What's in the box?

I have a Love/Hate relationship with gifts. I love getting packages- it's the coolest thing for me to open a box and dig through all the packing and fish out all the goodies inside... but I hate surprises and I always have. If you want to get rid of me forever, try throwing me a surprise party. I don't have any idea why that is the case, but it fills me with a mix of horror and anger which makes me want to run screaming from the room for people to surprise me... and when they surprise me AND hand me boxes of consealed, wrapped, unknown items? It's as if I am expecting a delivery like the one that Brad Pitt got in Se7en...

I don't know what that is, but it came to mind when I was working on the script for King! and I brought that feeling into the story. I got the pages of that scene from Dan last night, and they just plain out rock. Hopefully, you'll see more of that here soon...

Creature Feature

Everyone has their favorite stuff- Maybe it's the song you can't get enough of, or the sweater that you wear till it almost falls apart or that neato Japanese action figure that you overspent to buy on ebay... One of my personal favorite things is The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Ever since I was a kid, the Creature movies just flat out rocked my socks off. I don't exactly know why- maybe it was the mood of the movies, maybe the visual of the creature... maybe it was that I identified a bit with a being that basically just wanted to be left alone but was drawn into everyone else's drama. Regardless, those films still grab me. So does this picture by Dan, which he did for the Spazdog art exhibit... Freaky deaky, ain't it?

King for a Day!

The cat is officially out of the bag!

That is, if by "cat", you are referring to a big, hairy guy in a white jumpsuit and by "bag" you mean something that isn't a container of any kind...

In any case, Daniel and I are making it known that we are kicking out the jams with a new mini series called KING!- the very same series that I've been hinting about for days now. We wanted to go all "Franklin Mint" on you all, and hit you with a gold plated collectors figurine set for 97 easy installments of $99.99 to commemorate this happy event, but we knew that even with throwing in an attractive (yet functional) display case and a set of space aged cutlery wouldn't buy us any cred with you. So... we decided to do the next best thing, and offer you a way cool, limited edition Lithograph featuring King and a hord of zombies. It's only $8 (really, it's $5 but the extra $3 goes to postage and some extra packaging to keep those Lithos April fresh!) and you can get one from our site here! Get them before the book blows up or we run out, which ever comes first...

Holding out for a Hero

Having never worked on a "Hero" type book before, I have been thinking alot lately about the idea of Heroes in literature; In my life, a Hero would be someone who kept me from being beat up on the playground or who runs into burning buildings to save people... but in literature, you usually have to do something bigger or flashier than that. You need to be bigger or stronger or better than other people. You have to stomp the bad guys into the ground. And most importantly, you HAVE to win.

In the book Dan and I are doing, I want to do something different with our Hero, because I don't think that literature (especially in comics) gives us the whole picture. I'm not sure where it's all going to take us, but it's sometimes fun to head out on an adventure and not know exactly where you'll end up....

But for those of you that need your traditional Heroes- check out this. It's got all my biggest Heroes in it...

Who died and made you King?

Been working hard on new the new mini series scripts- it's coming together quickly, which is somewhat scary in it's own way. I'm used to doing alot of research and reading and crafting work on scripts- the devil you know, for example, took 2 years to write... So, doing 4 issues of script in a couple weeks is weird. Part of it is the subject matter, because zombies, dragons and alien invaders are just plain fun to write about and that's made it flow easy.

What I struggle with, though, is I have this internal need to have a hidden agenda when I write something; I always like to pull a "...I am not lefthanded," moment on the reader, and I always have.

I think I have a good one for this new book. We'll soon see if I'm right.