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December 21, 2020
Here's another thing I'm in before the year is out...
It's the 2020 edition of Word, the official publication of Writers' Alliance NL. It contains articles about how local authors spent their pandemic, and I'm one of them!
The good news is you can read it, too, if you just click on the picture above! How's that for an early Christmas present?
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November 28, 2020
All right, let's talk about this...
Bedlam & Belfry, Intergalactic Attorneys at Law: The 2nd Dozen is now officially released! Like a lot of things it was put on hold this year because 2020 turned out to be one for the history books, but it's out now and is available at finer online merchants!
It's been five years since the last Bedlam & Belfry book came out, but the boys are back with their usual legal chicanery. I like to think that a good Bedlam & Belfry story is like a Bugs Bunny cartoon in that they do some really awful stuff but you give them a pass because it's a comedy. Like the disclaimer on the back cover says, "No lawyers were hurt in the making of this collection." And that's an exact quote!
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November 23, 2020
These are the things you find waiting for you when return home after being away for over a week...
For the uninitiated, they include author copies of Back Issue! # 122, a comp copy of Alter Ego # 166 (in which yours truly has a letter published about Wonder Woman co-creator H.G. Peter and how he has yet to receive a co-creator credit), and a preview of something that's been in the works for a long time!
More news to follow!
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August 7, 2020
In a non-COVID world, Back Issue! # 122 would already be available and people would know what I selected as "The 40 Greatest Moments of The New Teen Titans." But in the world we live in, it's been pushed back to October.
The good news is it's still coming out and there's a preview online right now that reveals the last five moments (36-40) as a tease. So if you can't wait until then, just click on the pic above for a taste!
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July 29, 2020
This past weekend would've been the 51st annual Comic-Con International in San Diego, but because of COVID-19 it was cancelled back in April. Currently, the San Diego Convention Center is being used as a COVID-19 shelter for homeless people.
In addition to being all around bad news for everyone, it was bad news for me because I had written an article about the time I met Ray Harryhausen for their annual Souvenir Book. When the convention was cancelled, I figured that was the end of that.
But then the convention organizers elected to hold a virtual con, and Comic-Con@Home was born! And with it the Souvenir Book was reborn, albeit now as a downloadable PDF.
If you're reading this, that's good news for you because it means you can download it yourself and read about my adventure back in 2006 when I traveled 3,457 miles (give or take) to get my picture taken with the master of stop-motion animation. (Okay, I did other things while I was in San Diego, too.)
And for the record, this makes the third project that was released during the pandemic with something in it by me. If it wasn't for the Coronavirus, I'd be having a great year. Maybe in an alternate universe, I still am.
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July 3, 2020
Like everything lately, the publishing world has been knocked off-kilter by COVID-19. From my perspective, I've had not one, but two projects released during a global pandemic.
The first was my article in The World of TwoMorrows book. The second was my story, "Saturday Morning," which was published in Riddle Fence, a local literary journal. Unbeknownst to myself at the time, the Winter issue (#35) was printed and mailed to subscribers back in April (I think). Unfortunately, I didn't get my contributor's copy, so I have no way of knowing when it actually arrived. And since stores were shut down, there was no way to bump into it in the wild, let alone buy it.
I figured the whole issue was put on hold due to the Coronavirus, but I was wrong. So the only people who have seen it are subscribers, and even then people were preoccupied, let's just say.
From submission to publication took over a year and a half, so it's a little disappointing that it came out when no one was looking. But to have two projects be released when stores were closed is some kind of bad luck, although it's hard to complain about bad luck when the world's on fire and your problems don't add up to much by comparison.
Anyway, I was in Riddle Fence # 35, the Winter issue. That's my name on the back cover!
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June 19, 2020
Boy, if this book could talk! From the printer in China to North Carolina to a Fed Ex international distribution center in Sweden to either Toronto or Montreal to Newfoundland (maybe even via Halifax), it's finally here! Canada Post is months behind on parcel delivery due to COVID-19, but my wait is over!
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21,800 miles (give or take), or over 35,140 KM (and three months) later!
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April 26, 2020
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If you're like me, you've had a lot of plans disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. I'd hoped to make some other announcements here, but projects have been put on hold, pushed back, or cancelled outright.
Ironically, one thing that did happen recently was The World of TwoMorrows book arrived from the printer in Hong Kong just as Diamond, the distributor that the publisher uses for comics shops and bookstores, shut down. It's finally here, but the places that sell it are closed.
The only copies that are in circulation right now are the ones sent out by the publisher to customers who've ordered it directly from them. And if you want a copy, too, you can get one that way by just clicking on the picture!
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What you see when you look inside!
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February 13, 2020
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Twenty years ago today, the last original "Peanuts" comic strip ran in newspapers along with the breaking news that its creator, Charles M. Schulz, died the night before.
To commemorate both anniversaries, I wrote a retrospective about "Peanuts" and its creator for Forces of Geek. So if you grew up with Charlie Brown and the gang and want to take a trip down memory lane, all you have to do is click the picture above!
To put things in perspective, here's what the world was like back on February 12th & 13th, 2000:
The St. Louis Rams won their one-and-only Super Bowl two weeks earlier; the Rams have since moved back to Los Angeles
The Sopranos was partway through Season Two (episode five aired the same night); Everybody Loves Raymond was in Season Four (of Nine)
The number one song in America was "What A Girl Wants" by Christina Aguilera
The New York Yankees were 2/3rds of the way through their back-to-back-to-back World Series championships; a few months later the Los Angeles Lakers would win the first of their back-to-back-to-back NBA championships (Shaquille O'Neal was Finals MVP)
Bill Clinton was in the last year of his presidency. Nine months later, Vice President Al Gore lost the election to Texas Governor George W. Bush. Less than a year after that, the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon happened
At the movie theatre, you could see Scream 3 or The Beach (starring a 25 year old Leonardo DiCaprio; he's 45 now)
The New York Times bestseller for the week was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets; Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was number two, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was number five (this was the overall bestseller list, not the children's)
At that year's Eisner Awards, Tom Strong # 1 won Best Single Issue, Tom Strong #'s 4-7 won Best Serialized Story, Top Ten won Best New Series, Tomorrow Stories won Best Anthology, and From Hell won Best Graphic Album: Reprint, so it was a good year for Alan Moore.
Also at the Eisners, Peanuts: A Golden Celebration won Best Archival Collection/Project (published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the strip), so with that we come full circle!
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Charles M. "Sparky" Schulz in 1995, at the age of 72. Photo by Ben Margot/AP Images
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February 8, 2020
The much anticipated TwoMorrows anniversary book, The World of TwoMorrows, is scheduled to ship in April. Up until now people have only been able to look at its cover, but its inside is revealed in a free preview over at www.twomorrows.com.
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So if you like behind-the-scenes books, how about a behind-the-scenes book about the people who bring you behind-the-scenes books?
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January 9, 2020
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New year, new news!
This summer it will be the 40th anniversary of the Marv Wolfman & George Perez's New Teen Titans, so how could I turn down a request from Back Issue! editor Michael Eury to write "The 40 Greatest Moments" of the team?
I couldn't, so you'll have to wait until August to find out what they are!
(And can you believe that this means it's been 15 years since the publication of The Titans Companion? It was released for the 25th anniversary of the series. And that seemed like a long time ago back then!)
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