Sent:  Sun 1/30/00 3:20 PM

Quick Reference:

• What’s New?

• This update on the web (nicely formatted).

Hey Everybody,

Well I kept my promise.  I’m not sending out these updates too often, but I think this one’s been a long time coming (since October 1999).  I will try to keep things brief, be we all know how that goes.  I thought I’d skip the chronological account and start with the most exciting news first.  There’s a ton of news to report so let’s get to it…

Press Release #1 – January 27^th, 2000
Well I took some well-received advice from a guy who stopped by my booth at the Denver Winter Con.  He mentioned that I should work up a press release and send it to all the comic magazines.  Many times they’ll print these and it’s news for them and it’s free advertising for me.  I knew I needed to do this even before I talked with the guy, but he was very convincing that I had to do it soon.

So with the release of the first issue coming up sooner than I want to think, I did it.  I checked out Yahoo! for a list of Comic Book Magazines.  There were about 20 and I visited their sites and found contacts.  The release was hard to type up, because you have to be very self-serving and hype it up without it sounding like too much hype.  I dug down deep and remembered my high-school journalism class and tried to put my best foot forward.  When you go to a hard-core engineering school, you don’t get many chances at journalism.  You can check it out by clicking on the link Press Release #1.

On Saturday (the day after I mailed out the release) I received a great reply from Cecil Adkins who maintains the Blue Phoenix E-Zine.  He said he’d write a story on the project and put it into the February 1^st issue.  I’m not sure how he’s going to do it, but I’m looking forward to reading what he wrote.

Denver Winter Con – December 5^th, 1999
I’m pretty sure this was the 5^th, because I had to miss a Bronco game in order to attend.  The usual crew was there: Monte Moore, Steve Oatney, and Robert Rhett.  I was there handing out my free postcards and trying to talk up the project.  This was my first Denver show and people liked the cover with the shot of downtown.  It was a very small show, tiny in fact, compared to San Diego.  I did my usual rounds to the retailers, but most of them sold old stuff and not all the retailers in the area showed up.  I hope once Monte and Steve take over the show more people will decide to come.  The show has changed names and is now called MajestiCon.  The show will be quarterly instead of bi-monthly, which hopefully drives attendance up. The next one is February 13^th and I’ll be there too.

 The attending visitors were Steve Firchow and Sharon Scott.  I talked with Steve for a little while and then he had his lunch delivered so that was my cue to bug out.  Sharon hadn’t gotten her food yet, so I talked with her for a while.  I showed her my packet and she asked if I had submitted it to Image Comics.  I told her that I had, and the whole Jim Valentino incident at San Diego (described in Update #6).  She knows Jim well and she said he is actually trying to help and may get overly zealous.  That’s not really what it looked like to me, but I’m sure he’s a nice guy.  She said I needed to send what I had directly to Jim so that’s what I did.  I packed up color copies of the proofs and sent them with a cover letter and a couple of postcards to accurately represent the cover.  Off it went in a FedEx Pak to Jim.

Spilled Milk: NOT an Image Studio
Well as you can see by this heading, CiCi was not picked up by Image.  Unfortunately Jim lumped it into the many other good/bad girl series and said they weren’t doing those anymore.  I guess he didn’t see any of the other characters, or check out the website.  It’s not all about her.  Granted she is the main character, but there are other characters in the storyline that are integral to the story.  As you can tell I’m a little disappointed, but I guess paying the monthly Image fees can be a bear sometimes if you’re not coming out monthly.  (Although I definitely plan on coming out monthly.)

 I think the rejection letter (affectionately called a “Bite Me” by fellow Mines students) will only drive me harder to prove Jim wrong.  I want to prove that this title is a solid concept and not just another good/bad girl comic.  And then when Image wants to pick up the title, I’ll have the monetary backing to say no.  So if you’re in the market for some Animated Spawn cels, original comic artwork, comics, or toys, then I’m your man.  I should be getting back on eBay once I convert my database over to Access 2000.

Comicon.com
I re-upped with Comicon.com for another year.  They provide a link to my site, and their site is seriously growing.  Thanks to Rick Veitch and Steve Conley for their great site.  They are also going to run my LinkExchange banner for a while…  For free!  Awesome dudes.  Although I wish they would alphabetize their drop-down list at the top.  It gets pretty confusing unless you know where that person’s booth is relative to all the other booths.

Digital Webbing
I just added the digital webbing link to the left margin.  They were kind enough to add my link to their database.  I think if I actually link back to them, they will provide more services.  We’ll have to wait and see…

When I swapped computers, I moved the site to the new one and I thought I’d be able to import it into Front Page with no hassles.  All of the content made it in, but the navigation links were deleted.  I thought by installing the new version of Front Page (with the Office 2K suite) I’d be able to import the web site.  No such luck.  So I had to rebuild the navigation structure from scratch and hope that I didn’t leave anything out.

In the works
I’m still working on the inside front and back covers.  I’ll most likely show a preview in the next update to try and get some feedback, so stay tuned.

Getting back into it…
Well the Holidays have come and gone and my birthday was just last week.  I hope everybody had fun and got a ton of cool stuff.  I know I did.  An unexpected surprise was the Sega Dreamcast.  I played Gauntlet on my old N-64.  Wow, did that bring back memories of the old arcade game.  The game-play is about the same as the old one, but the camera moves quite a bit and you just get used to it.  I played Sonic ‘til I dropped and finished the game, even with the mystery “Super Sonic”.  Sonic on the Dreamcast is definitely geared for a very young crowd, but the graphics and game-play are awesome.

Well I’ve put down the controllers and it’s back to work.  I hope to get a lot done before the next Denver Con.  See you next month…

Thanks for all your support,
Parker.