As promised, a new strip! Burt and the ILS. begins! Not only have we added a new quality strip by Sam White, but we're another step closer to our ultimate goal of bringing you fresh comics every weekday!
Also, added this months donation incentive pin-up: Brandi Cassidy!
Make sure to come back Monday when Issue 2 of the Radicals begins with a cover pencilled by Roberta!
And a Happy Halloween to everyone! It's one of my favorite days of the year for one reason: the History Channel! But everybody be safe tonight and have fun! I have to work :(. Otherwise I'd set my camera to infrared and go check out some allegedly haunted areas of East Tennessee according to The Shadowlands.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Home Sick - Radicals Issue 1 Complete
Aaugggh! I'm not sure how widespread it is, but around here it's front page news: the SUPERBUG! It's a highly contagious stomach virus that's tearing through east Tennesee right now. The other day I was in Powell, Tennessee scouring all the toy departments for 25th Anniversary G.I.Joes. When I got home I saw on the news that Powell Elementary had been shut down or sent home early due to an overwhelming outbreak. Two days later I was violently ill. Ironically, the same morning, we got G.I.Joes in at work. I managed to suppress my need to vomit until the store opened and I was able to buy them. That's right, G.I.Joes are a slightly higher priority than health. If I hadn't run out of hours and had to come home early, I probably wouldn't even have gotten the page colored this week. Speaking of which...
Radicals Issue 1 is done!
I'm happy. This is the first issue I've finished in over 3 years. Usually I would get 4 pages in and decide to reboot the continuity again. Never again! This universe is here to stay.
Next week, I will be running some filler art by Roberta as a "bump" to give me some more pre-production time for issue 2, which should start the following week.
Also, running the same week as the "bump", is "Burt and the I.L.S.", an action comedy series by Sam White, author/artist of Tuttle's and Burt Cottage.
Congrats to the Shepherd for running consitently in the TWCL top 1,000 for the last week!
Radicals Issue 1 is done!
I'm happy. This is the first issue I've finished in over 3 years. Usually I would get 4 pages in and decide to reboot the continuity again. Never again! This universe is here to stay.
Next week, I will be running some filler art by Roberta as a "bump" to give me some more pre-production time for issue 2, which should start the following week.
Also, running the same week as the "bump", is "Burt and the I.L.S.", an action comedy series by Sam White, author/artist of Tuttle's and Burt Cottage.
Congrats to the Shepherd for running consitently in the TWCL top 1,000 for the last week!
Friday, October 19, 2007
Monday, October 15, 2007
Update: David House and the Wizard of Time!
Double Holy Crap! I got an email from David House, artist/author of the Wizard of Time the other day! He's still around and writing sci-fi! I wanted to wait until I had the presence of mind to formulate a proper response and ask for permission to post it, or I would have had it up much sooner, but here it is:
"I ran across your Aug. 19, 2007, post asking for information about The Wizard of Time and its creator, David House. Well, that's me. I wrote, drew and published the comic book. I did it all, from working with the printers to boxing and shipping orders to distributors. I ended up needing a small second printing of the first issue - distinguished by the letter "TIME" in blue instead of red on the cover. The covers of the first two issues were only black plus spot color, but the third issue had a full-color cover.
The venture collapsed just as I got started with what they came to call the "black and white boom-bust" of 1986. Suddenly, I wasn't getting paid for orders for No. 3, and my capital was gone. I had to quit.
I attempted to start an anthology title called "Animal Universe" with two other funny-animal cartoonists in late 1986. I intended to continue The Wizard of Time story that way. We produced a preview edition and distributed over a thousand to comic shops through distributors. But by this time, the industry was buried in unsold independent comics. We got zero orders.
So in 1987 I did produce about 40 copies of a photocopied edition of The Wizard of Time No. 4 that was 5.5 by 8.5 inches. It had only six additional pages of the story. On the flip side it had an unrelated 8-page story. I have only one copy, and it's part of my portfolio.
What's ironic is that The Wizard of Time was not the story I wanted to write. It's an alternate-reality story with the same villain as in my main story. The story I really wanted to write is about an Oregon boy who goes on amazing adventures across the galaxy under a secret get-to-know-humans program with advanced aliens. I developed the story and individual episodes during college from 1981 to 1985. The title would be Space-Worthy with the main character a teenager named Jess Worthy.
But as you can see, I don't draw very well! I could do OK with animal
characters, but not people. So I figured that if I wrote a related, alternate-universe story with animal characters, and made money at it, I could then pay an artist to do the main story. Hoping to push on even with the failure of The Wizard of Time, I penciled out a sample opening page and gave it to one of the cartoonists from the Animal Universe fiasco in 1987. But he wasn't interested. He moved on to the computer game industry. And I moved into journalism and public affairs.
Amazingly, When I visited him in 2006, he gave back that penciled page untouched. He'd kept it all these years!
And I kept Space-Worthy in the back of my mind all these years but never got any new project launched. Until 2004, that is. At that time, I decided I'd write and self-publish the main story as a series of novels instead of comic book format. The result is much better than the comic book in so many ways. As you saw in the comic book, the expansive story line in The Wizard of Time didn't work well spread out over many, many issues, as I'd envisioned. The novel format is much, much better for an epic-length story.
I published The Key to Space, Book 1 of the Space-Worthy Chronicles, in March 2006, and a short novella that goes with the series called Survivor Planet in March 2007. I'm now working on Book 2, The UFO and the Wizard, as well as other short stories for the chronicles. It's a thousand times better than The Wizard of Time, in my opinion.
You can learn all about it, read sample chapters and order the books at www.space-worthy.com. Both books are also available at Amazon.com.
David"
That's awesome! I never really expected my blog to get anyone's attention, let alone an actual reply from the author. Anyway, this guy was a HUGE influence on me and you should at least take the time to go check out his site space-worthy.com. This I command!
"I ran across your Aug. 19, 2007, post asking for information about The Wizard of Time and its creator, David House. Well, that's me. I wrote, drew and published the comic book. I did it all, from working with the printers to boxing and shipping orders to distributors. I ended up needing a small second printing of the first issue - distinguished by the letter "TIME" in blue instead of red on the cover. The covers of the first two issues were only black plus spot color, but the third issue had a full-color cover.
The venture collapsed just as I got started with what they came to call the "black and white boom-bust" of 1986. Suddenly, I wasn't getting paid for orders for No. 3, and my capital was gone. I had to quit.
I attempted to start an anthology title called "Animal Universe" with two other funny-animal cartoonists in late 1986. I intended to continue The Wizard of Time story that way. We produced a preview edition and distributed over a thousand to comic shops through distributors. But by this time, the industry was buried in unsold independent comics. We got zero orders.
So in 1987 I did produce about 40 copies of a photocopied edition of The Wizard of Time No. 4 that was 5.5 by 8.5 inches. It had only six additional pages of the story. On the flip side it had an unrelated 8-page story. I have only one copy, and it's part of my portfolio.
What's ironic is that The Wizard of Time was not the story I wanted to write. It's an alternate-reality story with the same villain as in my main story. The story I really wanted to write is about an Oregon boy who goes on amazing adventures across the galaxy under a secret get-to-know-humans program with advanced aliens. I developed the story and individual episodes during college from 1981 to 1985. The title would be Space-Worthy with the main character a teenager named Jess Worthy.
But as you can see, I don't draw very well! I could do OK with animal
characters, but not people. So I figured that if I wrote a related, alternate-universe story with animal characters, and made money at it, I could then pay an artist to do the main story. Hoping to push on even with the failure of The Wizard of Time, I penciled out a sample opening page and gave it to one of the cartoonists from the Animal Universe fiasco in 1987. But he wasn't interested. He moved on to the computer game industry. And I moved into journalism and public affairs.
Amazingly, When I visited him in 2006, he gave back that penciled page untouched. He'd kept it all these years!
And I kept Space-Worthy in the back of my mind all these years but never got any new project launched. Until 2004, that is. At that time, I decided I'd write and self-publish the main story as a series of novels instead of comic book format. The result is much better than the comic book in so many ways. As you saw in the comic book, the expansive story line in The Wizard of Time didn't work well spread out over many, many issues, as I'd envisioned. The novel format is much, much better for an epic-length story.
I published The Key to Space, Book 1 of the Space-Worthy Chronicles, in March 2006, and a short novella that goes with the series called Survivor Planet in March 2007. I'm now working on Book 2, The UFO and the Wizard, as well as other short stories for the chronicles. It's a thousand times better than The Wizard of Time, in my opinion.
You can learn all about it, read sample chapters and order the books at www.space-worthy.com. Both books are also available at Amazon.com.
David"
That's awesome! I never really expected my blog to get anyone's attention, let alone an actual reply from the author. Anyway, this guy was a HUGE influence on me and you should at least take the time to go check out his site space-worthy.com. This I command!
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Shortpacked! Collection and TIme-slot Change (Again)
Ooooooh! Look what I got in the mail the other day! The first collection of Shortpacked! It's great! Go right to Shortpacked.com and purchase it this instant!
And speaking of toy-collector geekery: Check it out! Shipwreck and Zartan from the 25th Anniversary GI Joe Series! I also drove 120 miles yesterday to every Wal-mart and K-mart I could think of and found 3 of the Cobra Legions 5-pack! My Cobra Army Dominance is now unquestioned!
Also, the Shepherd is moving to Friday starting either this week or next (looks like this week since Jake never sent me the script, although the art is done.)
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Like Our Comics? Help Us Out!
While doing comics is very rewarding, it's also A LOT OF WORK. And when you have a "real job" in addition to doing comics like we do, it's hard to even muster the umpf to make yourself work on it some days. So, if you enjoy the comics, help us out. There are a lot of ways you can help out, some of which don't even cost you money!
1.) Help improve the comics' rankings on thewebcomiclist.com. All you have to do is click the buttons I've put on the comics' pages and then follow the links back to the site. All it costs you is a few seconds!
2.) Buy stuff from our CafePress.com store. There's lots of great stuff in there, including posters and wall clocks of the monthly pin-up girls. Funny stuff too, like the "I've decided to be (Check One) Evil" shirt, which you'll see Jayce wearing in the next issue of Radcials.
3.) Donate. When you donate, you get nifty incentives like wallpapers of the monthly pin-up girl. Sometimes, there might be extra strips for donating as well or extra material cut from the finished issues. Donations are also the way we get the highest cash yield. "Duh!" you say, but you'd be surprised how little we actually make off our Cafepress items. And if you are going to donate, please donate $2.00 or more, as most of the first dollar gets eaten up by paypal fees.
Now, I've seen alot of webcomics, that will put up a status bar for donations and say something like "If we don't get this much cash by the end of the month, we will shut down forever and/or eat this bucket of kittens!" and we aren't saying anything like that, but it does cost us a lot of our own time and money to produce this stuff. So, if you appreciate it and feel so compelled, then please share what you can so we can devote even more time to doing what we love and bringing you more entertainment.
Also, feel free to drop us a line and let us know how we're doing at destinyhelixcomics@gmail.com.
1.) Help improve the comics' rankings on thewebcomiclist.com. All you have to do is click the buttons I've put on the comics' pages and then follow the links back to the site. All it costs you is a few seconds!
2.) Buy stuff from our CafePress.com store. There's lots of great stuff in there, including posters and wall clocks of the monthly pin-up girls. Funny stuff too, like the "I've decided to be (Check One) Evil" shirt, which you'll see Jayce wearing in the next issue of Radcials.
3.) Donate. When you donate, you get nifty incentives like wallpapers of the monthly pin-up girl. Sometimes, there might be extra strips for donating as well or extra material cut from the finished issues. Donations are also the way we get the highest cash yield. "Duh!" you say, but you'd be surprised how little we actually make off our Cafepress items. And if you are going to donate, please donate $2.00 or more, as most of the first dollar gets eaten up by paypal fees.
Now, I've seen alot of webcomics, that will put up a status bar for donations and say something like "If we don't get this much cash by the end of the month, we will shut down forever and/or eat this bucket of kittens!" and we aren't saying anything like that, but it does cost us a lot of our own time and money to produce this stuff. So, if you appreciate it and feel so compelled, then please share what you can so we can devote even more time to doing what we love and bringing you more entertainment.
Also, feel free to drop us a line and let us know how we're doing at destinyhelixcomics@gmail.com.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
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