Teddy and the Yeti at Midtown Comics

Midtown Comics is a comic shop with one of its locations in Times Square.  This, for many reasons, is awesome.  What is also awesome is how Midtown Comics will soon be carrying copies of Teddy and the Yeti.

Ever since the debacle with Diamond dropping the book from their distribution plans, I've been working to get Teddy and the Yeti #1 into as many stores as possible.  It's one thing to drive around to comic shops in my general area, and it's another to reach out to shops that have a sizable online presence as well.  Midtown Comics is one of those companies that also has a great, popular online store for people all over the world to venture into...from an electronic standpoint.

Yes, I do sell copies of T&Y on my own website, and (hey!) I have made some sales there.  But from my own perspective, I see why someone would rather shop at one of these online sites with a large selection.  If you want to buy a copy of the book directly from me, that's basically all you're getting - until the second issue comes out, you can get that first issue...and that's it.  Order seventeen if you'd like, but I know that I'm much more likely to take advantage of some of the shipping deals that some sites offer and order some other books along with Teddy and the Yeti #1...so for this reason, if nothing else, I'm really excited.

I'm currently talking with at least one other big online retailer about carrying Teddy and the Yeti, and they seem pretty receptive to it - as in, they've said they will carry the book - but I don't want to announce anything else until it is finalized.  In the meantime, I shipped off a sizable box to Long Island City, New York today, and I eagerly await seeing it listed on their online site.  It gives this book such a broader reach than it previously had.  Look for it soon!

Cover preview, part 5 - New Dimension Comics exclusive

After the release of Teddy and the Yeti #1 a week and a half ago, I've gotten some really nice compliments on the book, but perhaps none as encouraging as from the folks at New Dimension Comics, who have been gracious enough to not only let me premier the book at their store, but have now agreed to sponsor a exclusive, low-run print of a future Teddy and the Yeti issue.  New Dimension Comics has done similar things in the past, offering exclusive covers to books like the Transformers and Witchblade, and I'm obviously thrilled to be a part of this.

The above artwork is from Alan Gallo, who has a great take on the characters.  I'm designing this cover similarly to recent variant "white" covers that Marvel has put out as of late, in that there will be the characters and a simple white background.  It brings the characters into focus and, hey, I think it looks cool.  Karin Rindevall will be coloring this, as she has done with all of T&Y's covers.

The exclusive copy will be for sale at the store and on their website...whenever it gets done.  Which should be soon.  I hope.

Merchandise.

Let it never be said that I am not self aggrandizing an opportunistic bastard an unconscionable miser entrepreneurial when it comes to Teddy and the Yeti.  Let it also never be said that I'm not thrilled with the idea of having more physical products relating to the characters - it makes it all feel more "real".

For this reason, I contacted Jennifer Sorensen of MonkeyCat Productions on the strangely alluring website, Etsy.  Jennifer worked with reference from the comic to create the Yeti doll you see to your right.  It turned out pretty well, if I do say so.

The question you are all asking is surely "can I buy ten of these immediately and give them out as Christmas presents?"  The answer to that is a resounding "NO!"  Well, okay...perhaps it's not as forceful.  But still, no.  I'm not saying that more of these dolls will never be reproduced, but we're not at that stage right now - I look at this as a prototype from anything to come in the future.  But it would be nice to think that I could possibly have more than one thing to directly buy on the website.

The doll is roughly 15 inches in height (about 38 centimeters to our metric friends) and has white fur and a deep purple textured fabric for the hands, feet and face.

Like I said, this makes for a good prototype/template.  If I were to try my own hand at making one (that is...ask my mom to help), I might look at other materials, etc., but right now I'm more than happy with this one sitting on my shelf right now.  And hey, there's my euphorbia plant and record stack in the background!  YES!!!

Garmin's Yeti...with a Teddy

Garmin, the GPS company with the "Carol of the Bells" parody, is back this year with another version of the annual Christmastime commercial.  This one, which you can view (if you like to watch commercials for some reason) here, is probably the strangest one I've seen yet.  What caught my attention, of course, was its inclusion of a Yeti and his Teddy.  See?  It's on the cusp of pop culture stardom!  I knew I was on to something.  Or maybe it just rhymes.  Whatever.

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!

Lost callings

It's a fairly well-known fact, in my estimation, anyway, that nearly every comic book writer wishes he or she was also a comic book artist, at least to the point where one could draw a book if that's what was necessary.  To this point, these feelings of inequity are only exacerbated when convention season springs up, as anyone who wanders over and peeks at your book will inevitably ask you the question: "did you draw this?"

The next few moments are filled with awkward apologies for lack of desirable skill with a pencil and brush.  After all, artists seem to become writers at a pretty standard clip, and even if their stories aren't necessarily all that great, hey - at least the art is nice.  Writers don't have such luck - comics are a visual medium and as such, the art is what first strikes the onlooker.  Comments that usually follow are of this variety: "uh, I'm sure the story is good, too"; "never mind, then"; or my favorite, "oh, I'm sorry."  It's just something that comic writers have had to deal with, and I'm happy to do so to get to work with individuals who are, after all, so talented at what they do.

I encountered a few good-natured folk while selling Teddy and the Yeti #1 at New Dimension Comics a week ago who asked the aformentioned question - was I the one who drew the book?  Naturally, I wasn't going to lie to them, as that would be a disservice to Duane and his many hours of hard work, but I made the shop-goers a deal: if they bought a copy of the issue, I'd try my damnedest and draw them a sketch of one of the characters on the backing board that came with the comic.  After a while, I stopped asking and just drew them something, and most of them seemed pleased.  The above is an example of what I churned out; I will mention that I was looking at a page of the book while drawing, and it wouldn't be too difficult to find the particular panel in question if curiosity really gets ya.

Overall, I'm happy with the result - I just scribbled some lines and what do you know?  It kind of looks like the Yeti.  What I really find funny is that I know some people will be more excited about something that took me two minutes to draw than they will be about my entire scripting process.  Such is life, my friends, such is life.

Someone please caption this.

I hope that everyone had a nice Thanksgiving - even those of you who are not American, don't celebrate American Thanksgiving, and are probably Communist as a result.  I had a great break complete with turkey, pumpkin pie, football (AMERICAN football) and on the following day, a book signing at New Dimension Comics.

As you can tell from the picture above, the signing went extremely well and people lined up to get the first issue of Teddy and the Yeti (so well I had to put the book in three separate places!).

In all honesty, the three hour event did go over pretty well.  I got to sell a few books, but even more exciting was the opportunity to meet with people and talk to them about the characters, the book, and random comics. I even drew sketches of Teddy and the Yeti for anyone who bought a copy, and they didn't all look like crap!  As long as expectations were kept low, anyway.

In any case, I had a great time, and much of that is due to the generosity of those at New Dimension Comics for giving me the space to set up and sell the book.  Also, Larry was there to keep me company and to point out the Franks and Beans advertisement that somehow made it into issue #1.  It's his favorite page in the whole book.