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Tonight we've got a two-fer.

I'd put up a post about page 17, and then decided I didn't like it and took it down. It was a little too self-promotional for me. Since then, I've done page 18 as well.

In page seventeen, I "name check" Mark Verheiden. Name checking is when you drop the name of a friend in your story. I do it all the time. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's blatant. Either way, it's fun, and a nice way to appreciate the people who are the wind beneath my wings, to steal a phrase from a Bette Midler song. That's something I never thought I'd do.

Mark Verheiden, of course, is the absurdly-talented writer and producer of such things as the good seasons of Smallville and the best frakkin' show on television, Battlestar Galactica. And, like everyone else on the planet, he's got a blog. Check it out, it's good stuff.

Then, I did page 18, which I considered the "easy page" of the book. It was actually one of the discarded endings to issue two, where Mark would fly Abby up to watch the fireworks on New Year's Eve. I liked the scene, but it didn't work for the story. Here, it worked nicely.

The fireworks ar all from photos, and there was no perspective to really worry about. I thought it'd be easy. The operative word being thought.

Turns out when you write seven panels of two characters flying, it starts to get boring visually. So I kept moving the characters around, and in to new and different, and much more challenging to draw, positions. I'm pretty happy with the end result, but it certainly wasn't the gimme that I thought it might be.

With this, I have six pages left to draw. Hopefully I can get at least one more drawn before I leave for the Licensing Show on Monday, which will put me in good shape to wrap things up by the end of the month. That's my plan at least.

Video Killed the Comic Book Star

I've mentioned before that I'm going to be doing the Licensing Show in New York. And hey, if you're going to be in the City So Nice They Named It Twice shoot me an e-mail and I can probably get you into the show sans admission costs.

Anyway, I've had to put together a video trailer of Love and Capes for the show that will be displayed at our booth. Just for fun, I've added a music track. If I were to ever broadcast this, I'd definitely get rights-clearances on the song. For now, it's a guide track.

Still, I think it came out okay. Hopefully, some people at the Licensing Show will think so, too.

Eight to go...!

Love and Capes #5 is now old enough to drive. I hit page sixteen last night.

Here Mark's Dad, Jerry, and Abby share a quiet moment. I've been beating up on Abby in this issue, and needed to give her a good moment. It's especially important as she's not going to have a great rest of the book either.

And, blissfully, this page was a lot easier since I was able to reuse the stadium from the previous page and they went inside the stadium for most of the sequence.

Eight to go…

Glass Houses

I'm always looking for more cool things to do with Love and Capes. That's part of why I'm going to the Licensing Show in New York next week, attempting to arrange Love and Capes underoos and video games and who knows what else. One of the things that I've managed to prototype, thanks to Toon Tumblers, are these slick as can be Love and Capes glasses!

There's a tweak or two that needs to be made on them, but nothing too major. I'm working on figuring out a way to make a production run of these, and hopefully you'll be able to order your own Love and Capes Toon Tumblers.

Would anyone be interested in that?

And The Crowd Goes Wild

My computer is back home and running quite smoothly. Big thanks to the Apple Store for getting it done on Sunday so that I would have it to start my week.

In fact, I got it back in time to finish page fifteen, which is the hardest page I've drawn so far. My stupid writer decided to set a scene at a baseball game. This means drawing crowds and rows of seats, and so on. For this page, I actually designed a series of heads and bodies of people to use in sitting crowd scenes. I'm sure I'll have to draw another crowd of people sitting in rows sometime in the run of the book, so I've got them on file. I also had to design logos for the Deco City Architects and the Chronopolis Dragons, as well as a logo for the stadium itself.

Well, for that, I took another logo I designed for RAP Promotions, the promoting arm of friend Roger Price, purveyor of my favorite convention on the whole darn planet, Mid-Ohio-Con, and used that as the corporate sponsor of the park. Hey, it's no more awkward than "Quicken Loans Arena."

This page also features two rather unique jokes. The first is one of the few times I borrowed something so obviously from my own life. My experiences shape the book, obviously, but there's never been a point where Abby acted exactly like some girl I dated. But, Joanne Spencer is loosely templated on my mother, who's a Steelers fan, so you might be able to guess what happens.

The second joke required a lot of clever staging (at least, I thought it was clever) and a little bit of trust, too. I could have spoon-fed the reader the joke, but I'm hoping that they'll make the connection. And it was a hard connection to draw.

All right, I'll be heading to NYC for the Licensing Show next week, so I have a lot to do and not a lot of time. Back to my now much-cleaner studio and to work…!

Words I've Always Wanted to Type

"I'm proofing the galleys now."Galleys are the just-as-it-will-appear proof of a novel or story. Friday, I received the galleys for "Til Death", the Star Trek: The Next Generation story Bob Ingersoll and I wrote for the forthcoming short story collection (available for purchase at the sidebar to the right). It's been a trip writing a prose story, and I certainly hope it's not my last such trip. Regardless, I'm enjoying the whole journey, including the proofing process. Incidentally, yes, there's a change or two, but very minor. It's amazing what little things can slip through so many people and proofs...which is why I guess we proof them in these stages. I'm proud of the story, and hope you enjoy it too. I'm looking forward to October.

A Lonely Place of Working

My big Mac, Denny Crane, is at the Apple Store right now, getting a tune up. He's been a little crashy lately, and I have some high end graphics work to do on him in the next couple of weeks. So, I cleared the time and took him in for some work.Normally, I would have reinstalled his system software and done a clean restart, but for the fact I don't have the software anymore. Oh, I dutifully bought a five-user license of the latest Mac operating system when it came out. But I only have two computers, so I lent it to my cousin last year to update hers. Then her condo complex burned down. She's fine, and dealing with it far, far better than I would have. And the insurance company has offered to reimburse me, but I want to wait a couple more months. Mac is releasing a new update of the software in a couple months, and it seems silly to buy the old when the new is so close to being released. So I'm here, in the studio, running off my laptop. The studio feels empty without Denny Crane's whirring and two widescreen displays (also at the Apple Store for a good cleaning) taking up a good chunk of my working space. I'm taking the time to clean everything now, and the studio could definitely use a good scrub down. I'm also trying to untangle the spiderweb of USB, Ethernet and Power Cables that have amassed behind my desk. Anyway, I thought I'd share. Denny Crane is gone for a couple of days, but at least you guys are still there.

How Big a Geek Have I Become?

A couple of years back, I was introduced to the Harry Potter series. The series has been really solid, with the exception of the speed bump that was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but got back on track with the sixth book. Of course, that's just my opinion, and I'm still looking forward to the movie of it this summer regardless.

Anyway, I thought I'd share how much of a Potter geek I've become. I was actually at one of the midnight releases, ironically before I was a fan of the series, just because I was hanging out with some Borders employees. I'd love to go to one for real, and in fact have been invited to do caricatures at a couple… but the book comes out the same week as Comic-Con in San Diego. That night I'm sure I'll be at the Hyatt bar doing the schmoozing thing.

But, I really want to get it. Heck, a couple days after San Diego, I'll be up in Los Angeles, with some pool time and a cross-country flight back to the Buckeye State ahead of me. I needs me the book. I'd just buy one on Monday, but there's all these cool pre-orders on Amazon, so…

Well, I've ordered the book via Amazon and it will be shipped to me at my Los Angeles hotel. It'll be waiting for me when I check in, and it'll be part of my post-Con recovery.

See, I'm not just a geek about comics and Star Trek.

Picks and Clicks

I'm adding a new category here to the Thom Zahler blog, one that I call recommendations. I don’t really want to get into writing full-blown reviews for too many things. If I don’t like it, I’m probably not going to talk about it. But there are a lot of cool things out there, and when I stumble upon one, I’d like to share it with you.

Here, I’ve got two. One was introduced to me by Christine, the oh-so-tasty Caribou Coffee granola bars. I’m a fan of their coffee (though my Starbucks baristas and baristaettes keep me coming back to there), and am now a fan of their snack bars. I’m hooked on the mint chocolate ones, which have just the right amount of coffee bite, and at 175 calories, they’re not crazy bad for you.

The other is a CD I bought from iTunes recently. I’ve been a big fan of Captain Tractor since I stumbled upon them on a Due South soundtrack. But they’re a Canadian band, and their CDs are hard to find in the States. Apple’s iTunes knows no such boundaries, though, and you can snag their CD in digital format for just $9.99. Their album North of Yellowhead is the first complete album I bought off iTunes, and man, do I like it.

It’s hard to explain the Captain’s sound. Kind of Celtic/rock/Canada/folk. It’s punchy and, more importantly, a lot of fun. These guys don’t take themselves seriously. Heck, to coincide with the album’s release, they even made their own North of Yellowhead beer. Unfortunately, that doesn’t dispense across the computer.

So, coffee bars and Canadian CD’s. I recommend ‘em both.

Big and Beautiful

My buddy Jamar Nicholas is a wonderfully talented artist, and possessor of the greatest self-promotional prose since Stan "The Man" Lee. When he's not working for Tokypop, or creating things like Detective Boogaloo, Hip Hop Cop, he runs BBWW: The Fat Wonder Woman Blog. It's hard to explain, but a heck of a lot of fun. Clearly scraping the bottom of the barrel, he's posted a new image by some Ohio hack artist.

Wanna see it? Click here.