D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

I want to get moving here and away from the internet, but as always, this is the place where I drop the clutter of my brain out, and usually before coffee. Here we go…

Health status: Still under the friggin weather, but feeling better. The nagging cough has kept me away from the gym and I’m not happy about that. Hopefully the cough goes away today. They don’t call me Coffman for nothin! — My wife has it worse, losing her voice off and on again, even nyquil doesn’t help her kick her nagging cough, so sleep has been touch and go. Suck is life.

Politics Update: I think some sort of big news is gonna break before the end of the day. Just a feeling. Maybe an endorsement? It feels like NOW would be the right time for that. And yes, my wife and I are still in awe over meeting and talking with Senator Obama. The sketchcard he signed is now framed all nice along with the ticket stub and hanging in my living room. I feel like I have a piece of HISTORY in my living room now and something my great grandkids can have or keep in the family… a Presidential signature, and an original work of art by their own blood.

Work update: I’m planning on cracking into our issue 4 ongoing today and getting the ball moving on that. Not sure when issue 3 hits stands, soon though, as it’s been turned in for a bit now.

I keep resisting the urge to “launch” something else because honestly it wouldn’t be prudent. I think these are false urges– meaning, I’ll get this rush of energy and great ideas and plans and it revs my mind up, but then I sleep on it and the next morning the idea feels like, MEH.

I guess I’m professional enough to know that my time is best spent in building the Hero By Night universe more and more, laying down a solid foundation here for things to come. Sometimes that vacuum feeling sets in, where it feels like it’s just Jason and I trucking along and high fiving each other with little feedback, but then we get the fan letters, comments, etc and it puts fuel in our fires. I just keep pushing for MORE… every day we need new readers. And you know what’s frustrating as heck? We have more readers online than the Batman print books– but that doesn’t translate to us having more sales than Batman or Superman– but still, that’s remarkable. If I didn’t have a full on comic universe to draw here, I’m betting I could send more and more of our online readers into shops…

Comic Shops…. there’s this weird stigma with some of them out there. Readers online tell me in private messages that they might know of a comic store in their area but they don’t want to go there for various reasons. Bad customer service, high prices, lack of what they want– and forget about trying to get the online folks to preorder, when I explain to a new guy that they have to preorder RIGHT NOW for books shipping in June, they think it’s too long of a wait to pay now. And it kinda is… they want to buy direct from me or the publisher when the books available. — marketing online, not many people GET. You can’t “tease” for weeks, months, maybe even days. You should wait until your book or physical product is in your hands and then put up a for sale link for the best performance with your core audience. It’s tricky– and my hands are kinda tied on that front a bit. The important thing is, pushing this old system so our preorder and reorder sales. It’s ridiculously backward, but that’s how it is. — I was explaining to Bob over the weekend, it’s why when I was approached by Diamond to distribute my Yirmumah monthlies I was doing I declined. It makes so much more sense to deliver direct and NOW. Maybe a short preorder period to gather some print cost money or such, but I’m talking 2 weeks, run a 2 week push special— with Diamond, it’s a 2 month wait. And I don’t even want to get into the people who complain that they preordered but their shop didn’t get the book in….. UGH. Makes for a grumpy me.

I guess that comes from my indy viewpoint, where I see opportunities where our brand could be making a lot more money. I also think my publisher could be making a lot more money from our website, but it would probably have to leave the Drunk Duck network to do so. Not a slight on Duck, but it would be hard to sell the type of advertising I’m thinking of with certain mature content sharing the network there. That’s something that’s a little annoying to me, that my kids or someone else could be reading HBN there and then click on some comic with language or adult themes pretty fast. I know it’s 2008 and we’re all grownups online now, but still, from a marketing perspective, that’s bad news. - The remarkable thing, again, about Hero By Night, or about MANY webcomics for that matter is, we have more readers than things that have been in print for 60 years. Comic books and comic strips. That’s what makes webcomics remarkable as a message that a good salesman could push and deliver— I see absolutely no reason why Nabisco or Frito-Lay or a meriad of other “young” companies aren’t advertising to this new youth oriented market. It’s just that they don’t KNOW yet. — Whoever lets them know, in the right way, would be wealthy.–

Ok– I’d better get to something that I CAN control… and that’s drawing awesome fun comics that you will remember forever. That you just don’t come to once a month or tuck away in a mylar bag.

Woops— school just called… gotta go pick up a sick kid. FANTASTIC!

So the wife and I, along with Bob, went to Barack Obama townhall meeting in Greensburg, PA - held at the Hempfield High School gym auditoriom. We waited outside in the cold in a long line of like-minded folks for about an hour or so. Calista and I breezed through security, but Bob beeped and got strip searched! hah! Go figure…

When we got in there were volunteers saying you have to have pink tickets to go to the forward seats and they were pointing everyone up to the rafters… pink tickets, I found out, were delegates. Well I ignored the lady because it didn’t look like she knew what she was talking about, and I asked another fella and he said, you can sit anywhere except the seats that say “reserved” — so we ended up on the left side of cordoned off area, but front row! How about that!? — I knew this was a townhall meeting so he’d be walking and talking and we’d get a great view.– Obama came out and did his stump thing, then opened it up for questions. The most memorable was a dude who asked two questions, one, would we get rid of the penny and why not? And two, would we build island prisons for habitual sex offenders! — Obama kinda laughed and said, WOW, that’s a real range of issues, but he actually went in and gave detailed answers to each one of those! You can tell he just loves to talk about issues– and most of all, he’s giving it to you straight.

I had taken the little sketchcard I drew back on January 4th, see here, thinking it was a longshot to have it signed, or that I’d even get anywhere near to the man, but it was in my pocket with a sharpie just in case. I’m glad it was!

At the end of the talk, he went around the entire ring of front row area, my wife and I were right up there talking to Barack O’Friggin- Bama! — My wife was in front of me, and I had her hold the sketchcard and sharpie– before he comes around the Secret Service officers sweep you and tell you to put pens away, he has his own pen– Barack comes up and says hello to my wife and she holds the sketchcard out and he takes it and says “Wow! This is really nice.” - And she says “Thanks, I didn’t draw it though,” and I pipe up “I drew it.” — and he stops and talks and says “Wow, you’ve got some real talent there. You drew my ears smaller than they actually are. Thank you!” — then we shook hands, I was kinda mesmorized in disbelief as he walked off with my sketchcard… and as he was walking off to the other side he turned and said, Oh, did you want me to sign that and get that back to you? — HELLZ YES! — Well I didn’t say that, but something more like, Definitely! — So I guess the process is, he hands it to a large Secret Service officer, and they have another Service officer holding a stack of books that he signs when he’s done, and they bring it back in for you after he’s exited the building. I imagine they have to search all the books first— so my sketch came back awfully fast.

The whole day is a blur now– my wife is in awe I think… here are some photos…

Well, it was a great time. Something different. I couldn’t help but think…. I’m shaking the president’s hand. That’s sure what it felt like to me.

So we’ve got tickets to go see Barack Obama at Greensburg townhall meeting this afternoon/evening. My oldest son wants to go, but I’m not sure it would be the place for a 10 year old, lots of standing, maybe two hours of standing– but it’s very cool that he is so interested in American history and politics. He’d rather read a newspaper than play a video game I think. Our little professor. In 7 years, he’ll be 18. That scares me a little– I want to world to be at peace– I don’t want him heading off to some other war of the future. I’m afraid that’s what McCain has in mind.

I just got done reading Mark Evanier’s “KIRBY: KING OF COMICS” - and of course, it was great. I can’t wait for the TOME he’s planning on writing. Get to it Mark!

Every now and again, I get asked about, what’s the deal with Jack Kirby’s ghost and Yirmumah and all that? And it’s not really a complicated story, but one I didn’t like to talk about publicly until recently, for fear of it making me sound crazy. Maybe it still will… But it’s odd, how everything comes together. Here’s a timeline of events…

1993 - I’m now embarrassed to admit, but when I was 17, my whole goal was to come right out of high school and be the next hot artist during the 90s boom. You had tons of young “hot” artists breaking in, some featured in Wizard and I’d just eat that up. It’s really what I wanted to be. I’d ditch school and go hang out at Extreme Studios and be the guest of Danny Miki there, it’s where I learned first hand that Rob Liefeld was a jerkoff, but also where Todd McFarlane said something nice to me in the elevator about a spawn print I had had made and happened to have on me. Marc Silvestri, McFarlane, Capullo, Larsen, these guys were my comic gods back then. I was completely ignorant of comics history—– When I’d even come near Silver Age or Golden Age comics, they just looked lame to me at that age.  They weren’t as exciting as McFarlane’s Hulk bashing through a brick wall and like 5000 bricks going all over the place. — I’m really ashamed of this now, but hey, I was a real know nothing kid.

San Diego Comicon 1993 - I went with what I thought were solid samples of my work, looking back now they were terrible. But I still managed to get portfolio reviews with any small companies I could. I remember a portfolio review with Chaos Comics, but my work wasn’t horror, and I remember them saying I needed to draw bigger boobs on the women! No kidding… Even though I was being shot down left and right, those cons made it seem like you were absorbing some magical energy you could take back with you to the drawing board at home. I remember it was almost time for me to catch my ride back home to the desert, and I was waiting out in an out of the way place. Over to the side I saw a small group of people gather around some older guy, some trying to get autographs and one guy trying to show his portfolio– I heard it was Jack Kirby, who all I knew then was the rumors that this guy created just about everything at Marvel and Stan Lee had taken all the credit and he didn’t make a dime. I walked up in he middle of a conversation, someone had asked him about Stan Lee, and he said “If Marvel Comics is hell, then Stan Lee must be satan!” and the 5 guys around all chuckled– a couple artists, including myself stood with little pieces out for him to look at, and I mean, it did look like he was looking at work and giving a critique—- knowing what I know now, I would have never bothered him, just thanked him– but he did look at whatever mish-mash I had there and I could tell he wasn’t really looking at it– I don’t recall what he said exactly, but it was just a standard encouragement to keep drawing and drawing. He told another artist “well why are you here? you should be drawing!” — and the group moved along.

For years after that I guess you could say I tried to “break in” to comics. I did the normal routines of sending in samples and getting rejection letters, and then I stopped doing that and just began working for independent writers and small companies that didn’t pay. My work was still pretty bad, but was getting better just from the sheer amount of volume I’d produce.  I think in this period though, I became more and more jaded as I saw a lot of crooked things by small companies, people being stiffed, work being stolen. Suddenly those dreams of being that hit artist, you know they dry up. I was really cynical and jaded. I still had offers from so called companies, but they all just seemed like people who needed artists so they could make a dime and not pay you anything. Mark Evanier would later call those types “Unfinanced Entrepreneurs” — Yeah, I worked for a lot of those! — I gave up on the idea of comic books, and started doing comic strips for newspapers, etc.

It was around 1997 I was producing different samples for newspapers, while i worked shitty day jobs. Just married and with a kid on the way, I took a long hard look at my dreams of drawing comics. I think I may have been about to hang it all up, I had definitly hung up the idea of producing mainstream anything in comic books. Then I had that weird dream.

The dream… well, Jack Kirby was in it. Sort of, verbally slapping me around. Asking why I was slacking, wasting time on other things. There was a weird Mexican Radio playing in the background– I was very confused in the dream — but this Jack wasn’t the kind old man from 1993, this one was energetic, drinking and smoking, tough talking. Basically in that dream he told me I couldn’t wait around for someone to come hand me work, I had to just start putting out my own books, and that ghosty Jack encouraged me to tell the truth, if I knew someone was treating someone unfairly in comics, bring it to light, so that other creators wouldn’t get bamboozled by some of those douchebag small publishers who were just feeding off young talents. That dream was so weird and vivid, I drew the first Yirmumah minicomic about it. I did what the Jack in my dream told me to, I took it to shops myself.— the response to it was fun, and got me interested in self publishing for the first time. Even mini comics, hand stapled…. even sometimes it was costing ME money to put them out or drive them into shops.

Yirmumah was like therapy to me… I spilled out all that cynical rage onto paper– very bitter and jaded stuff, but hilarious. Much of it is misguided, but still hilarious in a raw way. I made my good friend Bob into a character of sorts, and we said, to heck with this, we’re going to take it to conventions! So we booked Mid-Ohio Comicon first, Pittsburgh second….. at the first Mid-Ohio con we took Yirmumah to, I remember Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragones were having a Jack Kirby tribut panel, and Bob encouraged me to go to it, so we did. Bob had joked he was going to embarrass me with the story about the Kirby dream, and he actually raised his hand to ask a question and I was sweating… he asked instead whether there were any creations Jack thought were bad or disliked, and I think I remember Mark Evanier laughing and saying Red Raven???— but the one thing that freaked us both out…. they had said that for background noise, Jack would listen to radio, often on a mexican radio station…. so here we were a year later, and that one weird detail of my dream had come out. Bob and I looked at each other with a Twilight zone’d freaked out look. — When I tell that story to anyone who asks, they usually ask me, are you sure you didn’t read that somewhere earlier and knew it before the dream? — No. Honestly, and it’s shameful for me to say, but up until that point, I had no desire to learn anything about the forefathers of comics at all. I’d SKIP those articles if I ever saw them. –

but after these strange events, THAT is when curiosity took over. I found myself not buying any NEW comics. It was around that time I read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud— if you’ve read that book, there’s a character in there, that was almost who I exactly was, and it resonated with me. The guy who thought he’d be the next big thing, but it all fell apart, and he realized he was all about surface, and then had to start learning about MORE than just the shiny surface of the apple. Looking back now, I think that was a turning point for me– it was as if that chapter was written specifically to put me on a BETTER path. And do I did– my buddy Jim Rugg leant me his Will Eisner books (he probably remembers) — Comics and Sequential Art, etc…. I devoured those and bought my own copies. I had no interest whatsoever in the late 1990s comic market mainstream stuff– I found myself buying collections of old stuff and just DIGGING it now. Really learning about the craft of comics– and becoming VERY inspired learning about the work ethic of the comics forefathers. This period actually made me LOVE comics. — You can ask my wife how passionate I can talk about these subjects.

Yirmumah, without me knowing it, had brought me back into comics. And thinking back on it now, it was as if Jack had delivered to me in a dream something I’d need if I’d ever make a go of comics as a lifelong career… Yirmumah was some sort of attitude. Some sort of unstoppable DRIVE– a tough talking old school sort of mettle. And it did make me feel like I could do it again… but on my own terms with my own rules.

A strange series of domino like effects lead me from project to project, and ultimately to WEBCOMICS, and the enlightenment that they were the future of the medium. I always kept in my mind, as I talked with other creators or groups– what would those guys from the 40s have done with all the tools we have today? Why, I don’t think they would have persued books at all if there was a way to magically beam your comics right into kid’s bedrooms and families living rooms every day! — that’s what got me so hyped on Webcomics, even during the days when publishers at shows would just see anything on the web as not fit for print. — in just a few years how things have changed!

Back to Kirby and Yirmumah— I Had old fans of Yirmumah ask me why I never put Jack in the webcomics– and I think it was after I had learned so much about the past, I just didn’t want anyone to think poorly of me for portraying Jack in this REAL tough guy, no nonsense way. I just didn’t feel right about it. — But I get to the end of this KIRBY: KING of COMICS book, and Mark Evanier tells this story about a rough time he was having when he was 18– and Kirby just kinda sensed it and got him to spill the beans about what was up. See Mark was being harassed by an ex-employer, threatening legal action all while other things were weighing on him, and Kirby went to the phone and all Mark heard of the conversation as Jack called his harrasser was “If you ever bother Mark again, I’ll come down there and punch your goddamn face in,” -

I’d buy this book just to read that story, because now I know that my depictions of Jack weren’t so far off. Which makes the dream even freakier to me.

In a weird way, I see Jack Kirby now like the grandfather I never had or knew when he was alive. I don’t wish to ever draw like him, in his style– only to be inspired by the sheer amount of energy, work ethic, and love for his family and friends that he had. Even total strangers. I think one of my goals is to just inspire others like he did. Maybe telling this story will do that.

So what now!? My studio is 85% wallpapered with Kirby’s Mister Miracle work. Those black and white collections make a mean wallpaper, I’m tellin yah! I just like being surrounded with that crackling energy. When I’m feeling lazy or uninspired, all I need to do is look up somewhere, and he’s slapping me in the head telling me to get back to work. And not just Jack anymore, I think about all of those guys, and how hard they worked. I’m grateful because, well, I feel like if not for them, I might not have the opportunities I have now. They are the greatest generation of comic creators, and a huge inspiration to me.

Back to the drawing board. 

Skipped blogging yesterday, I just plain forgot. Still sick here– I think I had gotten rid of the one type of chest cold, then on Easter picked up some sort of throat thing. My wife has lost her voice, etc. Fun times. I notice fatigue seems to be an issue as well, but I’m using the sleepyness to tap into that weird part of the brain where new ideas linger.

Issue 2 of Hero By Night just wrapped up on the site– you can read the whole thing now for Saul Simian goodness. Issue three will be on store shelves in a couple Wednesdays. I like the timing of that for some reason. AND here’s an important note:

Issue 4 of Hero By Night is now available for preorder in the new Previews catalog at your local comics shop. It’s 99 cents! A great new jumping on point as we start a new arc with new badguys bad girls. Also there’s the Hero’s ring for sale! Made in the USA by Studio Bergstrom, a nice chunky metal– shops that order 25 copies of the 99cent issue get a ring for their shop, or you can order the rings individually for 24.95 - Here’s a look at #4’s cover and the ring!

If your local shop isn’t carrying this title, they must not like making money! - This one is only 99 cents, so tell them to give it a shot-

Still reading the Kirby: King of Comics book slowly and enjoying it. I laugh sometimes because of parallels with today’s times, or past work I’ve done with editors, and creators who are sheer lazy.

Plans: I have plans to micro-develop, (I just made that up) within the Hero By Night Universe– I’d like to do 5 page stories of fan favorite (and my favorite, really) characters. Doctor Nowhere, Saul Simian… and i gotta get the origin of The Steel Phantom done up, a character who’s yet to appear in the comics in phantomy form, but has appeared as another character… WHO COULD IT BE!?  - But yeah, we have a whole little world building over at HeroByNight.com and in the print books. I figured I’d hedge my bets a little and flesh out some of the other concepts, not only for the sake and enjoyment of the readers, but it also allows my publisher, Platinum Studios, to be able to have individual things that they can work their magic with in other mediums. That’d be good for everyone, yes?

I’ve got a lot I’d like to get doing today, so I’m going to have coffee and read for a spell, then hit the drawing/writing board.

I slept in today. Sue me. I’m still a bit sick here off and on with this cough and congestion, but today feels like the day it’s clearing up, thank goodness.

Probably gained a pound or two thanks to Easter food. Back to the gym tomorrow, as long as the cough is gone.

On conversations… I think I’ve had the strangest mix of conversations here this morning. Via email I’m talking with a guy at DC Comics, then our PR guy at Platinum Studios, emailing back writer Jay Busbee right before this blog. I was on the IM talking with James Patrick, he has an awesome new book deal in the works, an we were talking about Hero By Night issue 4 stuff which I’m starting here this week– gotta bang out issue 5 cover here first…. but then the phone rings.

My wife answers and comes in about 30 seconds later with the phone muted and not looking happy. It’s my Dad. He’s at the magistrate’s office. Being the adventurous type my Dad is, and a man of honor, on New Year’s eve he had an altercation with some couple, where this woman’s boyfriend had done her wrong in some way, and well, I think my Dad cold cocked the guy for hitting a woman or something. He wouldn’t give me details. The police got involved, but ironically my Dad wasn’t cited for anything, the woman was. And I guess this woman has been seeing my Dad since then… a knight in drunken armor! —- UGH. Well, today was court day, and they need money to pay her out of there or they’re taking her to jail… supposedly they tried everyone else because they are broke, but they end up calling me to ask for 140 bucks– which my Dad can pay me back on Friday when he’s paid…… so what do you do? Well several thoughts go through my head.

#1 I don’t know this woman. And I don’t really care to, especially now. Let her rot?

#2 My Dad’s voice asking me, I could tell we were the last hope to help this person, but only for HIM. And it seemed rational that we will be paid back this Friday I guess.  So I got off the phone and asked my wife to write a check out to the magistrate’s office…

Well, my wife is thinking more along the lines of #1 there, without the question mark on the end. She takes the checkbook, and she’s pretty damn angry right now. She’s going in to deliver the check, and she says a few choice words for my Dad too. UGH.

It’s very odd that somewhere along the line, WE became the responsible ones and the parents seem to need our help now. We’ll be scolding them. She’ll be scolding him telling him not to surround himself with trash…. and it’s true! The whole situation just sounds incredibly trashy and Fayette-Nam to me. It’s embarrassing to hear, to write about… and I’m sure it’s embarrassing for my Dad to have to call me. It’s going to be doubly embarrassing if my wife does show up and school these two grown adults. Maybe that is what’s needed, someone to tell them the truth.

My opinion of my Dad is, he had a longgggg boring marriage with my stepmother. He was the old adventurer from the 60s who I wrote about in comics, and suddenly he was a kept man, contained… broken down. Sitting around waiting to die. — probably the BEST thing that ever happened to him was losing that dead weight of crazypot my stepmother was… — So I try not to judge my Dad at all. He raised me well and taught me right from wrong. He taught me the simple things about honor too, which still gets him in sticky situations like this one he’s in today. So I guess i kinda feel like, I’d rather have him out there LIVING than sitting around waiting to die and being miserable with regrets of the past.

On money... people around here think we have fucking money! It bugs me. I mean, we have enough to get by with, but we’re not rich or anything. We’ve built everything we have, and we work really hard to keep it all. And being sort of the freelance/consulting type income, sometimes the checks don’t always come exactly when you thought they would, and it can cause some stress. It gets amplified when someone calls and asks for a loan, or suggests we must be secretly stashing Hollywood money away or something…. after all, I travel all over now, I just came back from Los Angeles! — Boy that DOES sound fancy, doesn’t it? Believe me, downtown Los Angeles is nothing to write home about. I think when some people hear I went out there, they envision me camping out on the Hollywood sign, with a campfire using money logs to warm me. UGH. — I’m a cartoonist!!! — and anyway, that adds stress to my mind. The perception locally that we have a ton of money or something.

My wife and I laugh with the money we DO save though. We don’t smoke, we don’t really drink a lot either. It’s at least an extra 300 bucks between us that other couples would blow on cigarettes and beer. And thank god we don’t have drug habits. — we’re just RESPONSIBLE ADULTS. And man, that does feel GOOD and WEIRD at the same time. I’m pretty low maintenance, just put me in a room and let me draw comics all day, or do research on the internet.

While it would be silly to move away from here, I can now see why someday, it might be necessary to do so. Somewhere near the beach calls to us.

Hey, happy BIRFDAY to my wife! She’s not 30… yet! Awh, I love her. It’s still true that I can’t sleep properly in a bed without her by my side. I’m like a big baby.

Easter! Candy! YEE! - My kids will be bouncing off the walls soon enough here.

My buddy Dave lent me his copy of KIRBY: KING OF COMICS, which I am devouring. I know a lot of the old stories already, but it’s still very inspiring to read. It reminds me I need to step things up in my own game… if you’re only drawing ONE comic, you’re being lazy. Or you’re not fast enough. Here was a guy who was doing 5 different daily features under different pen names for a syndicate. IN the morning he’d be drawing Pirates, and in the evening he was in space. How awesome. Gotta pick up my own copy of this tome soon.  I pinch myself for missing the Kirby panel in LA, could have gotten the author to sign one.

– Something I didn’t want to talk about publicly was the situation with Pittsburgh Comicon. But I’ve had a couple douchebag supposed “fans” emailing me asking me to boycott my appearance there, on the count that the show’s co-owner, Michael George, was just found guilty of murdering his ex-wife 18 years ago. Now, first, I gotta say, I’ve known the Georges for 15 years through Pittsburgh Comicon. Each year that show raises thousands of dollars for the Make-A-Wish foundation and not to mention the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Michael and his wife Renee were always supporters of the small press and independent local creators, including myself. Yeah, 10 years ago, I attended the show as a flannel clad angry young man, with mini comics in hand. They loved the name “Efh-U comics”, when I thought for sure I’d be kicked to the curb with my crass little comic books– Now I’m treated as a “media guest” kinda– and Hero By Night was also on the cover of the Pre-Con mailer, which made me very happy—– ANYWAYS, it came as a surprise to learn about their past, to myself and MANY others in this area. I followed the trial in the news, and frankly I can’t believe the guy was convicted 18 years later, pretty much because some schmuck said he made a phonecall and Michael had answered and it threw off the timeline of events. You know, when that crime happened, the police never tested his hands for gunpowder residue? — it seems to me, in my opinion, that the prosecution did a great job of painting Michael George as a sleezy guy who was having affairs and wanted out of his marriage. The jury couldn’t seperate the two things. Even Michael George would probably tell you he was an asshole, in one quote on the news, he said he had done a lot of bad things in his life, but he would never murder his wife. Unfortunately though, that’s where they are. I’m told by friends who know the law much better than I, he’ll likely spend the rest of his life in prison. All of this is supposed to be on an edition of Dateline NBC too, probably in May I hear.

So why should I boycott the Pittsburgh Comicon if justice has supposedly been served already? His current wife, Renee George is now on her own with kids to raise a business to run and hopefully a convention to keep going. A convention that has done a lot of good for charities and individuals. I know she can keep it going with the help of her friends and staff– and I’m sure it’s a really rough time for their family too now as they fight on, and they probably have a ton of legal bills. Whether you believe he did or didn’t do it… his family surely did not.

The anonymous douchebag who emailed me called it “blood money”- any money Pittsburgh Comicon would make, or any money I’d make at the show. That’s ridiculous, and I reminded said douchechill in an email, that ALL money is blood money. If you live in the USA and pay taxes? Do you know how many of your dollars have gone to wars and bombs dropped on innocent kids? Maybe you should boycott the DOLLAR if you’re so worried about blood money. The rest of the world seems to be doing so!

ANYWAYS— I’ll be at the Pittsburgh Comicon with a lot of Hero By Night stuff and supporting the show. Supporting the Make-A-Wish foundation, the CBLDF and great new organizations like HERO Initiative. I encourage more creators and fans to come to the area, because it’s always been a great show for actually meeting with creators and fans– a good vibe each year.

Off to the inlaws for Easter food.

This is hilarious. The guy on Keyboards looks like Zefrank to me. Which reminds me I miss the show with Zefrank. I hate it when good things go away.

Easter weekend here… my wife’s birthday tomorrow. I couldn’t afford to take her to the ocean this year, so I got her the next best thing to that I think.

It’s snowing outside– suck.

My 9 year old son is bugging the beejezus out of me to download movies for PSP, so I’m trying to learn how to go about doing such a thing. God bless the pirate bay.

Friends are coming over this evening. Our old pal Dave and his wife. There will be food… probably some Wii. Only 3 months to go until he’ll be a POPPA! Poppa-Dave!

I have been summoned to carry groceries in from the driveway…. it’s snowing outside….

suck.

The only reason I called this the “Good Friday Edition” was because I looked up and saw it was good friday on the calendar. Let’s hope it ends up being one!

So far, not so good. I woke up at 5am to take the dog out to whiz, and I noticed the slight cough I had yesterday has migrated into my chest, and runny nose and the whole bit. A post-convention cold! Hooray! I’m sure I’ll kick it in a day or so, but when I tried to get back to sleep, I just couldn’t, so I came down to the office to start my day, a day I SHOULD be sleeping in, since the kids are off of school.

It’s funny when I lay there, and a MILLION ideas fly past my head. Origin comics…. formats… launch something new? revamp something old? go deeper with current characters? work on site designs? character designs?– it goes on and on– all equaling one thing for sure… as soon as my mind is awake, it’s REALLY awake.

My sub-conscious is yammering at me, that Monday is coming. Another Monday. If you know me, you know what I’m thinking. That it’s the start of a new week of not doing something that I use to do so seemingly easily. Hurm.

Here’s a couple photos from the Wizard LA trip, courtesy of our pal, Brandon J. Carr:

I appear to be thinking about something.

RIght off the airplane and right onto a commercial set for Comic Book Challenge 3.

I love this one of Jorge looking all JAZZED to be signing beside Donald Faison. HA!

And the last one I’ll leave for the day is Jason Embury, our fearless colorist, hamming it up as CROSSING JUSTICE! in the CBC commercial.