Friday, July 22, 2011

Missing San Diego


For the second straight year and much to my chagrin, I am not in San Diego. I've already heard from a bunch of folks who are attending and they tell me it's a mad house -- again. In a bad economy it's great to see the show remain strong. I do miss it.

The show is supposed to be a week earlier next year and I am shooting for a triumphant return in 2012!

Lost Squad stuff: I don't want to call it news but I am working on a new story arc and toying with the idea of just putting it out online or through a digital platform. I don't want to say too much at this point, but I've got some ideas of how I can pull this off. I'd love to put it out through a publisher in print format. Maybe Image Comics? That I would LOVE but I need to think that through first.

The new arc will have a different artist. I have approached two VERY solid artists about taking on the position as Alan is simply too busy and too high profile now. I am hoping that we can get Alan to do an eight page story as backup for the first issue or maybe to include in an upcoming Digital Webbing Presents issue.

BTW, drop Alan a line and say congrats on the birth of his second child, Matilda, who arrived into the world on May 18th.

Movie Stuff: As always Hollywood moves at it's own pace. The team that is in place right now is simply finalizing contracts and putting together a small LLC production company to handle the rights and such. As I have said before, I am VERY happy with the players involved. They simply get it. The treatment that I've read is very faithful to much of the comic, both in content and spirit, but also expands and changes things in a fantastic way. The new layers really open things up. The writer has been in the news a bit somewhat recently for a mid-profile project that has a tremendously high geek factor. It also helps that he's a WWII buff of the highest order and is British and has a cool accent. The Brits have a great advantage in pitch meetings I'm told because of their accents. Maybe I can fake one.

So I'm spending the week plotting and missing San Diego. Although I don't miss the crowds I will miss seeing friends and playing the networking game.

I will be doing a small show in Indiana in October. I am excited for that. More details to come.

I won't be setting up this year in Chicago in August. It just doesn't make sense. I may be in attendance, but I need to square some things away first.

So, game on for Comicon 2012!

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Kody Chamberlain talks creating comics


My pal Kody Chamberlain the awesome auteur (a little Stan Lee alliteration there) of the dark thriller SWEETS from Image comics has given a tremendous interview to NEWSARAMA about the sausage making that is creating comics. He's not only a great artist but a terrific storyteller as well.

Check out the interview and enjoy the peek-behind-the curtain of one of comics' hottest creators and his process.

Kody gives a checklist of great books for the aspiring creator. I have every book on his "writer's guide" list (save one) and would recommend them unconditionally as well.

Kody is one of the truly good guys in comics and an extremely talented cat as well. Click on over and give the article a read. It's good stuff.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Happy Birthday, Alan Robinson! AND cool new Lost Squad swag!


Happy Birthday to Lost Squad artist Alan Robinson!

If you want to give him a grand birthday present, consider heading over to his Red Bubble portfolio site where he's got some cool Lost Squad themed t-shirts and hoodies for sale.

He's got a couple great shots nicked straight from the comic as well as the cover from the collected trade.

You get a terrific looking t-shirt and Alan gets a little coin in his pocket. Win win, in my book!

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Back from C2E2 - webstore open

I am back and just about recovered from C2E2 this past weekend. Had a terrific time and met a lot of great fans who seemed to enjoy the book.

We did brisk business on Saturday and the crowd was very open to
checking out the wares of creators in Artist Alley. The new, smaller venue was perfect with enough room to move through the wide aisles.

I will definitely be returning next year. BIG thumbs up to the guys running C2E2. Give this show a few more years and I think it will turn into an 800 pound gorilla.

My schedule demanded that I leave the show early on Sunday and I'm sure that I missed some sales. I passed out a bunch business cards and web traffic to this here blog has spiked. With that, I've decided to (finally) open up a little web shop here for signed Lost Squad books and art.


The web shop uses PayPal to handle transactions, but you do NOT need an account to buy, just a credit/debit card and you log in as a PayPal guest.

I only have signed trades up for now, but I will be adding items and announcing them here.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the table and said hello. The feedback I get from people who have read the book and are wanting more really goes a long way for a small creator like myself.


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Digital Webbing Presents #1 at COMIXOLOGY


Digital Webbing Presents the fine independent comics anthology has been resurrected once again (at least in digital form)!

Skeedaddle on over to COMIXOLOGY to purchase and download the latest of the new digital volume. The first four issues are now up over there.

From 2002 until 2008, Digital Webbing Presents was a terrific outlet for up-and-coming (and some well known creators) to try out new story ideas, hone their craft, and have their work appear in print.

Editor-in-Chief and general Digital Webbing grand poohbah, Ed Dukeshire shepherded 36 issues into comic shops, an amazing accomplishment in independent comics.

I was fortunate enough to have stories in 12 of the issues (including the first appearance of the Lost Squad in issue #7!) and I still receive emails from people who are fans and are looking for more.

Ed (along with Kel Nuttall) are looking to keep the book alive with the advent of digital comics. Hopefully they'll be able to put up some of the old back issues one day. I'd love to see that.

My story BARNSTORMING with art by Juan Moreno appears in the first issue of the new incarnation. It's a based-on-a-true-story-ish tale about a rookie Mustang pilot flying cover for B-17's in WWII. It's a fun little adventure tale that I have had sitting around for more than a few years and never could find the right outlet.

If you're itching to create comics, you might click on over to the Digital Webbing forums and check out the amazing community of like minded creators. You can find a collaborator or two and create your own story to submit to the new Digital Webbing Presents. Check out the list of prominent DWP alumni and realize that this could be the first step to a career in comics. What've you got to lose?

I have some back issues of Digital Webbing Presents that I would be willing to sell as well if anyone is interested. I need to set up a Lost Squad back issues shop and I may just toss up some of my old comp copies up there as well.

Monday, March 14, 2011

C2E2 this weekend!

I'll be appearing once again at C2E2 this weekend, March 18 - 20. I'll be setting up and peddling comics in Artist's Alley at table F11.

I'll have plenty of copies of the LOST SQUAD TPB for sale as well as single issues sales of LS stuff and my two self-published horror anthologies, FREAKSHOW and BRIDE OF FREAKSHOW.

Look for the large Nazi zombie banner and LOST SQUAD logo. Stop by and say hello. I love talking comics.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Tony Lee talks Dr. WHO

Should have posted this quite a while ago as this was published about two weeks back.

My pal and all-around great guy, Tony Lee was interviewed by Newsarama about his ongoing Dr. Who comic from IDW.

Check it out the video here.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Movie stuff

Got a few emails in the past couple of weeks from friends asking about the status of the Lost Squad property in Hollywood. Thought I'd do a quick update.

Most of you probably know that Rogue Pictures had let their option lapse as of last January. In the interim, things have moved along the development track albeit at a leisurely walking pace.

Here's what I can say - there are behind the camera creative people who have attached themselves to Lost Squad. I love their take on the story and could not be more thrilled. Honestly, they really get the book and have crafted a terrific pitch to get us on the screen.

The next step is to take it out to people familiar with the book and have interest in a Lost Squad movie. Things are slow usually around this time of year in the movie biz, but we have a number of friendly ears who will listen to the new pitch.

So there we go. Like I always say about things Hollywood related, "It's all vapor."

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

One more time -- the Halloween essay

This will be the last year I toss this up on the site. It's a favorite, but it's probably time to retire the essay.

I do need to sit down and write this out and expand it as a new project (a screenplay or novella, perhaps). I'd love to get inside the mind of "Max" our creepy tenant and expand the story.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Language Warning. I get a bit potty mouth in this one.

Back in 2005, I was asked to write a quick essay for the horror blog Dark, But Shining byNewsarama blogger and all-around good guy Kevin Melrose. The piece was to be included in a series of essays by different authors describing what REALLY scares them.

Last year I jetted out to Hollywood and did a round of meet-and-greets with a few movie types and I told this story in one of the meetings. When I finished, the veep in charge of story told me, "Go home and write that one. That's fucking creepy." I've got the bones of the story down, just need to find the time to write it.

Here it is -- PEERING INTO DARKNESS:

When was the last time you were really scared?

I mean really fucking scared.

Not the quick adrenaline shock that comes when you slam on the brakes and narrowly avoid rear-ending the car in front of you, but that sick-to-your stomach, creeping feeling where you are absolutely certain that something awful and vile is going to happen.

True story –

In the year after college I worked for an apartment management company renting units and dealing with tenants. An older woman, the mother of one of the tenants, came in late one dreary September day and needed to get into her son’s apartment. We hadn’t received a rent payment in almost two months and we were fairly certain the guy had just disappeared and abandoned his apartment. The mother was there to pay the balance, remove some of his belongings, and sublet the apartment.

My boss, Steve, wanted me to go over and unlock the door and stay on site until the woman had finished and lock up behind her.

“Go now, man. You gotta see this guy’s apartment,” Steve said. The mother had to fill out some paperwork and I would have a good ten or fifteen minutes at the guy’s apartment by myself.

The guy – I’ll call him “Max,” as I’ve long since forgotten his real name – lived in a basement studio apartment right across from the laundry room of a small, older building with nine units.

Max was a LARGE guy. By large I mean HUGE – easily 6’6” or 6’7” and a flabby 250 lbs. Max was also a very odd guy. He liked to pace between the parked cars in the small lot behind the building for hours, and had taken to sticking his head out his door and glaring at each tenant as they tried to do their laundry. One tenant was certain Max was holding a hammer as he watched her sort her whites from her colors. Most tenants in the building began frequenting Laundromats.

Max’s studio apartment was the only one in the building located below ground, and it had no windows. None. No source of natural light. So, when I pushed open the door to Apartment A, the room was completely dark except for the light spilling in from the hall. The switch by the door failed to produce light of any kind, but I could make out a standing lamp next to a mattress resting on the floor. I stepped over some scattered magazines or newspapers and turned on the light.

And there I was, standing in a room covered from floor to ceiling in images of bondage, S&M and gruesome torture.

Neat stacks of cheap leather-fetish porn mags were against one wall, each about two and a half feet high. More magazines were scattered across the floor along with hundreds of pages torn from other issues and tossed casually around the room, and in piles so deep you couldn’t tell the color of the carpet.

Scotch-taped to every inch of wall was Max’s original artwork, his twisted creativity on display, where he could really amp up the action from the magazine photos and manipulate and control his sadistic fantasies.

A pencil-and-charcoal drawing of a blindfolded woman lashed across a bed of nails.

A woman nailed to a cross and hung upside down, done in marker.

He’d saved the most graphic of the images for the wall and ceiling above his bed. These were the last images Max would see when he went to sleep and the first thing he’d gaze upon when he woke up.

A crayon drawing of a woman with hundreds of small cuts across her back tied to a rack and suspended above a pit of fire.

Women with spikes through their breasts and with flesh pierced by dozens of hooks.

This isn’t what freaked me out. The explicit stuff didn’t really get to me. It was two other things, really.

One was the hammer lying next to the door, sitting there, waiting for Max to take it in hand to defend against perceived threats outside in the hallway.

The other was the small, child-like handwriting underneath the most prominently displayed and most violent series of pictures.

The writing on each picture read, simply: “SARAH.”

That really fucking got to me.

Sarah was someone’s daughter. Maybe someone’s sister or girlfriend. Someone’s mother, perhaps.

Max had decided that she suited his taste.

He knew exactly with whom he wanted to dance. These weren’t random, sick thoughts on paper. The pictures were simply a blueprint for what he really wanted to do to Sarah. She probably had no idea that Max was watching and plotting. I knew damn well that she had no idea her naked image was plastered on Max’s wall, or she would have run to the cops as fast as she could.

At that point, I could feel Max there in the room with me. His presence filled the small space. A door closed loudly somewhere upstairs and I got the fuck out of there, barely remembering to lock up behind me.

I ran into Max’s mother coming down the stairs and had to descend to the basement once again to open the door for her. Before going inside she turned, smiled, and said, “I’ll be just a minute. I only need to get some clothes. I don’t like to be in there.” She knew about her son. She understood when I told her I’d wait out in the hall.

As it turned out, Max had been committed to an institution and she was taking him some of his things. I hope he’s still there rotting, frankly, and that Sarah is far away.

The apartment was soon cleaned of the filth and closed up never to be rented again.

As for Sarah, I never did find out who she was exactly. I checked the tenant list for the building and didn’t find a Sarah listed. She’ll never know how close she came to, what I believe, was a monster.

When it comes to movies that really creep me out, it’s not the flicks with demons or monsters or undead stalkers in hockey masks that get to me. It’s always the film where the human mind is the real villain that scares me. Give me a well-done and cliché-free serial killer movie, like The Silence of the Lambs or Seven. I think it’s because of my short time in Max’s apartment, where I peeked into the window of a really dark and twisted psyche. I found that, for myself, the scariest of monsters lives inside the disturbed mind

Monday, August 16, 2010

Chicago Comicon

This weekend marks my triumphant return to Wizard World Chicago Comicon or whatever it's being called this year.

After missing it last year for my sister's wedding, I'm looking forward to being on the floor and slinging comics on Thursday.

I will be setting up in Artist's Alley at table # 3428 with LOST SQUAD singles and trades along with my little horror anthology FREAKSHOW and BRIDE OF FREAKSHOW for sale.

I have some gorgeous Alan Robinson original art pages available as well.

Stop by and say hey!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Not in San Diego.

Long time between posts and there's much I'm dying to reveal but sadly can't at the moment.

I know, I know. I'm a tease. Guilty as charged.

For the first time in seven years, I'm not in San Diego. Feels weird to be honest. I'll be extremely busy this weekend and my goal is to go into my bunker and ignore the comic news coming out of the left coast. Fat chance, most likely.

I will be at Comicon Chicago FKA WizardWorld Chicago. I'm splitting a table with fellow Digital Webbing Presents alum and all-around good guy, Glenn Jeffers. More on that as we get into August.

I'm asked a lot about the Lost Squad movie and I can't get into to too much detail but there is movement. There are people interested and I'm very encouraged by the progress. The people involved are all VERY talented and have a lot of enthusiasm toward the project. They really seem to get it. More news as I'm allowed.

I've still got a bunch of projects in various holding patterns which seems to be a running theme for this blog in the last few years.

One thing I can confirm is I'm going to have a short story in an upcoming issue of the relaunch of DIGITAL WEBBING PRESENTS. The story is called BARNSTORMING and is a WWII tale about P-51 pilots flying an escort mission near the end of the war. Art by the amazing Juan Moreno who did DARK SIDE OF THE MOON for me in DWP #3 (my first published comic!). He's solid. Check out the sample above.

We're having it colored and it's slated to be in one of the first issues of the new launch.

So everyone have fun in San Diego. Think of me pouting at home and missing the action.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

C2E2 this weekend.


I will be heading up to C2E2 this weekend in Chicago. Looking forward to hanging out with old friends and slinging some comics. I'll be setting up in Artist Alley at table O8 on your bingo card.

I'm sharing space with the incomparable Joe Judt creator of KUNG from Moonstone Books.

I'll have LOST SQUAD trades for sale along with selected single issues. I still have a few FREAKSHOW and BRIDE OF FREAKSHOW issues, so if like the classic EERIE or CREEPY books, then you will enjoy these four story horror anthologies I wrote.

Swing by our table and say hello!

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Lost Squad covers - part II

I had tossed up a slideshow of the cover gallery last week, but some are having trouble viewing the images, so I'm reposting the covers from issues # 1, 3, 4, 5 and the trade. Enjoy!











Click on the pics to view larger images of the covers.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Lost Squad covers

Sprucing up the site a bit. I noticed some new people visiting and wanted to upload this slideshow of Lost Squad covers.

Artwork by Alan Robinson.



Here's the pitch -- It's the DIRTY DOZEN by way of the X-FILES - weird war tales created for a new audience! When a mission is too weird for the U.S. Army the brass calls in the Lost Squad. It's 1942 and the seemingly unstoppable Wehrmacht is on the march. AS the Nazis swallow more and more of Europe, Hitler's scientists perfect a mechanism that could guarantee his ultimate victory!

Reviews: 4 out of 5 stars - INDYCOMICREVIEW.COM

"The Lost Squad is three parts high adventure and one part humor" - COMICREADERS.COM

"This series has a lot of character" - SEQUENTIALTART.COM

"An interesting tale, one a bit off the beaten path." - BROKENFRONTIER.COM

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

New Project

As we're go for the launch of 2010, I thought I'd share a quick peek from one of the new things I'm working on:
Pencils by Tommy Patterson
Inks by Michael Babinski

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

My annual Halloween post.

It's been a while since I posted and now that we're approaching Halloween I thought I would toss up my essay on what really scares me again as I have the last two years. It's gotten good play in the past and I think it's a fun read.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Language Warning. I get a bit potty mouth in this one.

Back in 2005, I was asked to write a quick essay for the horror blog Dark, But Shining by Newsarama blogger and all-around good guy Kevin Melrose. The piece was to be included in a series of essays by different authors describing what REALLY scares them.

Last year I jetted out to Hollywood and did a round of meet-and-greets with a few movie types and I told this story in one of the meetings. When I finished, the veep in charge of story told me, "Go home and write that one. That's fucking creepy." I've got the bones of the story down, just need to find the time to write it.

Here it is -- PEERING INTO DARKNESS:

When was the last time you were really scared?

I mean really fucking scared.

Not the quick adrenaline shock that comes when you slam on the brakes and narrowly avoid rear-ending the car in front of you, but that sick-to-your stomach, creeping feeling where you are absolutely certain that something awful and vile is going to happen.

True story –

In the year after college I worked for an apartment management company renting units and dealing with tenants. An older woman, the mother of one of the tenants, came in late one dreary September day and needed to get into her son’s apartment. We hadn’t received a rent payment in almost two months and we were fairly certain the guy had just disappeared and abandoned his apartment. The mother was there to pay the balance, remove some of his belongings, and sublet the apartment.

My boss, Steve, wanted me to go over and unlock the door and stay on site until the woman had finished and lock up behind her.

“Go now, man. You gotta see this guy’s apartment,” Steve said. The mother had to fill out some paperwork and I would have a good ten or fifteen minutes at the guy’s apartment by myself.

The guy – I’ll call him “Max,” as I’ve long since forgotten his real name – lived in a basement studio apartment right across from the laundry room of a small, older building with nine units.

Max was a LARGE guy. By large I mean HUGE – easily 6’6” or 6’7” and a flabby 250 lbs. Max was also a very odd guy. He liked to pace between the parked cars in the small lot behind the building for hours, and had taken to sticking his head out his door and glaring at each tenant as they tried to do their laundry. One tenant was certain Max was holding a hammer as he watched her sort her whites from her colors. Most tenants in the building began frequenting Laundromats.

Max’s studio apartment was the only one in the building located below ground, and it had no windows. None. No source of natural light. So, when I pushed open the door to Apartment A, the room was completely dark except for the light spilling in from the hall. The switch by the door failed to produce light of any kind, but I could make out a standing lamp next to a mattress resting on the floor. I stepped over some scattered magazines or newspapers and turned on the light.

And there I was, standing in a room covered from floor to ceiling in images of bondage, S&M and gruesome torture.

Neat stacks of cheap leather-fetish porn mags were against one wall, each about two and a half feet high. More magazines were scattered across the floor along with hundreds of pages torn from other issues and tossed casually around the room, and in piles so deep you couldn’t tell the color of the carpet.

Scotch-taped to every inch of wall was Max’s original artwork, his twisted creativity on display, where he could really amp up the action from the magazine photos and manipulate and control his sadistic fantasies.

A pencil-and-charcoal drawing of a blindfolded woman lashed across a bed of nails.

A woman nailed to a cross and hung upside down, done in marker.

He’d saved the most graphic of the images for the wall and ceiling above his bed. These were the last images Max would see when he went to sleep and the first thing he’d gaze upon when he woke up.

A crayon drawing of a woman with hundreds of small cuts across her back tied to a rack and suspended above a pit of fire.

Women with spikes through their breasts and with flesh pierced by dozens of hooks.

This isn’t what freaked me out. The explicit stuff didn’t really get to me. It was two other things, really.

One was the hammer lying next to the door, sitting there, waiting for Max to take it in hand to defend against perceived threats outside in the hallway.

The other was the small, child-like handwriting underneath the most prominently displayed and most violent series of pictures.

The writing on each picture read, simply: “SARAH.”

That really fucking got to me.

Sarah was someone’s daughter. Maybe someone’s sister or girlfriend. Someone’s mother, perhaps.

Max had decided that she suited his taste.

He knew exactly with whom he wanted to dance. These weren’t random, sick thoughts on paper. The pictures were simply a blueprint for what he really wanted to do to Sarah. She probably had no idea that Max was watching and plotting. I knew damn well that she had no idea her naked image was plastered on Max’s wall, or she would have run to the cops as fast as she could.

At that point, I could feel Max there in the room with me. His presence filled the small space. A door closed loudly somewhere upstairs and I got the fuck out of there, barely remembering to lock up behind me.

I ran into Max’s mother coming down the stairs and had to descend to the basement once again to open the door for her. Before going inside she turned, smiled, and said, “I’ll be just a minute. I only need to get some clothes. I don’t like to be in there.” She knew about her son. She understood when I told her I’d wait out in the hall.

As it turned out, Max had been committed to an institution and she was taking him some of his things. I hope he’s still there rotting, frankly, and that Sarah is far away.

The apartment was soon cleaned of the filth and closed up never to be rented again.

As for Sarah, I never did find out who she was exactly. I checked the tenant list for the building and didn’t find a Sarah listed. She’ll never know how close she came to, what I believe, was a monster.

When it comes to movies that really creep me out, it’s not the flicks with demons or monsters or undead stalkers in hockey masks that get to me. It’s always the film where the human mind is the real villain that scares me. Give me a well-done and cliché-free serial killer movie, like The Silence of the Lambs or Seven. I think it’s because of my short time in Max’s apartment, where I peeked into the window of a really dark and twisted psyche. I found that, for myself, the scariest of monsters lives inside the disturbed mind

Monday, July 20, 2009

San Diego plans.

Off to San Diego and Comicon on Wednesday.

I will be camped out with LOST SQUAD artist Alan Robinson at Exhibitor's Table C04. We are right around aisle 600 tucked in the back corner of the convention hall.

The group I'm hanging with are listed as "Friends of Ed".

We'll have a few trades for sale along with singles issues of LOST SQUAD and FREAKSHOW, original artwork, and Alan will be slinging sketches as well.

It's Alan's first time at Comicon so stop on bye, say hello, and watch his eyes bug out at the sheer madness of it all.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

TRIGGER HIPPIE

I'm a sucker for a crime story and I've had this one percolating in my head for a while.

It's called TRIGGER HIPPIE. I nicked the title from a MORCHEEBA song, but it fits.

Here's the idea --

Meet Paul "Trig" Trigger -- lover of women, fish tacos, and a good spliff.

Trig does odd "jobs" for a specific criminal clientele, big time pot farmers, taking care of a laundry list of unpleasant duties. In exchange he gets a little walking around money and enough smoke to make it through the week.

Only problem: Trig is a pacifist.

Where an old school mook would rough up a deadbeat dealer, Trig has to cajole, beg, outsmart, and outhustle people. With his charm and wit, he just manages to keep the peace without anyone resorting to violence.

But, when a hottie with a bag full of cash takes off to spite a small time dealer, Trig and his new Samoan bodyguard Lars go looking for her before she ends up getting hurt - or worse. Things really go south when her body turns up and the money is missing and Trig starts looking good to LA Homicide for the deed. Being firmly in the crosshairs of a murder investigation is enough to turn this peace-lovin' slacker into a bad ass mofo looking for a little payback.

Trig finds that for a pacifist, he's got a mean right cross.

It's two parts Raymond Chandler and one part Cheech and Chong peppered with a little Tarantino humor and an oddball cast.

Artwork is by the man-with-the-skilled-drawing-hand Ulises Carpintero.










Again, this another project we hope to drop in San Diego.

Feedback welcome.

Monday, May 04, 2009

CRESCENT CITY

As promised, here's a glimpse of one of my new projects - CRESCENT CITY.

Here's the quick pitch:

The Musso crime family, kings of New Orleans, is in trouble.

The competition is moving in on their corners, a shipment of uncut product is missing and the new hotshot District Attorney is working the Grand Jury for indictments of the mob’s top people.

But, worst of all, the family shaman has lost his mojo.

Antony Musso is the family voodoo priest and it seems that his spells and rituals may not be as potent as they once were. A terribly superstitious lot, the Musso family has run New Orleans’ crime rackets since the mid 1800’s using intimidation, business savvy, violence and voodoo. From protection spells to calls for good luck to the blackest of arts - voodoo murder - the family has employed the occult to further their fortunes.

Now, someone has whacked Antony’s Uncle Nicky using a bit of the old school juju and the top suspect is someone who’s been at the bottom of the Gulf for 30 years. If Antony can’t protect the family from the forces aligned against them, the family’s karmic debt – years of murder and magic – is going to come due with one hell of a vig on top!

Artwork is by the amazing Damian Couceiro. Here's a preview of the first six penciled pages.


We're buttoning the extended pitch down and polishing the project bible to take this out to publishers. You can see by the artwork if we fail to get a publisher it'll be because the writing stinks. Damian's stuff is fantastic!

Drop me some feedback,

This will be a part of my creative neutron bomb I plan to unleash on San Diego Comicon. Run for the fallout shelters, editors!

More project previews soon.

Friday, May 01, 2009

"So where the hell are you???"

That's from an email I received. I'm touched that people still care.

So where the hell are we?

Here's what I know -- Alan and I have severed our relationship with Devil's Due. We'll no longer be putting out any LOST SQUAD comics through them. All rights have reverted to us going forward.

I want to thank Josh Blaylock and Sam Wells and everyone at Devil's Due for all their support and hard work.

We are looking at other opportunities. That's about all I want to say on that for now.

Rogue Pictures still holds the option for a LOST SQUAD movie until early 2010. At this point, I have no news on that front. The development process has been hampered by the writer's strike and by Universal's sale of the company to Relativity Media. Things could still change and the ball could get rolling, but it's not looking good.

I'm sure we will be shopping the project around if rights revert back to us, but it would be great if things got rolling with Rogue Pictures.

So where the hell are we going?

I have a TON of new projects in the works including a horror idea with Alan Robinson.

Artwork has been steadily coming in and I should have at least FIVE new projects to pitch for San Diego.

In the next week or so I will toss up some sample art for the new projects just to give a taste.

So thanks for hanging with us. There will be more artwork and news to gander at both LOST SQUAD related and info about new projects.

So keep checking back. More posting as time allows.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

NYCC - Robot 6

The ROBOT 6 blog over at the Comic Book Resources site has picked up on my pal Neil Kleid's Lost Squad recommendation. I slipped him a copy of the trade on Sunday. Thanks for the shout out Neil and Robot 6! Click over and check out the blog.

If you're new to the site, take a look around and if you're looking for a copy of the trade, click on the Amazon button I've set up over on the sidebar.

Tell 'em I sent ya'!

A longer con report is forthcoming starring Tony Lee, Kody Chamberlain, Neil, and other good pals. Special guests -- Jon Stewart, Ethan Hawke and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.

Stay tuned.