The call... and the wait.

Well the call was made for the company KA-Blam for printing. Of course we'll see whether or not I was successful in getting my point across to them. If not I will be calling another number that I have for them since I haven't had any kind of response since I sent them the amount of money via paypal.
Portland is looming in the distance within the next month we'll be up in Portland toasting the town or at least I would hope so. The Stumptown mini is nearly ready to go and be printed by yours truly. If things go the way I hope, it will be a great selling point to give away free black and white stuff at the table to entice new reader to pick up the color book. At least that what I am hoping for.

Welcome to the Latest- Part ll

As it stands, finally looks as if issue four of Pandora's Garage is up on the indyplanet webstore. That is good news for us but I am still awaiting the arvial of the Johnny Vega spot as well. So partially everything is going well. The Stumptown Mini is being worked on as we speak. That should be done by the end of the month. That too, should be a good thing as I begin to really focus on finishing the last three issues of the Johnny Vega in color books for the first series.
Keep this all in mind this is also on top of a major move from Eugene to Portland.

Printer woes

Well yesterday was swell as far as finding out information about the on line comic printer that I have been having issues with. Some of the questions that I have been having were answered by KA-Blam's on line web log. But not everything. So there was a comment box listed to respond to the posting but remarkably when I went to post it I was denied.
Not a great way of dealing with customers.

Here was my response to this posting by them:

This answers at least one of the questions I had about the printing process but still there was a question of customer service.  Kinda open ended I know, but I am not talking about the physical printing of the book or even the pricing issue.  I clearly understood that aspect of printing and planned months in advance that there will always be some kind of and problem, natural or man made.
But what I have a problem (as comic company) with was the fact that as soon as an order was generated AND that order was paid in full, in  advance of the printing and the verification process there was no response of anykind.
Over a year ago I had several issues, no pun intended, that were answered quickly and taken care of as well.  That service has disappeared.
Interaction and communication is key for any business to thrive. I hope the other issues that I have as a small company can worked out to my satisfaction,  because I do like this company.

But of course this is a mute point since I couldn't respond to their posting. It just was a little more fuel to the fire for this issue that Black Box Comix is dealing with. If my company ever makes enough money I'll buy my own press and print the entire book in house. But I can tell you this that I wouldn't over extend myself in this matter.

The New books

Well it's a done deal. I have the Johnny Vega in color! here at the house and have looked it over and found that there is a few things are well what can I say? There is room for improvement but that's the trick isn't it learning from the past and improving upon it. But all in all it looks pretty cool.

Johnny Vega has arrived! Well I can that I am happy it’s here and it is definitely a change from what I am normally used to working on within such a short period of time. With Stumptown only a few scant months away and then Seattle I am going to have my hands full working on perfecting my digital techniques for the rest of the run of Johnny. I consider this my freshmen run at doing color and digital work. I am still working on it but I knew that there would be, at least for me things to keep a look out for.
BUT WILL I GO BACK AND FIX IT?
The answer would be no. The reason is simple I have to keep moving forward. To take a step back would silly. I have seen way to many artist that never move forward and keep reworking the past because it doesn't look right. I have seen this with many comic illustrators and fine artist.
Guys (and gals) live with it and move on. I think that’s why you see so many crappy books out right now but they always seem to get the press.
Anyway, about the images. This was my solo attempt at getting a book out on my own. Three separate stories and in on a timely fashion. One story was done on scratchboard called the Misguided. It was also a poke at the H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythology. The other’s from the previous two volumes of the garage of Johnny Vega and the finally installment of Avartar.

New images from Pandora’s Garage Volume 2. The first two images are from El Samurai by Daniel Barton and one from the Original Johnny Vega black and white reprinted from Guilded Edges #6 . In this issue Dan was exploring his urban hero, Jesus Vasques. Dan was trying to capture the feel of the old Sergio Leone spegetti westerns as well as the a Quentin Tarantino feeling to add as well along the way. Dan was and still is learning the ways of comics though he is fairly knowledgeable of the old Kirby books from Marvel. But like all writers (including myself) find it hard to stay on target with all the ideas running through our heads to put down on paper.
His art style was growing by leaps. With this particular story you got the feeling that it was a modern piece of graphic fiction than something that was set in the past like the first installment. But there was definitely a heavy lean on the computer to help the work along.
My hope was that he wouldn’t depend to render his work so much on the computer that his story would suffer for the sake of the art being shown.
Of course I could point that finger at myself as Johnny Vega -in color! uses a heavy amount of digital work. I think that the biggest difference between myself and Dan was the fact that I had already developed a pen and ink, black and white style before I started on the computer . If you compare the images of Johnny Vega now and then there is style that comes though. It was topic when the Guild was meeting together when I was approached by TACKE. This was a name that I gave a young guy because he didn’t understand that there was a time and a place to call about questions about making comic books but not at 10:30pm.
TACKE had these grandieous ideas of t-shirts and other merchandise. I had told him it was great that he had the ideas but if didn’t have a good story or art nobodys gonna wanta buy a t-shirt. Then I could see that this wasn’t getting through to him. So I put to him like this if you didn’t have a skeleton what have you got? He said I don’t know. I tell you, a blob of flesh. And right now that what you got. You need to really work on your story. When I look back I know that I probably shot him down real hard but he would’ve dropped lots of money on something that he would never get anything back as a return.
Needless to say he never did work on it again. It was to bad because TACKE could have had something cool to look at it if he had kept at it. But thats back then not now.

Here we are with some new images from the previous copies of Pandora’s Garage Volume 1. This was a massive undertaking for myself and Daniel. We really didn’t know if these books or the publishing houses that we were going through were going to actually workout for us.