Strictly as a hypothetical:

Would anyone be interested in buying a bio-comic about Edward R. Murrow?

The latest press release from Bluewater Comics about an upcoming installment in their "Female Force" series devoted to Barbara Walters got me thinking about the man again. You may recall my endorsement of the movie Good Night and Good Luck a few years back, dealing with Murrow as well. The idea's been preying on my mind awhile.

Seeing as strangemaps is on my friendlist feed, and alasdair was speaking of how and why he valued maps, it seemed a good moment to post this particular work in progress and training exercise...

From Mythical Maps

Attended my first ever InDesign User Group session tonight. We got some explanation on how to link other programs' files into *.indd projects so that updates in their software-of-origin can be automatically reflected in the InDesign file as one goes. It is basic stuff and while you can do this with other software suites, where CS4's abilities are concerned...learning how to do anything the Adobe way after years of Corel is all still fairly new to me.

I'll be attending the November Comix Jam tomorrow night at the Shanghai Restaurant. Suzanne Marsden's announced that this'll be the last one of 2009, so...

Noticing that CBC's TV arm has improved its Nielsen performance of late. I'm glad to see it, and I'm also fully convinced that the privately-owned TV networks' leaders will never forgive this "sin" by the Crown-owned broadcaster against them. At least no more than they have any of the previous instances.

My favourite retail-bought calendar is getting the go-signal for a 2011 edition: Star Trek: Ships of the Line. Word straight from one of the participating artists, Doug Drexler! *happy dance!*

Sitting down to shut up for a minute...

"Accomplished" isn't all of it, though. For a while there today, "frustrated" would not have been out of line to describe the mood today either.

( More technobabble for interested parties... )

And tomorrow, it's back to regular job-hunting and other errands, including a writing workshop.

Back to you!

Well, I didn't go to today's ByMUG meeting. This, per the doctor's strong suggestion that I try to take things relatively easy for one more week this past Friday. That's okay. I got to see my brother's family this weekend, lively bunch that they are, which was good for the soul in its way.

Seems like the Hallowe'en trick or treat traffic's still doing its slow year-to-year drop-off, further aggravated this year by the ongoing health scares in progress. It does look like the costuming's getting better among those keeping the tradition going. A good thing, that. The kids doing the rounds hereabouts could have done very well - or at least a lot better - without the high winds and the chills.

Maybe next year for that?

Oh, and a bit of Local Hero comics news to close out on: the inkwork for the second issue is done!

Our new inker delivered the last pages to Ian Gould this week, and I am in receipt of a bunch of scans which I need to get a look at via wi-fi download as soon as I feel up to hauling the laptop to the local library branch.

The next edition is set for this upcoming Wednesday at the Shanghai Restaurant on Somerset at 7 PM.

Confirmed at this URL:

http://comixjam.tripod.com/

Been toying with a number of things in between job searching, research, keeping up with friends and family and housechores.

One of those is a bit of spacecraft design based on material from Christopher L. Bennett. Seemed like a cool idea at the time, based on a discussion of favourite starships in novels over at TrekBBS.com. Still does. I should really be doing something like this in CorelDraw, Illustrator or SketchUp, I suppose, but a real pen on real paper ends up most mentally efficient for me right now. None of it's officially sanctioned in any real sense, but it's a fun exercise that I can learn from.

Also, I've been toying with Manga Studio.



Not quite where I want to be with it yet, but then perfectionism holds sway in just about everything to do with illustration for me. Especially after visiting Montréal the previous weekend and seeing several Big Names working away in Artists' Alley again.

Practice, practice, practice...

A high-five to mercuryeric, since I just saw his good news posted on Facebook: he's now officially co-writer on Action Comics!

Another one to ruckawriter for still being there and still working on that series!

In case anyone's wondering, I'll be in Montréal this weekend.

Here's why:

http://sequential.spiltink.org/2009/09/montreal-comic-conthis-weekend.html

No, I won't be renting a table. This year.

2010, hopefully, will be different.

Just so we're clear about what we've been reading in the Super-books for the last couple of decades...

( Read more... )

Okay. Some of you know that I've been a SHIELD/Nick Fury fan for a while now. So my interest in Secret Warriors won't be a surprise.

Some stuff's been going on in the last couple of issues that almost threw me out of the story. Now, I'm not so sure that Jonathan Hickman hasn't in fact thought things through.

( Allow me to explain... )

Continuing an irregular series on fictional comics geography...

If you've been reading Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink, then you've heard of this addition to the roster of DCU cities and towns, Liberty Hill.

In Ink # 1, it's described as being "in the shadow of the (American) nation's capital". In # 2, now on sale, one of the main TV stations in Liberty Hill's region is Baltimore. So Maryland's not a bad guess for the town's host state if anyone's interested.

I'll be running a table today from noon to 5 at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair's 2009 edition. It will, as usual, be held at the Jack Purcell Community Centre just off of Elgin Street in Centretown.

Further details here or here.

Something budgie_uk mentioned recently got me thinking...and it got me this result:

Just thought I'd post a reminder:

Yes, I'm still working on Local Hero with Ian Gould. We're hopeful of getting the second issue out later this year, but seeing as there's a bit of "dead time" in my "night job" schedule right now for various reasons outside of my control, I wouldn't be averse to doing a few "one-off" commissions and such like for interested parties.

Just saying...

A bit of practice sketchery here. If you've seen Local Hero # 1, you'll already be acquainted with Gloria, but a fresh look is always a good thing for anyone and their friends, yes?

Look down.

Then look up again.

I'm about 20% done on the pencils for Local Hero # 3 as I write this, and there's more. I'm about to head back to an old day-job in office work for the next few months. Which usually means a bit of a production slowdown, as in years past. Not an ideal situation, obviously, but bills have to be paid down or paid off. And some of those just don't go away no matter what you're doing to earn your pay.

Meantime, Doug Drexler reminded me of something important: the value of persistence and enthusiasm. Go take a look at that article. Then start rummaging around a while if you've got the time. Even if you're not a Trek or Galactica fan(both of which he's worked on, and I expect he'll be on staff for Caprica as well), I think you'll find stuff worth sticking around for.

Some among you already know about the Shuster Awards, our own counterparts to the like of the Harveys and Eisners south of the border.

They've added a new category: the Gene Day Award for Canadian Self-Publishing.

I refer you to the Shuster Awards' own page on the subject in the link above.

What do I think?

I think this is another good step in building a home-grown comics sector in Canada's entertainment industry. I want to see us get to the point where everyone with talent and ambition to do so can make a decent living in the field. It can only help the country for that to happen.

The work continues...