Spilled Milk Update 17

Spilled Milk Update #17

Sent: Mon 10/30/2000 8:00 AM

What's in this issue:
What’s New?
It's been a while...
The New Look
Majesticon September 2000
Mile High Comics
Pinups-O-Plenty
The Rant

It’s been a while…
I haven’t written an update since after the San Diego Con. I thought there was no need to put one together because I feel like I’ve just been waiting for stuff to come in. I’ve been plugging along on the scripts for issues 2, 3, & 4 because until they’re inked I really won’t get a good feel for the pages. I can throw good ideas down and maybe some of them will stick, but it’s definitely not final until I can see the lettering over the inks. I hope by the next newsletter I can say that issue #3 has been inked. I should just trash the “status” web page because I never really get to update it that often and when I do have stuff to put out there I forget to add it.

The New Look
I’m attempting, in my not so free time, to make the website look a little more professional, but still keep the feel the same. Instead of using Bryce to “brute force” the text to look like spilled milk, I’ve played around with the Photoshop Effects (embossed) to get the look I want. Granted the new text doesn’t look like the logo, but it’s close enough to jog your memory that you’re sill at the Spilled Milk site. I’ve added some hover buttons to provide feedback for the left margin menu. Slowly but surely the site will change (hopefully for the better). I think the new introduction screen turned out pretty good and it loads pretty fast. I’ve been tweaking some of the images so they load faster. I’m getting to like GIF files a little better only because the support for interlaced mode is well know as opposed to the JPEG “progressive” mode.

Majesticon September 2000
I thought this went well. I didn’t sell that many preview issues, but I threw some in for the hourly giveaways. Steve Oatney, one of the Majesticon promoters, gets up and yells at the crowd for trivia and gives away freebees to the winners. Zak and Chuck were there with the Lazarus Lives project and I got to see Mark Texeria (Tex) again. He is so laid back and he did this cool Batman pinup for a guy for $125.00. What a bargain!!

If you live in the Denver area, don’t forget the next Majesticon is Sunday, November 26, 2000.

Mile High Comics
These guys have been great as always. First Lyn buys a whole mess of books to give away to his NICE customers and now Sean, Pam, and Will got me a blurb in the October 2000 edition of the NICE news monthly magazine. That’s awesome. Not only is the preview issue featured in the independent publisher area, but they’ve also added it to their bonus book section. If you want to buy the preview issue through Mile High, now you can. It takes a while before the orders are official so I won’t know for a couple of weeks how many Mile High fans are signing up for the CiCi Preview.

I’ll need to ask permission from Sean and Pam to reprint their blurbs on the website and I hope they say yes. I’ll be adding a new section on the web that will have reviews (good & bad). You’ll be able to see what people have said about the preview issue and hopefully it will entice you to buy one before they’re all sold out. I’ve been told many times that the only thing bad about the preview issue is that it makes you wanting more and the miniseries probably won’t come out until after the new year.

eBay
I’ve been putting a CiCi Preview issue out on eBay and running for 10 days at a shot. It end up selling anywhere from a penny to $3.25 depending on the week. So if you’re looking to get a bargain on the Preview then check out my section on eBay and you may pick one up for $2.21 delivered to your door. It gets some pretty decent traffic to my site because I’ll post a few messages on USEnet advertising the auction.

Pinups…
If you check out the fan page you’ll notice that there are a few more pinups. I won’t go into that much detail here, because it’s all out in their pinup section on the web. I had met Kristy in San Diego and she colored a page from Issue #2. I only saw Matt’s submission package at the Comic Con International and contacted him for a pinup. Vicki saw the preview issue in San Diego and e-mailed me a pinup up out of the blue. Alp had done a pinup a while ago and I threw that in there as well.

The Rant
What if lawyers were paid like doctors. Whenever you call in for a doctor and you ask some questions they typically don’t charge you. I guess they figure if they keep you alive you’ll be able to pay them when you finally do make it in. But when you ask a lawyer a question the clock is ticking and you get a bill. This is much like most computer support hotlines, which is now typically bundled with you new computer. Granted, somehow Microsoft gets away with this sort of billing. If you call them then you had better get your credit card ready, unless it’s a legitimate problem and you’ve spent hours bringing it to their attention. Although I know I don’t charge people when they ask me for computer related help, but wouldn’t it be nice if I did.

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.