Pitch is Complete!

ECCC HERE WE COME!!!!

So excited to finally be able to say, the pitch is complete. The final files will be uploaded to the printer today and this bad boy is ready to shop at Emerald City Comic Con NEXT WEEKEND! The pitch has turned out great. Hannah’s pages are so incredible, every time I see them I am in complete awe. She really brought a life to these characters I couldn’t have imagined. Thomas’s letters and design are great. If anyone out there thinks that lettering isn’t important to a book, you could not be more wrong. Proper lettering is so vital to a book and Thomas has done a knockout job with this pitch. And Greig came on last minute and did a killer cover and even a design of the amulet to use in the pitch book. The whole team has been amazing! It’s been so much fun putting this together.

I am so excited to share this with people and also very nervous. Everyone has worked so hard on this, I really hope someone at ECCC takes notice. We’d really love the chance to tell the rest of this story. I’ll do an update from the con after next weekend and see if I have any good news to share. For now, check out the awesome cover below as well as our logline:

The Kingdom of Roan is at war.  Both sides vie desperately to awaken the last dragon to fight for them, a lost relic whose ancestors were living weapons of mass destruction long uninterested in human affairs.  Whoever controls the dragon will win the war, and the secret to bringing it over lies with two ordinary teenagers who have no idea how important they’ve just become.

SAGA!

One of the comics I’ve been most anticipating is SAGA from Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples. Brian is responsible for my current obsession with comics. I first picked up Pride of Baghdad a couple of years ago and was so blown away I had to read everything he wrote. So I tracked down Y: The Last Man, which lead me to Ex Machina, which lead me to The Walking Dead and Scalped and so on and so on until I had turned into a full blown comics fan, something I had never been my entire life.

Fiona has been one of my favorite artists recently. Her work on North 40, Mystery Society and others has just floored me. Her art is unreal and the thought of her teaming up with BKV, it was a dream come true.

I downloaded it on my iPad today because I don’t know when I’ll actually get into a shop to pick up my copy and I just couldn’t wait anymore. Let me tell you it was fantastic. Great story, art was amazing and I’m excited to see where this goes. Also it was about 44 pages and only cost $2.99. That’s a pretty amazing price and kudos to Image for making that happen. There is another new book from Oni Press I wanted to try, but they are asking $3.99 for 24 pages. Just another thing that makes SAGA so special. If you somehow missed it, I highly suggest picking up a copy. Can’t wait for more!

-jesse

Creator Owned Day

Yesterday was Creator Owned Day across the web and tons of people got involved on Twitter, trying to raise awareness to Creator Owned Books. Since I basically only read creator owned books, I feel like EVERYDAY is creator owned day, but it’s awesome seeing people make a push for it. I think we need to see more creator owned books getting made and less of a reliance on the Big 2. I do think there are some great books out there right now from the Big 2 (Synder’s new Batman run is pretty great) but I would just love to see books like Green Wake or Mystery Society sell as many copies as Animal Man or one of the 100 Wolverine books on the shelf. The sad fact is most creator owned books don’t sell well, which is why most don’t continue. If it hadn’t been for a creator owned book called Pride of Baghdad, I never would have gotten into comics. And if it hadn’t been for creator owned books like Y: The Last Man, The Walking Dead, Scalped and DMZ, I probably wouldn’t have stayed reading comics. It’s only been recently that I’ve started to branch out and read some of the Big 2 stuff and the new DC 52 is great because of the few books I’ve tried, I don’t feel so overwhelmed not knowing years upon years of back stories and major events.

But for me, creator owned books is where it’s at. I think they are telling some of the most interesting stories out there and I think if people knew that comics was more than superheroes, they might be more willing to give them a try.

So yesterday on Creator Owned Day I did not read a Creator Owned Book, instead I spent my time last night working on CREATING my own book. As you well know, Hannah and I are working on a new pitch which we are hoping to have ready to pitch for either Emerald City or c2e2 in a few weeks. Last night I sat down and plotted out EVERY page for ALL SEVEN ISSUES we are hoping to get the chance to tell. This way if the book gets picked up, it will make the writing process that much easier, because I have a detailed outline of what should happen on every page. Not to say things won’t change, but this just really helps me out a ton when it comes to scripting.

So you can check out the pic below and keep it locked here. I will be sharing more from the pitch as it gets finished. Hoping to see cover roughs from Greig tonight. Very exciting stuff.

jesse