March 25, 2007
Playing Catch-Up

   Wow, I can't believe that I used to blog every week! A month seems to take enough time away from work as it is! I must've been nuts back then, considering how a weekly blog is essentially a monster that eats up your material quickly!

   Here it's been, some time past (a premature) post-daylight savings time in 2007 already! I just finished gathering my receipts and encoutrements for my tax preparation, which can be a miserable headache when you're self-employed. I do keep most of the years' expenditures in one basket, and estimate the milage to the local Fed Ex dropoff and highlight the phone calls that were business and all that rot. I kept pretty good expense records of my November Texas Wizard World show, but I was frustrated about not finding anything for last year's Megacon, except for the bill for the hotel room, which I split with Sergio Cariello (who had to wear headphones to tune out my rafters-rattling snoring).

   My first instinct is to mush all the paperwork into a ball and send it to the accountant to figure out, but my wife isn't keen on the extra cost of others sorting our paperwork by the hour. 'Hey, time is money to me, too!", I argue ineffectually, and boy oh boy she hates when I say that! But aside from her full-time job, she does our laundry and many other thankless chores, so I really don't have a leg to stand on.

   So I was a bit stressed out this week dealing with taxes, not to mention some last-minute wrapping up of the 52/WW3 Pt 1:Call to Arms, due next month. It turns out that there is now two extra pages of story in the issue, a total of 24 for your money. A two-page spread was added to give the reader a more global view of major events taking place, the least of which is Black Adam kicking all kinds o' ass. Said ass-kicking commences this week in 52 week 46, with art by me and my 52 compadre, Pat Olliffe.

   If you're new to comics, Joe Sinnott is a classic comic book artist who has brought joy to several generations of fans by inking for Marvel, as well as illustrating for Treasure Chest, and Catholic-themed comics. On Joe Sinnott's website, www.joesinnott.com , it's been reported that Joe had a minor heart attack in late February, but is home recovering. If anyone wishes to express their well-wishes, the website has an address to send cards (emails are too plentiful to plow through). And while you're at it, you might want to order Twomorrow's "Brush Strokes with Greatness: The Life & Art of Joe Sinnott". It ships in May and I think we'd all like to see Joe hang around to enjoy this well-deserved tribute. I met him briefly at a Silver Age panel in San Diego in the '90's, and told him that I was an inker and that I looked up to him, and that was about it, because a) I'm sure he's heard it all before and b) I'll never be in the same league as him so why pretend? I don't remember what Joe said in response, but I remember it being very gracious, encouraging and polite. He has a presence that's every bit as warm and endearing as his art. Like that favorite uncle you look forward to meeting every time!

   On a more trivial note: I, like many others, noticed in Mighty Avengers #1 (which was the best Avengers story in many years), Bendis wrote THOUGHT BALLOONS, which were once banned as being "unrealistic", as if a twice-dead being constructed by Ionic energy is realistic. Well, all I gotta say is...

   Thought balloons never went away. They just became multi-colored first-person-narrative captions. It usually works, but when there was a group of people thinking to themselves/'narrating' it could get confusing, and I can't imagine the hardship on the letterers and colorists! So let's see more thought balloons make a comeback. Not the redundant "His blade is cutting my ropes"-type thought balloons, just the occasional inner monologue!

   I've started on the first Gen13 issue with Carlo Barberi and it feels good to be part of a monthly team again. Aside from a commission piece (see commission page 4 for the Daredevil piece we did a while back) Our first issue guest-stars The Authority's Midnighter and Apollo and it's a blast! Wait and see (but DON'T wait for the trade you cheapass):)...

   I'm supposed to do yet another email interview via a new MyComicSpace, pal, but frankly, I can't make the time to say what I've said before in other interviews with a different twist. So I'll answer some of his questions here. Why did I decide to persue inking when I broke in the comics industry?

   It seemed the easiest road to funnybook stardom, as I was a lazy young penciller. I could do some solid work, but I was just too young and lazy. The pursuit of girls was more important at the time, which is fairly normal I suppose, except I put ALL my energies into dating and almost none into breaking into comics. Through a Pittsburgh comic shop I had met with other fan-artists and got to ink a short story written and pencilled by George Broderick (no relation to Pat) which never saw print. I never finished the job and eventually lost the art when I moved away (sorry, George!). At the time, George seemed the most confident artist of our loose-knit gang of wannabees. George self-published a funny-animal comic called Critter Corps during the '80's black & white boom (in wake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles overnight success), wrote a New Teen Titans/Dr. Light story in the '80's, before becoming Art Director of the short-lived West Virginia-based Innovation Comics. I run into him at conventions occasionally, but I'm not sure what he'd been doing, until recently, when his inking work appeared in Bongo's Simpsons Super Spectacular (featuring Batton Lash's usually hilarious Silver Age comics homages with Radioactive Man.

   More on ME, and my self-interview next time! Hope it's worth the wait!
 
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