It is a 40 page FULL COLOUR mini-digest sized at 5×7.25 inches, laid out in the LANDSCAPE format. About the size of one of those paperback MANGAS, but turned on its side (and nowhere near as THICK!) 28 of the pages are for a comic story and the balance are a Guest gallery in the back plus sketches of my own. I am pretty proud of this little book. I’ve seen the proof and it has come out very well; KENESS has done a wonderful job on the printing.

I’ve wanted to do a full colour comic book for ages but could never make the numbers work; my sales are low and the minimum print order (to get a low cover price) is usually very high. So my conundrum was to either A) go for a high volume/low unit price but be saddled with both a large investment and unsold stock (which I’ve done many times before) or B) spend less money for less volume but have an alienating cover price. Doing this book at the digest size made the full colour option affordable (both for me and my customers).

Part of the breakthrough for me has been finding a wonderful printer, who is both local and patient in answering my many questions as I formulate a plan for a new book. A few months ago, I began talking to KENESS printing, about pricing for a colour book. Based on those discussions I planned a reformatted, expanded and coloured version of an old 10-page SEPHILINA story (originally done for the BABES in SPACE anthology). Though I had a plan and a great quote, I wasn’t sure if I could actually get it all done in time. However, I recently had a HIATUS in my paying work, which gave me some spare time, and a chance to go for it..

My only regret is not making the book a little bigger. I was maxed out in the vertical (for a digest) at 5 inches but I actually could have made the horizontal about an inch wider, and I am not sure now why I did not. If it goes into a reprint I may expand it to 5×8. However, my REAL hope in a reprint would be to do a much bigger, re-formatted PORTRAIT style book. Both pages in any given two-page spread can be stacked two atop one another (ie; to become ONE page) if I ever get enough pages done to justify a big, album style book.

At the beginning of this project, I had roughly half the drawing already done, but even so, the remaining work was quite a bit to do; the half that was already drawn had to be reformatted to the LANDSCAPE format and then coloured, and the OTHER half had to be both drawn and coloured (not to mention written!) and all those fiddly dialog-balloons had to be dealt with… Even with the freedom to work on it full time for a few weeks, I was beginning to feel that I had bitten off more than I could chew, and worried that it would not get done in time for this year’s COMIC CON. But, happily, I made it. It is always fun to do Comic Con but it is an EXTRA satisfaction to do the show with a new book in hand.

So if any of you will be at COMIC CON next week please stop by BOOTH #1329 to visit myself and my old booth-mate RHODE MONTIJO. I will have this NEW BOOK, plus some buttons and prints that I have never sold at Comic Con before. Rhode will ALSO have new product; his charming new children’s book, THE HALLOWEEN KID. Awesome!!

Oh, and a heads-up; one consequence of my recent grind-stone, not to mention the fact that Rhode and I now both live on separate coasts, is that we haven’t been able to wrangle any crazy BOOTH THEME this year. Hopefully the joy in seeing our new product will offset the disappointment in not seeing us dressed as robots this time around? I hope so.

See you there!

Most of the Sephi Pin-ups were done years ago (in a thread on the DRAWING BOARD) but one of them is being worked on now. I asked JULIA to do her take on the character and I REALLY love what she has come up with. Here is a sneak peek:

It is so much fun for me to see other artists do their version of my characters especially when the end-result is so appealling. JULIA is also posting step-by-step progress of her SEPHI PIN-UP on her BLOG so keep an eye on that… OK, back to the grind-stone for me!

I put a lot of thought into planning how to display all this stuff. Even with the extra space dividend (now that I get the entire table to myself) it is hard to display all the bits and pieces I have produced over the years, now including the stuff I produced for this show; 7 new buttons, and 40 new prints (ten 11×14 designs, ten 8.5×11 designs and twenty designs at the NEW size of 5×7). The prints in particular present something of a conundrum to display in such a limited space, especially the variety of designs that I have now. Some exhibitors bring wire frames to hang the artwork, or other heavy, bulky display cases but I am determined to use only lightweight and modular displays so that I can take the show on the road as much as possible.

I am quite happy with the solution that I came up with this time around, which was to use a daisy-chain of clips to hang prints from the back-drape (between the two banners I had made for EMERALD CITY) and have a fetching booth-babe stand in front of them as an eyeball-trap… What a marketing genius I am, to be sure.

I need to think of a different solution for those shows where there is no drape (such as APE) so I will most likely make myself one of the PVC pipe display frames I see other people use. I didn’t get a new book done this time around but I have not given up on the idea that a mini-comic may get done in time for COMIC CON. Lately I have been puting more effort into PRINTS than comics… It is always tricky to trade off the months of work that drawing a book takes, and the low price that they sell for, against the ease of selling one single image over and over at a relatively higher price (a comic takes months for one person to make and sells for $3-$5 and a print may take as little as a day to make and sells for $20).

While I would like these things to at least pay for themselves I do not want to be driven away from what I want to do in an effort to pander to “market forces”. Likewise, I’d prefer to have more people come and actually look at the artwork (rather than just walk on by) So I will do as much as I can to make the display appealing, but I don’t beat myself up if people move on to something else. Failing on my own terms is what it is all about.

I recently bought a rolling trunk for away-teams to long shows out of town (such as Comic Con) but I don’t really sell much in two-day shows so, while I was tempted to use my new trunk for this trip, I opted for a roll-aboard carry-on bag stuffed full of my wares. This thing is designed to carry about 8 pounds of socks and undies but at the moment it is jammed with about 55 pounds of books and is definitely the heaviest carry-on bag of all time.

Other than the rolling brick, I have a small duffel bag and a folio-case containing my new vinyl BANNERS. It is strange that I have never made these before. Rhode and I usually hand-make the booth-decorations for each show, but having a more portable and durable display will be key from now on.. To make my kit complete, I still need to buy some lightweight banner-STANDS for those shows that do not provide a backboard. In the past, I have used an EASEL for this purpose but they are bulky and have a huge footprint that is inconvenient in cramped booth spaces.

If you are in Seattle this weekend (March 13/14) come by the EMERALD CITY con where I will be sharing a booth with TED MATHOT and DEREK THOMPSON. It would be nice to find out that I needed to pack more stuff to sell. Selling out would be a GOOD problem to have.

You are welcome to download this mini for free.

After a few days of wondering which idea to actually do (a common problem for me) I started drawing KAT & TELLY in earnest on Tuesday morning (based on some drawings and ideas that had been frying in the brain-pan for sometime) and finally finished the last drawing in the wee small hours of Saturday morning. I had intended to print the books myself at home but, as the sun rose on Saturday morning, that plan was aborted due to yet another bout of printer trouble (the combination of a prima donna printer and a procrastinating cartoonist has been fatal for many CON projects in the past).

Thankfully, I was able to run down to the copy place a few blocks away, and get this mini printed out in a matter of minutes (on my own paper) and then hop a cab to the con, where folding and stapling completed the package in time for the minis to go on sale at 11 am.

This year, Rhode was unable to be a part of the show as he is out of town. However, he had already left a stash of his product at my place here in SF and I was able to load a stripped down inventory of both his and my stuff onto ONE luggage dolly and get it all to the show myself. Rhode’s pal Paul was able to help out with manning the booth.

UPDATE:
the book itself is online HERE: