Free Comic Book Day 2010 Advertising Opportunities
Love and Capes #13 will be part of the Free Comic Book Day festivities on May 1st, 2010. As in past years, the book will have space for advertising. Wanna be part of it?
Love and Capes #13 will be part of the Free Comic Book Day festivities on May 1st, 2010. As in past years, the book will have space for advertising. Wanna be part of it?
All ads are full color, full bleed with a trim size of 6 5/8" x 10 13/16". And ad design services are provided at no cost if you need them.
Download a PDF price sheet here.
| BACK COVER | $1000 |
| INTERIOR BACK COVER | $850 |
Space reservation due by February 5, 2010.
Deadline for ad art is February 12, 2010.
Ads are accepted in PDF, EPS, TIF, JPG or PSD format. 300dpi minimum. Make checks payable to Thom Zahler Art Studios or Maerkle Press. PayPal accepted at tz@thomz.com.
Twitter Contest Recap
Just to recap, I ran a Twitter contest for the last couple of days. In Love and Capes #12, there's a scene where Abby kisses Mark. When I wrote it, I could hear the soundtrack in my head So I asked people to guess which song that was. That's wildly random, so I gave out a hint a day.
I only got two hints in. The first was that it was a song from 2007. The second was that I referenced another song by this band in my other romantic comedy. That was Long Distance, which referenced Hanging by a Momentby Lifehouse.
I figured that second hint would only work for people who had read that unproduced sitcom script, and I figured there couldn't be that many. Only people who'd followed a bunch of my work would even have a clue that I'd done that project, yet it was all Mizelle needed to figure out that the song was First Time, also by Lifehouse.
I'll use music, frequently, to try to get the right mood for a piece. Here, though, everything just came together.
In #12 (and spoiler warning if you haven't read further) Abby thinks Mark is going to go away forever, and runs up to him in a dramatic moment and delivers, as Some Kind of Wonderfulonce put it, "the kiss that kills." It was a huge moment in the story, and I really needed to nail it. I was worried from all sorts of angles. Drawing two people kissing is always rough, because of how the faces interlock, and trying to make sure both faces can be seen well enough. Plus, it was a big moment and needed to have that feel.
I drew it and thought I did okay. When I colored it and dropped in the background, though, that's when it happened. I could hear First Time and could almost imagine one of those spinning shots as the camera circled around the two lovers. And the lyrics of the song could easily be applied to Abby, with her being scared for Mark and it's definitely a first kiss that isn't a first kiss.
Read the book, you'll get it.
All that was missing was the rain. That probably woud have been too much. Plus it's a hassle to draw.
The contest was fun, though. I'm going to have to do more of them. So keep following me on Twitter for more.
Love and Capes #12/Twitter contest
In my Robot 6 interview, I mentioned that I was considering doing a Twitter contest. I've decided to do it, and here it is:
1. Read Love and Capes #12. Page 26, panel 1 is a big half-page splash. When I drew it, in my head I heard a song. First person to Twitter me with the song name and artist gets their pick of anything from the Love and Capes store.
2. I'll post one hint a day, every day. And I'll add the hints here after they appear on Twitter, so bookmark this page if you need to. This is the permalink.
Hint #1: The song was released in 2007.
Clue #2: I've referenced this band in the other romantic comedy I wrote. A ittle something for longtime fans.
AND WE HAVE A WINNER! @mizzelle on Twitter correctly guessed "First Time" by Lifehouse. Specifically, here's the part that got stuck in my head from when Abby runs to catch Mark to the kiss itself:
Looking at you,holding my breath, Feeling alive all over again,
For once in my life, I'm scared to death,
I'm taking a chance,letting you inside.
As deep as the sky, under my skin
Like being in love, she says
For the first time
Flying Robots and Flying Cars
Happy New Year, everyone!
To celebrate, I'm showing off this panel of page 14 of Love and Capes. That means that I have ony ten more pages to do to finish the FCBD issue. And I betcha I can get them done this month. After that, I'll only have 120 to go.
Wait. What? I probably shouldn't have typed that.
Hopefully, I'll get the initiative to do a real New Year's post, full of recaps and brave statements about blowing the doors off this New Year. I know that calendars are just arbitrary numbers created by man, and today's really no different than yesterday. But still, the number thing gives you something to hang intentions on, and whatever construct helps, right? Of course, I'm not going to start any resolutions until tomorrow. New Year's Day is too much a holiday.
Okay, enough rambling. Let me leave you with this: There's a hashtag meme going around Twitter about "Where were you ten years ago?" Me, I was doing a caricature gig at a New Year's Party for pretty nice bank and then getting ready to go back to work at the ad agency. It'd be a little less than two years before I quit working for The Man and went off on my own, starting Raider. And after that, everything hit high warp and I haven't looked back.
Also, ten years ago there was this commercial, that I think is just as relevant today as then. Minus the silly stuff about Microsoft, of course.
Where ARE my flying cars?
Could Love and Capes #13 BE MORE EXCITING?
Of course it could. What kind of cereal prize will Mark get?
Crusader and Iron Man?
In other news, the official announcement about Free Comic Book Day 2010 has been made. Love and Capes #13, of course, is on it. But when I went to the website the day of the announcement, I saw this:
According to the site, the thirteenth issue of Love and Capes will feature Iron Man and Nova fighting the Red Ghost and his Super-Apes.
I, of course, was surprised. Fortunately, it was just a mistake which Diamond quickly corrected, and I didn't have to rip up the twelve pages I'd finished to make it in line with the FCBD announcement. Plus, I'm sure Marvel is just as happy to keep my grubby mitts off their characters.
The error has been corrected, but I still think it's kinda funny.
Looking a Gift Horse in the Mouth
I hope you all had a good Christmas. Mine was pretty great.
I constantly mention the Christmas Eve event at my house which is, by far, my favorite part of the season. 
It's the one time of the year that Zahlerdu is full of people and kids and food and Santa (who does stop by because Uncle Thom is all kinds of connected).I know my neices and nephews*love coming here, seeing and playing with all the toys and learning to color on my computer.
Well, that last one is just enlightened self-interest. I need some workers to help me speed up my Love and Capes process.
And yes, giving is much better than getting. It's great to find the right present, something special or unexpected to give to someone equally as special.
But the getting can be pretty awesome, too.
Over the years I've received the amazing gifts, from custom action figure "dollhouses" from my aunts, to a DVD of my television appearances on local news and Who Wants to be a Millionaire, to a Star Trek voice activated-light switch. And, of course, the Mighty Men and Monster Maker Kit, which may be the most awesome toy ever and featured art by Dave Stevens.
This year, I recieved a copy of Love and Capes.
I was understandably surprised when I saw it. I mean, I have dozens of copies here in the house, plus I created the darn thing. But my cousin Jamie, the gift-giver in question, saw my John Crichton-esque confused expression and said "It'll make sense when you open it."
Yes, Jamie had gotten Chris Sims of The Invincible Super Blog to annotate the collection the way that he does with so many other things, including Anita Blake. Except, that LnC is much better because, you know, stuff happens.
Chris marked the book up with such witty bon mots as writing "Who Watches the Watchmen" on brick walls in the background, demanding both more Fearleader appearances and an Elvis Bear spin-off, and predicting that Mark will sell his marriage in a bargain with Mephisto in #25.
Like with most humor, the retelling loses something. It's great! I can say two things with absolute certainty: Chris Sims is a very funny man and he has the handwriting of a serial killer.
I don't know how much Jamie paid for this service, but I can only guess it's in the low four-figures. It's certainly worth it, though. So, if you're the significant other or good friend of some comic creator, I can't recommend it highly enough.
And I'll take my ten percent commission, then, Chris.
Thank you so much, Jamie. This was great!
So, I hope you and yours had a great Christmas, and here's hoping your New Year is everything you want it to be.
* Okay, in this case it's second cousins and Goddaughter and her brother, but nieces and nephews is just easier to type.
Seven come Eleven
Page eleven took some doin'. I knew basically what characters I wanted to use and what I might say, but it took forever to break the page. I wound up cleaning for two days trying to break the writer's block to no avail. And then I became creatively dyslexic. 
Waiting in line at a Wendy's I figured it out and broke… page thirteen. And with Love and Capes I like to work in order, so.
Finally, it came to me in church what to do on this page. Some people would say it was me not paying attention to the homily, but I like to think of it as divine inspiration.
Still one more clunky page to do, but I've got a bit of a car ride ahead of me. Long car rides do help jar things loose.
In the Words of Han Solo, "It's Not My Fault"
I'm getting some reports that Love and Capes #12 hasn't shipped everywhere. I don't know why Diamond would list it in their new releases and then not deliver it until after the Holidays, but apparently that's what they're doing. Anyway, if you're one of the people affected, I wanted you to know that it wasn't something I did on my end.
Meanwhile, I managed to finish page ten of the next issue. I've hit the spike strips of writing and these pages are coming out a lot slower than I expected. Also, if you compare these posts against what actually prints, you'll notice that I'm going to rearrange pages in the print edition. I realized this Abby sequence needs to happen earlier in the book.