The Big Goodbye

Today was the day. I sent out the final files (minus one recalcitrant ad that will be in tomorrow) for Love and Capes #4 to Quebec, where Lebonfon will be printing it. I didn't get too much more done today, aside from that, but that's a pretty big thing.Sometime soon, I'll have to start #5, but that's a project for another day. Today, I'm just going to sit here and bask in the doneness.

The Finish Line

A year or so ago, I made the decision that it was time to stop working on weekends and evenings. I'd allowed my work life to grow to the point where it was, well, my life, and I wanted to get it under control. So, I slowly let my clients know and I went from there. It's a hard thing for a freelancer to do. So many of us start out with this as a second job that weekend and evenings are the only times you can work, and sometimes your clients come to expect it. Anyway, I staked out my position and have tried to stick with it.

Now, I'm not saying I'm never in the studio after office hours. I am. A lot. But it's usually only on stuff I want to work on. Things that are fun, or that I have a burning desire to do. Or, when a friend calls and needs some help, which is what happened this weekend when John Gallagher asked me to help him finish off his Free Comic Book Day issue of Buzzboy. John's a great guy, and we've all fallen under the Dreaded Deadline Doom. So, I said "sure" and started coloring.

Fortunately, it wasn't a horrible job. As coloring goes, the pages were pretty simple. And I still got out to see "Zodiac" (very good, by the way) and out to dinner on Saturday, too. So I wasn't locked in for the weekend or anything. Best of all, they came out pretty good. I posted the first a couple of days ago, the balance are below. Click on any of them to, as Jebediah Springfield once said, embiggen them.

They Keep Pulling Me Back In

So I thought I was done with "Buzzboy" and then Sky Dog Big Mucketeymuck John Gallagher called and said "Can you do four more?" And then he smashed a watermelon with a sledgehammer. Wait, that last part was the other Gallagher. No matter, the upshot is, I'm doing four more pages. Here's the first of them.

In Love and Capes news, I got my orders for the Free Comic Book Day, and I have to say, they're pretty good. They're well over ten times my normal orders, so the book is going to get in the hands of a lot more people. Hopefully, a chunk of them stay on board for #5, coming out in August. The book ships off to the printer on Monday, and I'll be getting them sometime after that.

Of All the Souls I Have Encountered in My Travels...

I'm a week late in posting this, but the Captain always understood the importance of duty, so he'd understand me being too committed to get this posted. With his untimely passing last week, I thought it was fitting.

Funny story… I first met him with Bob Ingersoll, writer and lawyer guy (and co-writer of Til Death) and the Captain asked Bob "Are you a sentinel of liberty, too?" And I said, "No, Cap, he's a lawyer."

You know, as long as we remember him, and keep publishing a monthly comic with his name on it, he's not really gone.

Clearing the Decks

Today's the last of my cleanup days, I think, where I try to do all the little stuff that's slipped through the cracks. I was messed up by a bad deadline on a lettering project, and a couple of other things. I know it's the nature of the beast, but it doesn't mean I like when it happens consistently.

One of the bright spots, though, has been coloring Buzzboy. I colored a six-page "Buzzboy in Space" story, and I just finished coloring a second story, an autobiographical "How I Became a Cartoonist" story. It's really sweet, and I'd tell you to pick the book up just for that, but that'd slight the rest of the goodness in the book. Besides, it's free! That's right, it's a Free Comic Book Day book.

Below are thumbnail links to the pages. These have no copy on them, so you can see them without ruining the story.

First Convertible Day!

Today is was the official Convertible Day of 2007! I had the top down on the Supercar-D (a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder, for those of you new to the blog) for the first time today, and tooled around a bit while taking it to the car wash. Any Covertible Day is always a good Convertible Day, especially the first one.

Wrap Party

And here's the last page of Buzzboy, at least for now. I'm the regular colorist, unless you've heard something I haven't, so I'll be back on board for the next issue.

On top of that, I've had a moment of inspiration and have figured out the cover for Love and Capes #5! Expect to be seeing it soon.

I'm going Phi Beta Kubert

It seems to be Rush Week here at Thom Zahler Art Studios world headquarters. We're not pledging for a sorority (why would I want to hang out with a bunch of guys?) or anything, just that there seem to be a lot of clients who require our, shall we say, immediate attention. So, we're keeping the chatter down to a minimum, despite how much we want to rave about 300, and just uploading the eye candy that is our latest page of Buzzboy eye candy.

My Name in Lights… or Ink, at least

The cover to The Sky's the Limit, the Star Trek: The Next Generation compilation that Bob Ingersoll and I contributed to, has been posted here. I've got a tiny image here on the website.

I can't even express how much I'm looking forward to seeing this when it comes out. Words fail me, which is a bad thing for a guy who wrote something to say. Still, it's gonna be cool.

For those of you not in the know, the title comes from the last line of the last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Captain Picard joins the rest of the crew in a game of poker and says "Five card stud. Nothing wild. And the sky's the limit." It was a great ending to a great episode and a great series.

Knowing My Place in the Universe

Last night was the first Wednesday of the month, which means that I, my girlfriend, and a bunch of our friends, participate it the legendary Pub Quiz here in town. It's a knock-down, drag-out trivia competition, including a video round, a picture round, and a missing link round. There up to eight people on each team, and our team in particular is kind of the New York Yankees of trivia teams. Well, without the being completely evil part. We're the one everyone wants to beat, and we're also the one that usually wins.

Each of the eight have their own areas of expertise. Mine, obviously, are quantum mechanics and comic books. So last night, we got this question: This super heroine made her first appearance in All-Star Comics #8. It couldn't be Wonder Woman, I thought. That was too obvious. Besides, her first appearance was in Sensation Comics, right? I used to have the hardback treasury edition. It's what her First Appearance Action Figure is based on. So it'd have to be someone else. I chose Hawkgirl.

Can you believe that it was Wonder Woman? I thought our host got it wrong, and on the way home, called my Mom and had her check the answer. Okay, I didn't call her at 11:30pm to have her check Wikipedia, she'd left a message earlier in the night and said to call, and she's more of a night owl than me, so I was returning said call. She's usually on the computer doing real estate stuff, so having her check wasn't that much of an effort.

And our host was right. I felt horrible all that night. I mean, it's a comic question, I should know that cold. There are any number of questions on Pub Quiz that we think are between A and B and we pick A when it should be B. That's fine. But me not knowing a comics question, geez, that's like not knowing my own middle name.

Worse yet, when the scores were all tallied, we were tied with another team. That one question could have been the difference. So we went into the tie-breaker round. We had to get two points. I got the first one for our team, and teammate Dave and I were simultaneous in getting our second winning point. So, I feel vindicated at least a little bit.

Oh, yeah, and here's a newly-colored page from Buzzboy!