The Road To Emerald City

This is the time of year when my brain melts.

As one of the 4 Founding Fathers of the Emerald City ComiCon, a portion of the operations of the show (i.e. setting it up, processing all of the info coming and going, design, print, etc.) falls on me. We all have our areas of expertise, and we all bust our asses all year long to make this show happen. However, with less than a month away, TONS of little things crop up that need to be taken care of on a daily basis. Along with a normal family life and work, this makes for a very scatter-brained Brian... hence, the meltiness of my brain, as of late.

Anyway...

Besides the running of the actual show, there has also been certain preparations for the show that I have been working on, in regards to Rorschach Entertainment. As it stands, RE will have a busy year at the show. We have a couple of new books, an artbook (by Sean Dietrich), and a special guest.

After a long delay, Issue #2 of Sprecken: Kalabus Rex finally makes its debut this year, continuing with the original miniseries of Sprecken that I started at last year's show.

I have also lettered the first issue of a brand new RE series called Bolt Magee, created by Steve Lawlis artist, Erik Thompson. It's a great little book by a talented creator, so pick it up if you're at the show.

Lastly, Gigi Edgley will also be making an appearance at the show, sitting behind the RE booth to promote our venture, Blue Shift. Although the miniseries is still in production, she will have the ashcan on hand for sale, as well as a brand new art print (see above) by artist Camilla d'Errico (who will also be at the show).

As for me, I will be running all over the show floor during the event, but I will try and make time to spend at the RE booth when I can.

Don't Mess With The Warrior!

8th time around!

Yesterday was Mackenzie's 8th birthday. For her, it was a modest and mellow event, considering her past birthdays almost always ended up with an evening at Chuck E Cheese. No night out, just the family at home with a small dinner, some cake, and a few choice presents. As part of my effort to cut back on the amount of useless crap my kids tend to end up with, she got quality over quantity. No crappy toys this year...

Her presents this year consisted of 2 light-weight jackets (one track and one hoodie), a couple pairs of nice jammies, a Hannah Montana music CD, a movie called ROXY HUNTER (about a 9-year-old girl detective), a pair of silver Converse shoes, and the Grand Prize Of Them All, a pink Nintendo DS.

She was very excited about all of them, especially the DS, of course. Like the rest of the family, she loves her Gameboy, and this is the first one she has owned that was not a Hand-Me-Down. All in all, a good day for her...

Octo-Bot!

Mostly as an exercise in creativity and/or stress release, I have a tendency to start working on designs for no particular reason. With all of the various projects (whether freelance, personal, or work related) I am working on, I find it's a nice break to just play around with something that has no deadline.

One the of the ideas I have been playing with is the "Mighty and terrible Octo-Bot, with its Tentacles of Doom!" (as shown here). This design really serves no purpose, other than being a fun looking image. But, it might make a neat t-shirt design.

Recently, some friends of mine (such as artist Sean Dietrich) have been getting involved with submitting t-shirt designs to sites like Threadless and Design By Humans. I'm not sure how well they've done with those submissions, but considering that those designs that are chosen are printed and paid for, I'm thinking about submitting this design for consideration. However... I'm not sure if this design is strong enough, or if I should drop the words, or change the color. I may play around with it a bit first...

Holy Hot Rod!

After almost 9 years of driving the same car (my beloved 2000 Dodge Neon), I have taken the plunge and bought a (nearly) brand new 2007 Chevrolet HHR.

With the arrival of my boy Jack "Lucky" Meredith over a year ago, my small but growing family placed a bit of a strain on our vehicle situation. My Neon and Amy's Hyundai Elantra were just not big enough. Oh, sure, we could get around town easily enough with all five of us packed in to either car, but we were packed in. Not exactly a lot of room left for the little things, like space or comfort.

On top of that, my work at the Comic Stop calls upon me to pick up shipments on a weekly basis, not to mention any trip out of town for family or business.

So, with all of that in mind, Amy and I kept an eye out for a new vehicle, preferably something not too expensive, decent gas mileage, and enough room for everyone and everything we would need it to do. Our list of requirements left us with a very short list of cars. One of these cars was the Chevy HHR.

After about a month or two of looking around, Amy found a sweet deal on a used HHR at a nearby dealership. This HRR had only 1,000 miles on it, and was a lot cheaper than other comparable HHRs we found.

After making an appointment to see and test-drive the car (which handled great), we found out the previous owner had just bought it a couple of months before. It turned that his mother suddenly turned ill and he needed a large mini-van to get her around (I believe he traded it in for a Dodge Grand Caravan). We thought about it overnight, and went back in the next day to see what kind of deal we could make. in the end, we got a new car for about $7-8,000 less than had we just bought it brand new.

Of course, the downside to this great deal is that I have car payments again...