Hey, Folks!

Item: We’re back! Issue ten begins today!

Item: Today I saw a report that fundamentalist groups are picketing the yet un-released video game “Dante’s Inferno.” To be honest, I don’t see what the hubbub is about—Heaven and Hell have been mainstays in comics forever! Whether it’s Hellboy, or Preacher, or Savage Dragon’s trip through both realms, the afterlife has been well represented in sequential art. Come to think of it, some Johnny Saturn characters have certainly journeyed through hell, and come close to the gates of heaven. At least we didn’t do what Spider-Man did when he made a deal with the devil to get out of being married.

Item: Today, when I was drawing at the Indianapolis Art Center, I tried something new. I turned all my cognitive processes off, and drew in a state of “no mind.” Samurai art! In the absence of having to think about what I was doing, my drawings were actually more accurate! Why, you might wonder, would this be the case? Because I wasn’t associating the subject matter with what they are, so I drew exactly what I saw without falling into the trap of drawing things likes the nose, eyes, etc., in the mechanical, canned way I’ve used to. Zen, baby!

Item: It seems like the day of the digital comic downloads is about to reach fruition. In the past, we’ve sold Johnny Saturn on Drive Thru Comics, Wowio, and directly off this site. We still sell comics on Drive Thru, but sales have fallen off there. Wowio was a real cash cow for many of us, but once it sold to Platinum Studios we got out. They changed their business model, and there was good reason at the time to think that this was all a massive intellectual property grab on Platinum’s part. Now, we are looking to the near-future launches of ComicsXP and Longbox. As I’ve mentioned in earlier blog posts, we are heavily aligned with ComicsXP, its owner Bob Hickey, and its Marketing and Pr guy, Chuck Moore. Longbox is a similar service, one that is also promising. Combine this movement with the emergence of iPhones and Kindles, and you’ve got a market whose time has come.

Scott.