Original art from Alan Gallo!

I currently have a small collection of original comic art.  Most of it is from projects that I've worked on and from artists I know (plus there's a random Iron Man page that I bought for five bucks at probably the first convention I ever attended).  Even though I've got scans of all of the work - at multiple stages - of the stories I write, there's just something about physically seeing the art boards in front of you, the ink visible over the pencils and blue line.

Alan Gallo lives in the Philippines, and it's expensive to ship art internationally because of the size, but I had to add some of Alan's work to my own collection, and just a few days ago, I got a package with several pages of art and a few surprises.

Alan's a great artist and a heck of a guy in general.  I bought a handful of pages, perhaps the highlight of which is above: the Teddy and the Yeti promo page with Andromeda Jones and, yeah, my dog Rusty.  This is something worthy of a frame.

Nearly every time Alan has sent me a scan of a page, there always seems to be the tiniest sliver of the in-house logo left uncropped at the top, and I've never been able to figure out what it was.  It looked like a bunch of drawing of girls' faces.  Now that I've got some actual pages in my hands, I can unveil the mystery.  It turns out that the images are...a bunch of girls' faces.  Huh.  And the Glass House Graphics logo!  I didn't expect that.  Glass House is a studio that represents a lot of different artists, especially, from what I've seen, international artists.

Alan (because he's a great guy) also drew this Thing sketch for me on a Teddy and the Yeti sketch card!  It turned out great.  It's actually not the only Thing sketch card I got in the mail this week.  Below is one that comes from the magical land of eBay, and it's drawn by Puis Calzada.

I wonder if this calls for a new post devoted to the Thing sketch cards I have (as opposed to the Thing sketch book, which is entirely different and possibly more awesome).  I'd say it just might!

Teddy and the Yeti: Incoming! is colored!

News of Teddy and the Yeti's demise has been greatly exaggerated.  There's work coming in at a slow but steady clip, and I'll be excited when I can announce the next issue's arrival date (believe me).  Suffice it to say that it will be relatively soon, and I can only hope that it will be worth the wait.  In the meantime, a short story, long in the making, was completed just two days ago when Leonardo Pietro (who I've worked with on a few FUBAR stories) sent me colored versions of our "Incoming!" story.  Oh my goodness is it great.  Above is one panel from the story, which features a familiar looking (and adorable) dog.  Each panel lives up to this one.  It's gonna blow people away.  It certainly did with me.

More to come.

website maintenance

If you head on over to the main Teddy and the Yeti website, you'll find...well, nothing.  The same is true for the Franks and Beans website, and this may cause undo consternation and wild, speculative rumors regarding my personal life.  Don't worry, though, because this is all due to some much needed updates on the server that hosts both sites.

Perhaps you've noticed that Teddy and the Yeti's homepage hasn't updated in, oh, forever, and this is due in large part to said server issues (plus perhaps a small dose of laziness).  Once the updates are complete and everything is ready to go, there'll be a new - and get this, functional - Teddy and the Yeti page up to view.  And boy,  I hope I don't have to redo the entire Franks and Beans website again, but it's possible as all of those files are saved in different formats, as opposed to the T&Y site which is saved in the wonderful "iWeb" program for the Mac.

My favorite "Peanuts"

For the past several years, Fantagraphics has been releasing beautifully bound collections, ultimately comprising the entire run of Charles Schulz's comic strip masterpiece "Peanuts".  I've never taken the time to sit down and read any big chunks of the thousands of strips, maybe because such a large work is a bit daunting to try and take on, or perhaps because it's simply always been around and I've always had the idea of "it'll still be around tomorrow".  I don't know that I'll ever own the impressive collections being offered up, but it's nevertheless easy to respect the work that Schulz did over his decades as a prominent cartoonist - he's without a doubt one of America's greatest artistic talents.

I was cleaning out my desk a few weeks ago when I found the above Sunday strip, clipped out and folded in half.  This was published after Schulz's death in early 2000, when newspapers couldn't let go of their longtime stalwart; the paper I got this strip from simply renamed it "Classic Peanuts" and kept printing it.  As far as I could tell, the strips weren't printed in any real order, so even though the language and the art style lend me to think that this wasn't a recent strip, I really don't have any idea of when it was originally published.

It's pretty obvious why I decided to keep this, in that it reminds me of my own dog; Schulz, even though he anthropomorphized Snoopy throughout the strip's history, managed to bring out just what we all love about dogs, and it's readily evident that whichever dog Snoopy was based on, he was loved deeply.

I'm sure that, if pressed, most people could come up with a favorite "Peanuts" strip.  This one's mine.

Here's what's next:

A few days ago I was asked if Teddy and the Yeti #3 was the end of the series.  It's not, of course, but I understand the question as it's been a few months between issues and everything that's come so far has had an ending to it - I haven't left too many "to be continued" questions (though there still is the issue of Ted's submarine abduction from issue #1...) and that was by design.  Even so, Duane and I are working hard on getting the next story finished so we can get it out to you, the discerning reader.  You are discerning, right?  Of course you are.

Above you'll see a preview of the next few issues/stories we'll be telling.  This page is going to be printed in the short promo book that I'll be taking with me to the New York Comic-Con, but I want to make it as available as possible for anyone to see, which is why I'm posting it here and will soon have it on the main website and Teddy and the Yeti's Facebook page.  So, hey - tell a friend and help me get the word out, if you would.

The art on this page is provided by Alan Gallo, who did a great job all around as usual.  I've included clues to the next three issues of Teddy and the Yeti (yes, Rusty will be in a story), even touching on some of the backup stories that appear in each issue.  I think the Andromeda Jones story, drawn by Nick Acs, will run in issue #5 as long as I get the art in on time.

Look for the special promo issue soon!  And issue #4 will be soon to follow!  Exciting stuff!

If that's movin' up then I'm...something something.

The past week of my life has been spent preparing to move from Wilmington, NC back to the Pittsburgh area for the summer.  Moving is a stressful event for anyone, but I find myself in a situation that makes it even more interesting: I really don't know where I'll be when the fall rolls around (hey, maybe I'll be dead or something), so I'm stuck in that place in-between moves.  Most of my ever-growing stuff is packed away (floor to ceiling) in storage for a few months, but I had to decide what I'd need to take with me and use for three months as I stay with family for that time.

I knew this was coming, so I planned ahead and brought stuff back home the last few times I visited; all of my Thing statues came with me on one trip (and almost all fell on my dog as I made a sharp turn), my Rusty painting came up on another, etc., but the final trip is always the most contentious - it's when decisions on what stays and what goes have to be made.  Needless to say, I've accumulated quite a stack of comics since arriving in Wilmington, and even though I was diligent in transporting them back home after I had read them, I still had a couple of tall stacks in my room when it came time for the final packing.

It was never a question of leaving my comics in storage; I have the unfounded image in my head of wild animals breaking the door to my storage locker down and tearing my comics to pieces and leaving the more mundane items - coats, furniture, flower pots - just as they found them.  But as I packed the car to make the 600-mile journey to Pennsylvania, I realized that there was no way I was going to fit in everything I had wanted to take.  I suppose it wouldn't have been 100 percent impossible, but I'd imagine the bottom of the car would have been shooting sparks and my reliable Toyota Camry would have averaged about six miles to the gallon along the away.  Oh, and I'd have had to steer from the roof.

As I made a mental inventory of all that was in the car and realized that some hard decisions had to be made, I realized that my boxes (and boxes...) of comics weren't as important as things like clothes.  Or my dog.  So I sucked it up, taped the boxes shut, and took them to the post office.

Media mail is a great thing - it allows you to mail things like books, DVDs and CDs for cheap; I ended up mailing three boxes, the heaviest of which was 27 pounds, and the cost for it came to about 13 bucks.  I am, however, terrified that they will get lost or shredded in some...I don't know, shredding machine or something.  Even though I could look at a picture of any comic ever and tell you if I own it, I have absolutely no idea what books were in the boxes I shipped.  So if one gets lost, I'm going to have a heck of a time replacing those books.

I bought insurance and tracking for each box, but I'm still fretting the disaster that will hopefully never come.  The boxes and their tracking information are each listed on the United States Postal Service's website, and you can follow along with me (hours of fun!) and see their progress by going here and entering in the following numbers:

0309 2880 0000 7564 5892
0309 2880 0000 7564 5915
0309 2880 0000 7564 5908

Fingers crossed.

The things I do for free publicity.

I recently conducted an interview with a reporter from the Uniontown, PA Herald-Standard, a paper from back home, about Teddy and the Yeti and comics in general.  I will say that the interviewer was knowledgeable and didn't ask questions like "they still make comics?" or "is Superman in your book?", which right away means that things went well.  I will post a link when the article sees print, and then we can all marvel at my thrilling answers.

Articles like the one that will be based around my interview are always one part information to two parts promotion, and as such I tried to make all my answers sound important; overall, I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about.  The danger is that I came off sounding like I was full of myself, and I worry about that - I don't want the heading to be "pompous windbag makes a comic".  We'll see.

At the end of the interview, I asked the reporter if I could e-mail a scan of the book's cover - what better way to showcase the book than with a picture of it! - to which she agreed, and then said "and send a picture with you holding the book, too!"

I was afraid of this.  It's not that I don't want my picture in the paper or that I don't like to have my picture taken.  Let's face it, I'm extremely good looking.  I just imagine people I went to high school with picking up the newspaper and seeing me plastered on page one of the arts and entertainment section.  I imagine they'd look at it for a moment, read the caption, and think "Jeff always was pretty weird."  It's just awkward, is all.  Oh well.  I suppose that a newspaper could put a picture of me on every page if it means they're promoting the book in a roundabout fashion.

The above picture is what I sent to the paper, sans mustache.  I drew the mustache for our purposes here, because as we all know, mustaches are funny.  And look!  Rusty's in the background, too.  Hey, fella!

Halloween 2009

I'm not usually one to get dressed up for Halloween - I'm not really sure why, it just seems that I never think about it until it's too late. This year, however, I made the decision to make a costume with a few hours to spare, otherwise known as enough time to run down to Goodwill and frantically try and throw something together (which, as it turns out, is a thought that many many other people have, as the store I went to was teeming with dozens of other Halloween costume procrastinators).

As this is a comic book related blog, I will let you figure out who I decided to go as. Some incorrect answers I heard ALL NIGHT are as follows: guy who was in a plane crash, guy who needed to go to the dry cleaners (??), and the most popular of the three, "The Castaway." Apparently I had a Tom Hanks vibe going on that day. I HAVE PURPLE PANTS, PEOPLE! COME ON!!

Also, two dogs managed to sneak into this picture. One is real.

...what's he LOOKING at?

To answer the title, probably a hot dog or something. Wait, scratch that...Rusty would never be so calm in there were a hot dog dangling over his head.

I got in contact with Carla Wyzgala a few months ago to possibly create a cover for Teddy and the Yeti. She's a great artist and her watercolors really stood out to me, and I thought that something of that nature might in turn stand out on a comic cover. We're still working the details out on the cover idea, but in the meantime I couldn't help but commission a spot illustration of my dog Rusty. Above are the results!

I love that dog. I'm going to try and get him in the book if at all possible.