And now...Paul Little!

New to the Teddy and the Yeti team is colorist Paul Little, who's helping to pick up some of the slack on a few of the pages in issue #2. Paul is something of a lifesaver - he's stepped in and kept things moving when the book could be mired in some fairly serious delays. Thanks to him and his great work, I'm confident that the second issue will be in stores on time.

Let me qualify that, I suppose - there was NO way I was going to let issue #2 slip from its in-store date (February 2010). But Paul has made it simpler for me, and with him at the reins I don't have to do an artist search and wade through samples to find someone whose style fits the book, and thank goodness for that.

In any case, I'm doing my best to make sure that each aspect of the book (writing, art, colors, letters, bananas) flows together as seamlessly as possible. While that's not always 100% possible, we're not missing a beat with Paul on colors. Welcome aboard, fella!

I have a hard time not getting excited by this.

Even though they've done their best to make the Hulk ridiculously strong to the point where I guess he can break planets in half, even though the same people have depowered the Thing to the point where he can't quite stand up to the Hulk in the same way he did back in the 60s, even though the Red Hulk isn't the "real" Hulk to begin with, even though there's no way they'd let the Thing beat the Hulk in the Hulk's own book at the very beginning of a new storyline, there's something about this that really makes me want to buy it. BEAT HIS ASS, THING! Friggin' Hulk.

pinup

Here's a new pinup of Teddy and the Yeti from Mario Wytch, artist on Arcana's upcoming Kutter Blaque. A colored version of this will show up in the second issue of the book! This is what Ted would look like if he decided to grow a beard. Awesome.

That is all.

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.

Cover preview, part 4

Remember when I told you that I wasn't actively trying to produce more Mr. Massive material (ALLITERATION!!)? Well, it's still true. Even so...there was a time when I thought I'd make it big with the character, and I did try in earnest to drum up some support for a Mr. Massive title.

As we all know, judging a book by its cover is just fine and dandy, which is why people pay so much attention to comic book covers - they are always EXACTLY INDICATIVE of what is going on inside. As I was peddling Mr. Massive around the Comic-Con International in 2006, I managed to convince all around great guy Todd Nauck to draw a cover for the book - it was planned that we'd do a second issue and it would be the main cover.

For a number of reasons, that never happened, and the world was deprived of a great cover for far too long. As Mr. Massive will be featured in Teddy and the Yeti's second issue backup tale, I figured that I might not get another chance to use this gem of a cover. Obviously, I'm not going to use it as the main cover for the book, but I wanted to use it somewhere, so it's getting the back cover spot - a criminally poor place for such a great piece of work, but better than sitting on my hard drive indefinitely, gathering digital dust.

I've posted the black and white inked version on the main site, but here's a little clip of the colored version - Karin Rindevall once again helped out and did a great job. To find the cover on issue #2, here's some instructions:

1) buy the book

2) flip it over

Viola!

Other stuff, part 3 - Mr. Massive

Mr. Massive isn't a project that I'm actively pursuing right now, but it'll always have a special place in my heart because it was the first full-size book I actually took the time to work on from start to finish and self publish.

The character himself is something of a spoof of DC's Captain Marvel or maybe even the more obscure Prime - he's a kid who turns into a superhero with unbelievable powers, except he uses them for all selfish reasons and very few of the right ones. Think of a superhero with attention deficit disorder and you're on the right track.

The theme of the book is pretty much straight up comedy, which I'm a huge fan of but can realize that it's difficult to find an outlet for such a concept. The picture at top is probably the best work that artist and co-creator Artboy_X (I'm not sure if he's still calling himself that) has ever done - he certainly took his time and got all the details right. The book itself is one that I can still read and get a chuckle from, and I'm notoriously hard on my own work after I'm a little bit removed from it, so that tells me that something was right with it.

I'm taking the time to mention this because Mr. Massive will be featured in the backup story to Teddy and the Yeti issue #2, which I'm currently getting ready for print. The short story features art by the illustrious Paul Tucker and you can find a preview in the comics section of the main site.

Some characters that I work on or try to develop lose steam after a while, but I find myself able to write down new jokes for the big guy pretty much any time I give it a chance. Maybe some day I'll get to return to this character.

Other stuff, part 2.1 - The Partisan redesign

Paul Tucker is both prolific and consistently good at what he does, which makes him a rarity in the comic book biz (the "z" makes it sound cool). I mentioned a little while ago that he and I are working on a title called "The Partisan", which features our main character versus everyone else in existence.

While putting one of our many stories together, Paul decided that Duranko, the lead character, could use a subtle redesign, and here are his results. Almost every part of his outfit hails from a different part of the globe - it's easy to see early American, Chinese and African influences in each of these new designs. It's things like this that make it such a pleasure to work with Paul on the various projects that we've been a part of.

Paul has a pin up of Teddy and the Yeti in the first issue of the book, and if all falls into place, he'll be drawing the short Mr. Massive backup tale in issue #2. Maybe one day we'll get a collection together with all our Partisan stories and share them. I know I'd love to see it.