Comics Experience Alum Launches New Book at Heroes Con!

Rob Anderson was a part of the online intro to writing class just a few months back and now he's debuting his new book ANIMAL CONTROL: SPECIAL CREATURES UNIT at Heroes Con this coming weekend!

Rob worked on the concept while attending the CE introductory writing class in October 2009. He's currently taking the Advanced class and kicking butt in it! He also regularly attends the Comics Experience Book Club where he tells me he's learning all kinds of cool storytelling habits and insight.

The book he's launching under his banner PANDA DOG PRESS contains three short stories and is 20 pages in glorious black and white. If attending Heroes Con, go by the Panda Dog Press booth and pick up a copy! If not attending the con, you can still get a copy through IndyPlanet.com.

And to make it an even more exciting thing for Comics Experience, Rob linked up with Introduction to Comic Book Coloring alum Coleen Allen to color the cover seen here! Congratulations to them both!

Preview pages of the book can be seen here.

2010 is shaping up to be a very exciting time for Comics Experience as we've seen alumni getting professional work from multiple publishers, producing their own comics, creating new clubs online, and even selling properties to Hollywood!

Look for more exciting announcements about new kinds of courses and new start dates for the classics coming soon!

Congrats again, Rob and Coleen!

Andy

Eagle Awards! We need your help!

Back from vacation and what great news! My book (and I guess that means me, too) is nominated for a prestigious Eagle Award! It's nominated in the "Favourite Comics-Related Book: category. I can't explain how cool this is. The Eagles are the British Eisners--this is a truly exciting thing for me and I hope reflects how the book has been received by its audience.

But why stop at nominations! If you can spare the time (PLEASE SPARE THE TIME!), just jump on over to the website and cast your vote for "The Insider's Guide to Creating Comics and Graphic novels" by, well, me.

Here's the link to vote. Just need your name and email address (the don't spam you) and then cast your vote. Takes about 45 seconds.

The book itself I wrote when I was just planning to leave Marvel editorial and go out on my own to start Comics Experience. It was about a year after I left that I finally finished the book. All told, it took about a year and a half to complete.

The Guide is a good tour through the steps it takes to make a professional comic book. It's got a lot of tips from lots of professional contributors like Neal Adams, Gene Ha, David Finch, Klaus Janson, John Romita Jr, and and many more. It's not all interviews though, it is a step-by-step guide. And it was a heck of a lot of fun to write and put together.

Marvel was really cool about letting me use a LOT of art from the Marvel Comics I edited and John Romita Jr. was so awesome to give me unlimited access to his art from his original graphic novel "The Gray Area: All of This Can Be Yours."

It's written for beginners and has been really well received. If you can, please vote today!

And thank you in advance to everyone who votes and everyone who has already enjoyed the book!

Here's the link again!

Eagle Awards! Vote Now!

And if you'd like to order the "The Insider's Guide to Creating Comics and Graphic Novels" just click on the image of the book and you'll go straight to Amazon!

Andy

I Always Wanted to Fly

And now I have, thanks to Kau'i Aero Sports in Kau'i, Hawaii. No posts from me lately because if my vacation this week and last week, but couldn't resist talking about this. So, I'm traveling with my wife, son, and my wife's parents (yes, I like them, so it's okay). And we're on "The Garden Island" of Hawaii and it is beautiful. Hardly a comic book to be found here, which, for me, is a pretty welcome break (of course, being the obsessive guy that I am, I brought several with me).

The place is breath-taking. Now, we'd been here a little over a week already when I decided to try out a form of hang gliding. The vehicle is called a Trike. It's essentially a hang glider with wheels. It has a motor for take off, essentially. But once you're up, your gliding and it's a wonderful experience. No cockpit, no windows, it's you against the open air.

I'm not certified to fly so I went up with Steve from KAS and he is certified and he knows the area and was an excellent guide, doing a lot of fun (but not risky) flying and giving me a view of the island hardly possible any other way. I wasn't all that interested in a helicopter tour, but this, the air against your face and body, the wind pushing you along, this was what I wanted.

We flew along the coast, looking at caves along the beech that you can only get to by boat, we flew INSIDE A VOLCANO! How cool is that? We flew right next to that giant waterfall from "Jurassic Park" where the helicopter lands in the beginning. We flew over a huge mountain ridge as clouds were rolling over the top of it from the other side, right towards us. It was astonishing.
Kaua'i is a beautiful island and a wonderful place to visit. And this flight through and around the island stitched my whole vacation together. If you ever get the chance, you too can feel like Superman. It really feels like you're flying.

PS. I haven't gotten my pics yet, so I pulled these off the Internet. One is just of a trike and the other is of the volcano I mentioned. Really awesome stuff. Check out www.kauaiaerosports.com for more information if you're interested!

Andy

The Return of the Real American Hero

So, there's been quite a bit of buzz and I anticipate a bit more after Free Comic Book Day. But Larry Hama is returning to his original continuity with G.I. Joe. The original series ran an astonishing 155 issues. For any comic, that's huge. For a licensed book, that's unprecedented.

So, I figured I could say this all in some interviews, and I'm sure I will, but I thought it might be fun to peal back the curtain a little bit to give you guys a glimpse at some of the business side of things on how a project like this happens.

Let's be honest, there are many fans who have wanted Mr. Hama (yes, I call him Mr. Hama when talking about G.I. Joe) to return to his original continuity for a long time. So, before we get into why it's happening now, its probably just as interesting to ask and then answer (and I can really only guess) why it hasn't happened before?

After Marvel stopped the publishing G.I. Joe, the comic book license languished for a while before Devil's Due picked it up in 2001 (someone feel free to fact check me there). DDP launched their G.I. Joe series, under license from Hasbro, same way Marvel did, with a continuation of the continuity that Marvel had established. Fans were happy about this. DDP decided to give it a five year gap between Marvel's #155 and their own first issue.

But what DDP didn't do was bring back Mr. Hama. Instead, they used their own creators. Which, to my mind, is totally valid. No argument from me on that. But eventually, they brought Hama back.

If I was to speculate as to why no one has done what IDW is doing with G.I. Joe before, I'd guess that Hasbro was probably not all that interested in looking backwards. While the company is very much aware of what has come before and upon whose shoulders G.I. Joe as a brand was built, they also are looking for what to do next. Strategically, from a business standpoint, to do any different means death in the market place.

DDP lost the license roughly two years ago. IDW Publishing quickly snatched it up and relaunched the franchise with a fresh start, geared more towards adults. I was hired to edit the relaunch and took a hand in shaping it from that perspective. The new relaunch (now in its second year) has been very well received and is doing great. Hasbro is happy with it, as is IDW and most fans are into it, too. There's no doubt it's been a success.

So, why now, would we want to "look back" at what has come before? Well, the answer to that is pretty simple, we don't see it as a look back. We see it as diversifying the line. Mr. Hama is not under any strict marching orders, but his book was originally intended for a younger audience and the universe he originally created is good for that. Oh, there are adult themes and some adult violence, but that universe lends itself to a more colorful approach.

So we're reaching out, not just to the old-school fans from back in the day, but also to put a comic out with G.I. Joe on the stands in a format that's, in theory, appropriate for a younger audience. Any parent shopping for his or her child should be cautioned that G.I. Joe is military fantasy. So a parent may not feel it is age appropriate. Please read the content before handing it to your young child. I recommend that for any and all comics, but it's worth noting here again.

When I initially took the idea of continuing G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero to Mr. Hama, I asked him at what point in the time line he'd want to pick it up. He suggested right after issue #155, where it originally ended. I then asked if ti would fill in the gap between that issue and where DDP picked up five years later and he said he didn't think that was a good idea. He'd rather not be tied down to what DDP published. I agreed. Did I mention that I call him Mr. Hama?

And that's how we got to the point where we could relaunch G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero.

Now, before we got cooking on it, I spoke with Mr. Hama about the notion of competing with his own nostalgia. Or, more accurately, with fans's nostalgia of Hama's work. That's a really tough thing to go up against. But Hama turned in the plot and we took it from there. He's right on target and the comic very much feels like an older Joe comic, without actually being exactly like one.

Choosing artist Agustin Padilla to handle art chores was a big help in that regard as well. He brings a kinetic sense from the 90s but is also able to tell a compelling story. He's got a lot of flash on top of his storytelling substance. I think he'll turn a lot of heads in the months to come. It's no easy feet to jump into a book that is so well loved. It's intimidating, and I've seen some artists get stage fright from such a gig. But not Agustin. He just dived right in and made it his own from day one.

Whether you're a long-time Joe fan or a someone interested in trying out the latest G.I. Joe book, give this a try on Free Comic Book Day (first Saturday of May). It's free after all, and it just might capture a feeling you haven't experienced since 1983.

Andy

C2E2

Headed out for C2E2 convention in Chicago tomorrow. I'm on three panels there:

On Saturday, I'm on the Digital Comics panel and then later the G.I. Joe panel.
On Sunday, I'm presenting on "Breaking Into Comics and Staying In."

The really fun thing is on Saturday night at Challenger Comics. They're throwing a huge IDW party. Check out the invite here! Come on by and meet your favorite creators (me, I'm sure) and hang out with us!
IDW does not have a booth at the show, so the rest of the time I get to float around, do some business and meet with freelancers. Meet with some other possible licensors and meet retailers (something I should do more of anyway).

I'm looking forward to the trip. Giordano's is my favorite pizza place on the planet and my brother lives in Chi-Town. Looking forward to seeing him, too.

If you happen to be at the show, come find me! Love to meet you.

Andy

Comics Experience Class Does the Impossible!

Okay, so it's not impossible, but it's really awesome! Last November and December, I took Comics Experience courses online for the first time and thirteen talented people bravely signed up for the course. And they were all awesome--still are, actually.

In six weeks, they took amazing strides, improving their writing and growing together as a group. I'm not tooting my own horn here, the talent was always there. They just got motivated and ran with it.

And now, just a few months later, ALL THIRTEEN of them have gotten their five-page stories illustrated, lettered and printed up in an anthology comic.

You can order it here! It's a huge book--80 pages of really great content. 80-pages of sweat and hard work. And they are ALL good stories. Solid stories with a beginning, middle, and end. With a protagonist you can relate to. With an adversary that fits the hero. It's all there in each story.

They did an amazing job and I'm thrilled to have my logo on the cover of the book (and they were gracious enough to ask me to write an introduction, too)! Congratulations to all of you guys. They are debuting the book THIS WEEKEND at the book at the Boston Comic Convention!

Andy

I don't usually do this...

...But my wife and I have decided to talk about this publicly. We were hoping that around this holiday we'd be announcing to family and friends that we were expecting our second child. And we were. But we're not now. We had a miscarriage a few weeks ago. We knew this in our heads, but this is extremely common. Fortunately, Alix's life was not in any danger and it looks like there's no reason to believe that we can not get pregnant and carry a baby to term in the future.

But it's a painful, shocking experience. And it happens all the time. Upon revealing why we've been away from the office and distracted to some friends in town, we came to realize how many people we knew who had experienced something similar. That's what prompted me to write this and Alix to write about it on Facebook. We didn't all know that each other had been through it.

So, it stinks. There's no rhyme or reason to it. It just stinks. But, we're alive and so is Cale and you pick up and start moving on. Which we've done. We're both doing well and Cale is too young to know what was going on.

So, if you are ever going through this yourself, I just thought I'd put this up to let folks know that you do know others who have been through it, too. We've been fortunate to have friends and family to lean on. And you will, too. And if you don't have anyone else, or don't want to ask, talk to me. I'll talk with you about it. I'll listen to what you're feeling, which, honestly, is all anyone can offer you in this situation.

Thanks for listening.

Andy