Originally published at Mikeintosh.net. You can comment here or there.

I drew this at the Manitoba con.  She is the one named Sailor Judoon!

Woh! Toh! Foh!

Originally published at Mikeintosh.net. You can comment here or there.

I finished the cover for Diaperman #14.  I’m up to page ten in colouring, and Jeremy’s up to page 14.  We’ve set a due date for January 24, so things are ticking right along!

I’m almost all set for the Central Canada Comic-Con over Halloween weekend!  Everything’s packed, and 25 issues of the Spanker comic are on their way!  U.S. Postal Service, so hopefully things will work out with that.  Hoo!  Stressful.

Originally published at Mikeintosh.net. You can comment here or there.

All done!

Some of them I worked a little more closely to reference material than I would if they weren’t for free and I’d actually agreed to do them in the first place.  But what the hell, hey?  Now to (arbitrarily) number them, and spray them with fixative since whatever card stock they used doesn’t hold ink at all.

Originally published at Mikeintosh.net. You can comment here or there.

Here’s the next six C4 sketchcards!  Only eight to go.

Originally published at Mikeintosh.net. You can comment here or there.

Now available on Indyplanet! Or in person this Halloween at the Central Canada Comic-Con.

After being caught inadvertently being heroic, the Spanker is approached by Family Force, a political action group that seems to know everything about him. Can he break free of their terrifying agenda?

The Spanker, a supervillain who is consistently thwarted by do-gooder hero Diaperman, breaks out into his own adventures in his quest to bend the world–over his knee!

Originally published at Mikeintosh.net. You can comment here or there.

When the Central Canada Comic-Con announced that they would be handing out free sketchcards with weekend passes, I didn’t really take any notice.  They hadn’t asked me directly, and I’ve had more experience than I’d like to admit with concoms coming up with sudden, poorly-thought-out ideas.

To me, this smelled like “let’s give out free stuff! Hey, artists, give us free stuff to hand out!  For free!”  That sort of thing gets my back up, and it’s not C4’s fault–especially since they extremely reasonably don’t charge for Artist Alley tables for out-of-Manitoba guests.

Still, nobody else will value your art if you don’t, so I found it very easy to ignore the request that hadn’t been sent to me in the first place.

Kyle, on the other hand, believes that all exposure is good exposure, and he replied to them.  And they sent him his ten cards, and my ten cards, and ten cards for Michael onto which they apparently want him to write dialogue, and an extra ten for I do not know what.

I appreciate tenacity, and brute-force bulling forward.  And also, free artist tables.  So I’m drawing my twenty cards.

Thus far I’ve been drawing whatever’s in front of me at the time, so coming up is Freakazoid (Michael bought me the DVDs for my birthday) and probably more Gargoyles since I’ve been going through the series ever since getting back from the Gathering.

And I suppose I need to draw Destro practicing the clarinet as well.

—

This is the first post on my new Wordpress blog, which is much more powerful and secure than my previous platform (sphpblog) and also automatically poots out posts to Livejournal and Facebook, which is extremely nice for me because now I don’t have to, and not so nice for you because you have to read everything three times.  Sorry about that.

Because my Philishave electric razor has become angered, and has recently been trying to remove my face, I finally relaxed the no-blades stance I've had since I got removable hair, and got a set of these:


It's not bad! I only have two issues: the goo-leaving moisture strip is not unlike wiping one's face with a snail; and it contains a battery. Being a stick with a knife on it, it doesn't functionally require a battery. I can only assume that the manufacturers felt that it needed one to attract the gamer market. Probably they just couldn't figure out a way to get a thumbstick on that bitch.


I bought one of these last week. I already own a 4 GB thumb drive, which was much cheaper than this one--and when I bought that one, I didn't already own one. Nevertheless, I couldn't build a little vroom vroom car out of that one, and that's an important feature.


Last weekend was the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, and while I haven't heard about numbers yet, it looked spectacularly well attended from where we were sitting. I wish we could have seen more of it, but we were there to work.



Lexington, in particular, pimped out his little green tail-less ass.

Kyle sold out of his Tarot cards again, and Lisa did a brisk trade in little My Little Pony magnets, obviously spurred by the San Diego exclusive super ponies she had on her table. We refer to them as "mascots" to the people who want to buy them, but in actuality they are bait.

People didn't seem to get what buying prints was about, for any of us. It was certainly useful to have the binder of them so they could see what we could do, but they were more interested in 8x10 commissions than anything else. I drew a four-winged gargoyle, Robin giving the Trickster an epic wedgie, and Tank Girl; Lisa did four marker commissions. I wish I knew how to colour with something portable.

Nobody had any idea what the deal with sketchcards is, either, so I can probably ignore them in future.

I can't recommend the iPhone enough to people who sit behind tables drawing character commissions. The ability to nearly instantly call up reference images of obscure Flash villains with one's fingertips is essential. At one point I had to hijack Michael's iPhone because I needed a picture of Robin and Lisa was using mine; astoundingly Michael had only one picture of Robin on it. And then the four horsemen came and we were omg ded.

Reminder for the Manitoba con: get previous comics set up on ka-blam.com, since Lulu has decided to be prohibitively expensive for some reason. Also finish TDA #1 and whichever I decide my own comic should be. And make little magnets.

The best thing about the Comic Expo was the souvenir artbook.  In previous years, only the invited guests had been asked to submit art for it.  Attendees were then able to comb the dealers' room and collect signatures from the guests without having to buy things from them, which was fun for everyone!  Except possibly not the guests, come to think of it.

This year, exhibitors and attendees were also invited to submit art for the book.  Lisa, Kyle and I were all accepted, which was fantastic!  First it was harrowing, as Lisa's piece skipped ahead of the judging process, and Kyle and I were left to await results.  He was notified before I was, and I am not too proud to admit that I behaved like a big baby for a couple of days.

I bought three books ahead of the Expo date (one for us, one for Sonia, one for my parents).  They mail out vouchers for people who do that.

When we arrived at our tables on Saturday morning, we found weird little metal stands with "Return To Calgary Expo" tabs sitting on top of our table covers.  We had all our own comic stands, of course, and we had no idea why the Expo would want to lend us two of them, so we tossed them onto my hockey bag and ignored them.

I redeemed my vouchers.  They were still getting the books out of the boxes at the time, so I was given numbers 1, 2, and 3 out of 850.  Nice!

And then on the way back to the table, we saw that all the other contributing artists had been given the same weird little stands, with comp copies of the book in them.  Oh.  And, sure enough, our comp copies arrived at our table in short order.  That meant we ended up with five copies of the book, but it is for charity, after all.  And Michael took one, so as it worked out we only have one extra.

It was a whole lot of fun signing our pages for signature collectors.  The organizers had gone to the trouble of highlighting the contributors' locations on the floorplan, which made hunting easier and resulted in a lot of book-passing between us.  We got very good at finding our own pages.  Plus, several people who came to the table for signatures ended up buying things, and it certainly increased traffic around Artists' Alley.

I really hope the Expo opens the artbook up for submissions again next year.  I just can't blow enough sunshine up that idea's ass.  (Not that I don't blow enthusiastic sunshine up the Expo's ass generally.)

And the most astounding thing about this year's Expo was that my parents came to it to see us.

Every year the Calgary Comic Expo prints a seriously awesome artbook with art from each of the invited guests. This year they gave exhibitors and attendees an opportunity to be in the book in the form of a contest.

We just found out that Kyle, Lisa and I all made it in!

This was my entry:


This is Lisa's:


And this is Kyle's:


Come out to the con! Buy the book! Get us to sign it!

We're very excited.

I was reading She-Hulk lately (which was a fun comic when she was goofy meta-comic Superhero Lawyer, not so much now that she's a Very Serious bounty hunter) so I drew her. You know, as you do.



I struggle with the forced-perspective right-in-the-camera thing. It's difficult. There should always be SOME arm visible, but it's always going to look distorted and stumpy. Plus, if I drew her legs receding into space, they would look even more distorted and stumpy. I didn't have any specific plans about her location in space; I was going to put in some kind of shorthand generic background colour and leave it at that. I have a really strong work ethic as far as backgrounds go; I am strongly committed to ignoring them as much as humanly possible.



So I was well on my way to that end when Lisa looked over my shoulder. "With her legs that way, it looks like she's sitting in a beach chair," she said. "You could have her shouting at a waiter."

And of course, once there is a joke, I cannot resist it.

The Manitoba Comic-Con is as well attended as the Calgary Expo, but not as well organized. Which is not to say that it's organized poorly; it's organized as well as or better than every other normal convention* I've been to over the years. It was weird in places, but overall it seemed to lurch drunkenly through the weekend without hurting anyone and people had fun, which is all that should be asked.

It didn't bring the same volume of guests as the Calgary Expo, and it concentrated on TV actors more than comic industry giants. I can't fault that: the average Joe is a lot more likely to recognize Helen Slater than Paul Dini. But the Manitoba 2-day admission price was an extremely reasonable $12, and the Artist's Alley tables were free**. Clearly their primary objective was to get bodies in the door, and it seemed to work. 11,000 on Saturday, I heard.

We flew out after work on Friday with no problems. Michael and Kyle had flown standby early Friday morning, and they had no problems either. We went to bed early, since we'd all received e-mails from Violet, one of the two showrunners, in all capitals, which advised us that we must arrive by 8:30 am or be booted from the show. This was not the first exasperated threat we had received from her. She is a mom, after all.

We made it, barely. Only one elevator was designated for move-in, and as we got to it we discovered that it was already full. "We'll catch the next one!" Michael said, and we watched the elevator go down, stop there, come back to our floor, open the doors, close them again, go up, come down, and stop. We pushed the button. They pushed the button. Then the alarm bell began to ring, and we went in search of another elevator.

As it turned out, lmai and the others were in there for an hour.

When we got to the artists' registration desk just before 8:30, we formed a line as the girl who'd been tasked with finding everyone's names on a sheet struggled to do so. Meanwhile, an older gentleman volunteer ably demonstrated his task, which was to be a dipshit. He made smartass remarks to us, to another artist who had decided that he didn't have to stand in the line, and to lmai, who didn't make the 8:30 due to being stuck in the elevator. "Shouldn't have packed eleven people in there," he said to her (she told us later, as she sat at the table behind ours).

This is, as I said, what I am used to from cons. One can't really be surprised by unprofessionalism when one is not dealing with professionals. Saddened, certainly, and resigned. And joyful when one finds professionalism anyway which is why I have such a torrid love affair with the Expo.

-

Sales were good, I think. It's hard to judge, since we didn't actually have issues of the comic to sell at the last Expo. We sold a fair amount, I think, though at a $3 price point I thought we'd move more than we did. TDA#0 suffered from its plain-paper, black and white cover and no signage. Lisa suggested re-covering them with a colour cover printed on better stock, which I think is a good idea, and I'll need to find one of those extended-arm staplers.

Postcards just do not sell. So, since our luggage was heavy enough already, I didn't bring any. However, I want to print up a bunch of Diaperman character postcards as giveaways, since the character designs are a large part of the jokes. Also, I really want to explain a glue-gun-carrying cowboy named Money Shot to moms. :)

Why doesn't the Expo have a freebie table? The Winnipeg con did, and Kyle and Lisa put postcards on it, which were all gone by the end of Saturday.

Winnipeg is, for some reason, crazy for business cards. Lisa ran out on Saturday afternoon. I'd brought my whole box, since they were already in a box anyway, and made a sizeable dent in it.

I gave away lots of little take-away magnets. I think I've found the solution: if I put a FREE sign next to them they get silently scooped up, stuffed in the swag bag, and thrown away probably. If I leave them at the front of the table with no explanation, people will pick them up and fiddle with them. "Help yourself!" I'll say cheerfully, and then they're happy that I gave them a cute little free magnet and I'm happy that they don't all sullenly disappear in the first hour and a half.

I sold two commissions, which was unusual because my table doesn't mention commissions in any way. I don't encourage them. I can't do colour without a power outlet, and it takes me a relatively long time to finish things, and I'm funny about work for pay. However, both commissions were to the same girl who wanted a female gargoyle and, heck, I can do those. I should probably just get over myself about it.

I also did a brief art trade with one of the girls sitting across the aisle from us. The girls across the aisle all liked Michael and his tendency to sing songs off the top of his head when thinking, or writing, or bored, or watching me draw, and they were sad when he left early on Sunday afternoon to attend the voice-actor workshop.

-

The banners worked perfectly. Black Cat's jubblies were at the eye level of all the boys who weren't already looking at the tables, as I intended. I could tell it was working because the boys would catch the attention of the boys they were with and say "look, it's Black Cat," (or, "look, it's Catwoman," if they were of a DC bent) and then they would regard the banner solemnly and without further comment.

The Diaperman banner worked in its twofold way. It explained its disturbing premise in 73-point type right to the left of Michael's head so that Michael didn't have to. --He still talked to people, of course, but he generally pointed them to the sign and told him that it's a lot like The Tick, until I asked him to please stop telling people we're plagiarizing The Tick, as we are not. After that he described it as a "superhero satire." "Oh, like The Tick?" people would ask.

The other thing the Diaperman banner did was have a large logo, and a large drawing of a diaper, being worn by the eponymous man, and thusly warned off the junior high school boys before they could roughly paw at the table and sneer "Diaperman?!" at me. Junior high school boys have a very low tolerance for sexual oddities, because they are deathly afraid they might be one. So, having been warned at a safe distance, they kept their eyes safely on Black Cat's jubblies, which made everyone happy. Me especially.

Kyle's banners appeared to attract Kyle's target audience of sideshow/horror fans. He had seven boxes of Tarot cards, and sold six on Saturday. The last one went on Sunday morning, and after that he sold books. He doesn't ever seem to sell the books when the cards are available.

Lisa mostly just wanted her banner to get her name up at eye level, and she reports that it seemed to work.

-

Lisa got one weirdo who shared his conviction that all superheroines are just sluts because of how they dress and are just asking for it because they're sluts. Why this shining prize chose to relate that to the short girl drawing sweet elven princesses and not, for example, to the guy sitting at the next table in front of a five-foot-high vinyl print of Black Cat's jubblies, I do not know.

Kyle got a fellow who explained that none of this art was ennobling or uplifting to the human condition. Whether he meant comics in general or Kyle's art specifically remains mysterious.

Michael and I spoke with only one fetishist and he was quite nice and not scary at all.

-

My iPhone was indispensable, though I did not once speak into it. Naturally it led us to Starbucks and McDonalds, which is what iPhones are always used for. But it also saved the day when Lisa needed a reference picture for Helen Slater's specific Supergirl costume, and Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman, and Blink from Marvel. And when I needed girl-poses to draw girls. And when I didn't remember off the top of my head how leopard's spots go. And when Amber asked if I knew what Felicia from Darkstalkers' legs look like, I didn't even know who that was--but Michael's iPhone did. (I'd have used mine but Lisa was already using it for a different reference picture.) Having the world of Google Image Search in one's pocket is an absolute must for doing commissions.

That, and PhoneSaber fights.

( Pictures below the cut! )

* San Diego is not a normal convention. I think it used to be. Now it's more like being in Kelowna when a disaster evacuation is going on and the only building in town with storm shutters is the comic book store.

The Calgary Expo is a normal convention in terms of scale and subject matter, but it is not run by normal humans. It is run by the very Incarnation of Efficiency and his henchmen, and is therefore not subject to normal convention laws. We got our table assignments for next year's Expo (which is more than six months away) last week. I did not know our table assignments for Winnipeg until we got there.*** I met the man who had sent me my Expo table assignments, in Winnipeg, as he attempted to get me to sign up for the Expo. ("Hi, Ken! We're already going. I got your e-mail last week," I told him. Twice, since he introduced himself to Kyle later.)

** Free, after a $25 donation to the Heroes Initiative, which is either refundable or not depending where you read. I wasn't worried; a $25 Artists Alley table is still a great rate. Kyle recouped some of the loss by absconding with everyone's acrylic nameplates.

*** But we found out our table assignments as soon as we got there, which puts the Winnipeg con ahead of Otafest, where we got there and discovered that the con-volunteer seated near the Artists Alley knew nothing about the Artists Alley at all, and to find Lisa's table assignment we had to locate a man we did not know, who was somewhere on the other side of the University campus and had no cellphone or radio. However, that puts Otafest ahead of Con-Version, who responded to Kyle's request for table assignments first with long silence, then confusion about the alien concept being presented, then finally dismissiveness.

Hoo, am I tired.



This year's Comic Expo was the first to run over two days, because last year's was packed full: 6000 people attended. It felt full, too; our table was frequently crowded. This year probably pulled in eight thousand--I'm just guessing--but spread out over two days it felt much more relaxed. Which I'm sure was nice for the attendees, but for us, sales were slow. Well, Lisa always does pretty well.



We lined up at the table along a spectrum: Marci was at one end, all cute and family-friendly and pure like the driven snow, and then Lisa, a little sassier, and then me darker yet, and finally Kyle and and his evil carnival of divination and sin.

Man, I wished I had comics to sell. Every time Michael showed someone the truncated one I died a bit, inside. But we networked with other folks about printers who are in town, or at least closer to it or, failing that, have phone numbers. I'll still upload books to Lulu so that people in Uruguay can order them, but that's it.

We also networked with the owners of the local comic book stores, who invited us to bring copies of Diaperman in. Which we would, if we hadn't sold out of the collection. But we did! --I think.



Derek France came by to chat us up about getting tables at Con-Version, and god help us, Kyle and I considered it. May Gord have mercy on us.

Comic finished and ordered!

Sketchcards ordered. I wasn't originally going to bother having some for the Expo, but then I spent today setting them up, so I figured the hell with it and got the seven-day shipping on them. Last year I decided I didn't want business cards, and then I regretted that. Better to have them and not need them, than the alternative.

One more print finished today:

I'll probably try to crank out another one or two before the Expo.

The wedding trip is blessedly now booked--almost. The packages to the hotel we wanted from Calgary sold out before we had financing secured, unfortunately. However, the Toronto packages are still available. And, as it turns out, it's $800 cheaper to book a package leaving from Toronto than from Calgary, so we booked that. We'll get a separate flight to Toronto, stay there a couple of nights, see Niagara Falls and what not. And it feels great to have that done.

Rings still haven't arrived, but soon. I hope.

The wedding reception--which is June 21, the week after the wedding--has been moooostly taken care of. The B&B-slash-hall has been booked, for a year now actually. Since the event is still just in the barbecue-with-friends-in-someone-else's-house category, and not the do-the-whole-wedding thing, it makes it a lot easier to plan. Apart from the food, and the shuttling people to Bragg Creek and back.

Right now Lisa is assembling invitation prototypes. Artsy craftsy! And we're sorting out the guest list. Even eloping in a foreign country doesn't get you away from everything.

Took Sheba in for her glucose test yesterday, and it came back as 1.2, compared to 6.5 a couple of weeks ago when she had her teeth fixed, and 22 when she was first diagnosed with diabetes. I could pretty much tell, as she'd drank almost no water for the past three days. So the tech had me take her off insulin completely for a week--which seemed a little drastic to me, but I'm not a vet, and neither was I about to pass up the opportunity to sleep in Sunday morning. Unsurprisingly, going from six units of insulin a day down to zero has made Sheba queasy, sick and miserable, and I've spent the day keeping an eye on the poor kitty.

There, done.



Now I have to get some comic book work done or I'm screwed. Thank blog it's just in black and white.

There, I think I'm done now. I tried to make it brighter and airier than usual. Still a person dressed almost entirely in black, of course.



I'm very much enjoying Christmas break which I am now officially halfway through. I intended at the outset to get a lot of work done on Diaperman 13, to get it done by the Expo. I have inked two and a half pages of it so far, which isn't no progress, but I haven't made a lot of progress. I'm hoping to accomplish more next week.

Had a great Christmas: I got a suitcase from my sister, Tick Vs. Season Two and a future Batsignal from my parents, and $50 from my grandparents. Which I haven't done anything with. (Actually, come to think of it, my boss gave me $100 and I haven't done anything with that either.) Kyle gave me a gargoyle and Jason gave me a collectable card game he transparently hopes to be invited to. And Lisa gave me Doctor Who Season 3, a clockful of Batman for the bathroom, and some minty chocolates which are not for the bathroom.



And of course we bought each other a TV and HDPVR. As things have turned out, the TV is more for me and the PVR is more for her, as she loves being able to pick and choose things to record a week in advance, and she loves no longer having to remember when Ugly Betty is on.

Right now she's not watching it, though. Right now she's glued to the Pokemon Diamond game I bought her, which seems to have been popular.

And the season of giving continues: the BBC gave me a new Doctor Who Christmas Special (click the link to watch online, provided you live in the UK; if you don't, adjust your proxy settings accordingly). My orthodontist will be giving me lower braces next week. And, just now, I have given you all an image of a heavyset man in his jim-jams in flagrante delicto with a cardboard box.

No need to thank me.

Lisa bought me a sticker at Comic-Con, and I just finished off a sketchbook, which means that I now have a new sketchbook on which to stick the sticker.

Anyway, in the interest of generating prints for the comic expo, I wanted to draw my own martini girl. Who more logical to fit inside a martini glass than the Wasp?

Colour to follow.

Kyle kept confusing this with a champagne flute. Don't try to wedge your butt into a champagne flute ever.

Work continues! I always have trouble lighting leather and vinyl.

Also I have braces on my top teeth, now, and they hurt.

Shaded! Now I need to put in the lighting, and put in a background of... something. That I'll have to... draw. I guess.

In the long-held tradition of sketching while the DM is droning on with tedious exposition, here's The Chosen One, my Eberron paladin.

	Scott Pilgrim Fanart Too bad I've drawn the title character terribly!
	Catwoman Drew this while not really paying attention. She's not putting enough weight on the whip.

Since my initial proof of my colour art book had had some problems, I had ordered a second proof. Unfortunately I requested standard shipping, which can take up to thirty business days.

Whoops.

Michael's and Lisa's and Kyle's books had all been fine, and since the plan was to do a joint order to save shipping, I took the gamble and placed the order.

So, naturally, my second proof arrived today. Luckily it's fine! And so now my book is available for everyone to order!

Lulu is awesome. Michael and I are working on another, recurring Lulu project.

I think I'll do another Vistaprint order. I only did one, and Michael and Lisa placed three. Each. We're going to need a bigger table.