you can see, there's been more progress on this front, as the monster design as been tweaked and an old-time coloring scheme has been added by Rafer Roberts.  I've got the text just about done, and then the page is off to be rendered.  It's turning out very well so far, in my nowhere near objective opinion.

- One of the reasons the Thing is better than the Hulk is because the Thing isn't just some raging, mindless brute.  He's a tough guy who knows how to fight, but he's also no dummy.  The above image is just further proof of that.  My friend Mike Adams took my suggestion for "the Thing beating up the Hulk" (which I suggest often) and put this piece together.  Great work, Mike, and finally, some truth!

- A few interesting website stats caught my eye recently.  First up is this phrase that I found among search terms; that is, someone (obviously I don't know who) found this blog by typing in the phrase "teddy and the yeti promo card 1 price".  If, by some stroke of fortune, that person is reading this post, let me say this: I...I don't charge anything for the promo card.  Seriously, if you reply to this post with a comment, I'll send you one.  For free!  I will.

Now that I sit back and think on this for a moment, another explanation might be that the person searching got a card at a convention and is looking to see if it's worth any money.  Hrumph.  That would be the less desirable explanation of the two.  So I refuse to believe it.

The next interesting search term is above.  Someone found this blog by searching for fellow Franks and Beans collaborator Larry Franks, and we know this person was looking for our Larry, because they even added information on the city and state.  That's weird.  Larry, are you searching for yourself online?  You know I plug www.franksandbeansonline.com all the time.  See?  I did it again!

- Lastly, and speaking of Franks and Beans, here's the highly (?) anticipated and painstakingly produced 54th episode of the probably hilarious Internet comedy show.  Seriously, we worked a long time on this and our entry to the Comic-Con film festival.  I'd like to think that this is one of our better ones.  You watch and decide!  That was not a suggestion.

Ultimate Hero pinup by Ruben Cordero and Todd Swain

Here's more nearly forgotten artwork that I happened upon recently:

It's the Ultimate Hero (and Gary) by Ruben Cordero!  A little while after our "Eye of the Beholder" comic came out in Strip Search, Ruben and I teamed up with co-creator Mike Adams to put a treatment for this character together.  Unfortunately, not too much has happened with these characters in the meantime, though I still have hope that one day the full story might get told.  A short story appeared in the back of Teddy and the Yeti #3, and I've got two more short stories hanging out on my hard drive (one a glorious five-page story by Duane Redhead).  I don't have any immediate plans for them, but they might just show up in a future issue of T&Y.

Below you see the inked version by Todd Swain.  Mike colored it, but we ended up going with a different color scheme in the end, so if this were to be used in some capacity in the future, it'd have to be redone.  Perhaps that's wishful thinking, but perhaps not.

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".

Issue #3 preview

The time is almost upon us - Teddy and the Yeti #3 will go on sale this Friday, April 23rd, at the Pittsburgh Comicon - I'll be at booth S088 with all three issues, the Josh Howard Presents: Sasquatch anthology, a few copies of Strip Search and a few other things.  Below is a preview of the issue; as I've mentioned before, this issue features three stand alone Teddy and the Yeti tales, including a colored version of their origin story, as well as a short backup story with the Ultimate Hero.  The following is the cover and the first pages of all four stories (so if reading them in succession doesn't make sense, don't worry - you're not stroking out).

The cover is by Godland's Tom Scioli, with Alan Gallo providing inks and Karin Rindevall on colors.  The interior pencils and inks are all by regular series artist and co-creator Duane Redhead, and there are a bevy of colorists in line for the Teddy and the Yeti stories: Giuseppe Pica, Karin Rindevall, Omi Remalante, Jr., and Paul Little.  The short Ultimate Hero story is penciled by Travis Sengaus, inked by L Jamal Walton and colored by co-creator Mike Adams with help from Paul Little.

The official solicitation info is after the preview.  Hope to see you at the show!  Look for the me there - I'll be the one shamelessly promoting this book.  Also, I'm very attractive.

Solicit info:

Thrill to three titanic tales in the third issue of Teddy and the Yeti!  Discover the origin of Teddy and the Yeti!  Witness an undersea battle!  And marvel at the one villain who could turn Teddy and the Yeti against each other!  Plus: Ultimate Hero with Travis Sengaus and an interview with cover artist Tom Scioli!

Other stuff, part 5 - Ultimate Hero

One of the co-creations that I feel most fond about has to be the "Ultimate Hero".  Unfortunately, it is also one of the most frustrating.

The Ultimate Hero began as the Ultimate Avenger - it's since changed for obvious reasons ("satire" gave way to "blatant copyright violation" once Marvel actually released a book titled "Ultimate Avengers").  Mike Adams and I developed a story where an egotistical jerk of a super hero had his powers taken away - transferred to an eight-year-old boy - to teach him a lesson in humility.  The result was one of the funnier, more complete stories I think I've ever told, but trying to get this concept off the ground has run into any number of speed bumps.  More than once we've been told that the project had been picked up for publication, but each time the fates conspire to stop production in one phase or the other.  Even though I manage to get my heart broken every time, I still hold out hope that one day - one day! - the right situation will come along for UH to see the light of day as an actual series.

The page you see posted above is from Teddy and the Yeti #3 - the Ultimate Hero plays the role of the second feature in this issue.  Occurring before the events in the proposed series take place, this short story lets loose one of my favorite aspects of the UH story - Ultimate Hero and his contempt for the old-school super hero "Super Supreme".  The art is by super Canadian Travis Sengaus, who has a flashy style that really suits the story.  Travis at one time was working on an actual issue of Ultimate Hero...maybe one day I'll be able to twist his arm enough to continue.

For now, though, I'm just happy to get the concept to print, even if it's just a short story in the back of Teddy and the Yeti.  Small steps.

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.