D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

 Yesterday Jason Embury (colorist) and I completed 5 complete pages ready for print for an educational style comic thing that I can’t really talk about any more than that. Here’s the first splash shot of page one though…

- So yeah, that was really fun. Honestly I don’t know of anyone else who could have pulled off the workload we did yesterday. So, high fives to Jason on this too. My kids already want that to be an animated show or something. (I wish!)

LIFE:

I didn’t get much sleep at all last night. My dog was spooked by something outside and was barking all night. I went outside to try to calm her down, but to no avail. This morning my wife and I smelled a skunk though… hooray! But yeah, while yesterday was a juggernautic output, today’s workload has suffered. I’ll be lucky if I get one page inked like a normal human being should.

WORK:

I deleted some bastard’s comment about me having delusions of grandeur about Hero By Night. He mentioned we only sold like 2000 books to shops or something, which is not true– you have to account the fact of reorders, conventions and online sales, etc etc… - But screw all the number talk… what I meant was THE STORY.  Which, I’m sorry if it seems big headed of me to say it’s something special, but it has been. From the all the great reviews of the book which you can find online (not a bad one in sight that I can find, believe me, i looked!) to all the NEW and OLD comic readers who come up to us at shows to sing our praises for it…. I’m STILL not use to it, but I’m glad that OTHER people have witnessed this. Jason knows… anyone who’s sat near my table or hung out at the past shows this year knows what I mean and have witnessed the weird glowing praise. Has it made my head or ego big? No friggin way.  but it IS something special. To these people I’ve talked to, the retailers I’ve talked to.. THEY think it’s important. So that feels nice, but it’s also terrifying.

Terrifying how??? Well you just worry that you might have told your ONE great story there. Can you top it? Can you keep those people happy? Keep em guessing, intrigued? Hooked? It feels like a challenge. Just like when I won that contest I thought ‘–”Oh man, now I’d better deliver!” — same feeling when someone comes up praising HBN at a show, or the hundreds of emails we get… I think .. “Oh man, I’d better KEEP delivering.”

Anyway, just wanted to explain a little about where those comments come from. It’s not just me sitting in a room saying “DUDE, I’M SPECIAL! EVERYTHING I DRAW IS IMPORTANT!” — I do know guys like that though! I’m definitely NOT that.

Odds and Ends-

DEAD STUFF- I was snooping around at old haunts after old collaborator Brian Lynch posted here and saw the link to his project “EVERYBODY’S DEAD” which is coming soon from IDW. Heres some sample art. To the best of my memory, that was a movie script Brian had in the Hollywood machine for years and years– it’s going to make an outstanding comic book series. The art on that looks killer. Said it before, I’ll say it again, IDW puts out some of the best quality books around. Check out their Everybody’s dead myspace page. 

 Go SOX! - Bob and I have a bet on baseball. He says Cleveland will go to the World Series. I say nay. So we have a whole dollar riding on that.

Screw you internet, I’m going to enjoy my weekend.