Taking orders…

I’m taking orders for preview issues. I can sign them or not. They’re $2.50 each and shipping and packaging is also $2.50 unless you want Priority Mail and then it’s $3.20. Priority Mail is the way to go if you want more than three. Still, on a per issue basis that would be cheap. I would definitely recommend buying more than one. If you want to frame it or something then you can put them back to back and you’ll get to see the entire cover.

I did sign up for PayPal (http://www.PayPal.com ) so I can take VISA or Master Card if you want to use that. I did it mostly for my upcoming http://www.ebay.com/ auctions and there is no charge for the service.

Blue Phoenix Strikes Again

I had some odds and ends to tie up before I headed out to The Con that meant that I needed to make sure I sent out a few preview issues to people for review. I was going to follow up with Cecil after the con to see if he had a chance to read the book and I thought I should check out his site first.

http://welcome.to/bluephoenix

Well to my surprise it was front-page coverage. If you can’t find the review, just click on the text “CiCi” and it’ll take you right there. I agree the image should be hooked up, because I’m so used to clicking on images and you go somewhere (at least on the Spilled Milk site). I thought it was a really fair review. It wasn’t all roses, but they backed up their criticisms with some good explanations, which are typical in comics today. All in all I thought that it was a great review.

You win some, you lose some…

They can’t all be great reviews. I got a curt review from somebody who didn’t like the book. Just flat out. The story, writing, the artwork; just didn’t like it. Now I’m no critic but I think the art is pretty damn good even though it’s coming from three different sources. I didn’t get any reasons, just flat out didn’t like any of it. Oh well. Most of my feedback is that people like the issue and can’t wait for the series to come out. I suppose you can be the judge and check out the free online preview:

http://www.SpilledMilk.com/preview01.htm

A Quick View of the Con.

You have to start somewhere, how about an empty booth.	Steve Oatney: A BIG help!! Quit posing... Now a little to the left. Keep going. A little more. More. That's it. Until you're out of the frame.
Done & DONE!	The play-by-play.

I had these good intentions of sending out this huge update after I got back from the San Diego Comicon International (The Con). I thought I’d be able to type up my notes every night into a coherent form and be able to use them later. Well… That didn’t happen. There wasn’t time. There isn’t time. So much went on that it would be nearly impossible to document it like last year’s con.

All in all I felt that this year was 1,000 times better than last year. I had an actual booth and I had a 30-page preview issue to show people (and sell). On Thursday I noticed that people would stop and check things out. I had my slide show going, which I actually modified to only display images from the website at a pretty fast clip. In general people were stopping and looking at the artwork and a few people bought some issues. People balked at the whopping $2.00 that I was charging. It was pretty hard to compete with the big guys who were giving their full color issues away with big names signing them. From Friday on I asked people if they would take about 10 minutes and read the thing. I got a lot of takers and subsequently people bought the issue. They were definitely curious as to where I was going with this. I didn’t want to give it all away in the first issue so the build up for the cliffhanger was a pretty good ploy. On Saturday and Sunday some people wouldn’t buy it because they were just there for the free stuff. So in some cases I’d give them one and ask them to give it to their retailer.

That’s pretty much how it went. There are more highlights below…

Mile High Comics

This year these guys were great (as always). Always willing to help me out. Their booth wasn’t too eye-catching… HA! I guess if you don’t count their HUGE banner and $100,000.00 in CA$H that was in a glass case complete with Security (who told me that a loaded gun was not far away with an evil grin). It was all for buying comics. People think that shops aren’t into buying back issues, but that’s a load of hooey. Well once Lynne figured out that the small black squares with the Spilled Milk logo on it were in fact STICKERS, they all started to wear them. I had dropped off a bunch of them and they helped me give them away.

William Moulton tells me that in their next N.I.C.E. newsletter there will be a write up of the preview issue. They will also be offering it as a BONUS book so pretty soon Mile High will also be distributing these issues. I really want them all sold and try to get MORE FEEDBACK. The more the better.

Lyn Moulton is buying 100 to give away to his N.I.C.E. customers and I’m throwing in 100 stickers just for grins. So get yours while the gettin’s good.

People I met…

Alp Altiner – I finally got to meet Alp and even after dental surgery, this guy’s got more energy than most people with 10 hours of sleep. I’m really glad he is inking this project.

Mike Owyang (Digital Broome) – He let us into the convention center with our first load of artwork and equipment for the con. He pointed me in the right direction to get my own exhibitor sleeve for my badge.

Terry Fitzgerald (McFarlane Productions) – Talked with him briefly about his commentary at the end of the Spawn issues. I think they’re pretty funny. I gave him a couple of issues of CiCi and he said he’d take a look.

Danny Miki (Spawn) – Got an autographed copy of Spawn for free. He signed it with two different colored pens held together. Kind of the spiro-graph effect.

Matt Hawkins (Top Cow) – Pretty much just shook his hand. He was rather preoccupied.

Jim Balent (Catwoman, Tarot) – Congratulated him on his run on Catwoman. Haven’t really followed Tarot so I didn’t say anything about that.

Robin Spehar (Dreamer Design) – I tried to explain the definition of “similar”, but he wasn’t listening. I guess at Dreamer they create all their own fonts and I was looking at some of their creations and said many of them looked “similar”. He took offense to that and would say the fonts look nothing alike. He went into a long diatribe about the curvature of the different letters and a bunch of other stuff that seemed pretty minor. Nothing that a layman like myself could possibly notice. I was probably creating raster fonts back on the old Macintosh long before Dreamer Design had even originated. That would be like saying that Arial and Arial Black look nothing alike. Granted one’s thicker and the character widths are different, but you have to admit they look similar.

Mark Texeria (Union, Black Panther, Pantha, really cool painted stuff) – Met him with a bunch of people outside the Wyndham one night. He’s scheduled to come to Denver in September.

Nick R. (Devoted CiCi fan) – Nick has been there since the beginning. He was one of the earlier winners of my eBay auctions.

Frank S. – CiCi mailing list winner!!

The Rant

I had this huge old rant about security at the San Diego Con, but I’ll save it for another time. This is getting too long. Well the short for is that security stopped me from going around to the different booths (mostly the self publishers) handing out my comic for feedback. I would stop for a while and chat, I wouldn’t just hand them out like flyers. So I’m not sure what the problem was. I’ve asked around on USEnet and nobody can really give me an answer. I could prove that I had a booth so I don’t think that was an issue. It seems like there could have been some interpretation in the “rule”, but they were sticking to one and enforcing it to the hilt. So again like last year, Security asks me to stop what I’m doing and get back in my booth. What a bunch of you-know-whats.

Sorry this is so short. Although some of you who actually read these may consider it a blessing. JI need to finish up the letters for issue #2 and then it’s on to #3!!

The standard removal policy if you should ever need it. Just reply to this message with the word remove in the subject and you'll be deleted from the mailing list. You might make it in ALL CAPS or else I might not take you seriously J.