COMICS UPDATE: Comic Con was last month. Unfortunately, we didn’t win the Eisner award, but it was still really cool being nominated and attending the award ceremony. Dave blogged about it here. I had a lot of fun at the show, hung out with the family, went to Sea World, and just generally enjoyed San Diego.

Oh, and while I was at the show, I discovered a comic called Super Siblings which has a lead character named James Clark who looks just like me circa 2002. Like me, the character has a wife and two kids — a boy and a girl — and his dad even looks like mine. And he acts kinda like me, too.

It’s both eerie and cool to see myself in a comic book, especially since the comic’s creator Patrick Scullen and I had never heard of each other before. Weird.

MUSIC UPDATE: I’m about 90% done working on my album of children’s music, and maybe 80% done on my second rock/pop album. I’m hoping to finish up a bunch of those tracks in time to have a demo CD together for when I perform in LA next month. You can read about that here.

OTHER STUFF: My kids turn five this month. FIVE! Where did the time go??

I’ll try to get back in the habit of writing more often, in case anyone actually reads this thing.

The Guns of Shadow Valley — the webcomic I write with Dave Wachter — was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Digital Comic!!

For those of you who may not know, the Eisners are the premier awards for the comic book industry. The Eisners are literally the “Oscars” of the comic book industry. It’s a very big deal to be nominated. Of the hundreds of thousands of webcomics and other digitally distributed comics available, only FIVE are accepted as nominations.

I’m incredibly overwhelmed, thrilled and overjoyed at the nomination. This is huge for me and Dave. I hardly know what to write. Dave did a fantastic job of summing up how he feels in a post he made over on the Shadow Valley website and I echo a lot of the sentiments he expressed there. I encourage you to read it — he sums up it up very well, much moreso than I am capable of right now. Plus he tells the origin story of how we started The Guns of Shadow Valley and what this journey means to us.

I’m honored to have our project included alongside the other nominees. I’m a fan of all of the other webcomics nominated in our category and it blows my mind to be in the same playing field. They’re all amazing.

Here’s the complete list of nominees for the 2010 Eisner Awards.

I thought the show this year was a lot of fun, but there seemed to be way more focus on movies and television than on comics. I realize Comic-Con has been like that for the last several years, but this year it was more evident than most. A lot of the foot traffic was heading past book sellers on their way to the movie studio booths. A few vendors I spoke with said their sales were dismal, and a few people went so far as to say “Twilight ruined Comic-Con” because so many of the attendees were there just for Twilight panels and merchandise. I’m not sure I follow the logic of that complaint, but whatever, I still had fun.

We bought our 3-year-old kids a couple of toy cameras so they could take pictures at the show. After the page break is what Comic-Con looked like to my daughter…

And I want to give a special shout-out to Pat Loika, Chris Maze, and all the gang who hung out at the Dial R Studios booth. It was great seeing you all.

See you next year!

- J.

My new webcomic The Guns of Shadow Valley went online today. New pages will go up twice a week. I’ll also be selling preview books this week at Comic Con. Here’s a quick synopsis:

Somewhere in the mysterious Shadow Valley lies a secret that could forever change the face of the frontier. To protect that secret, a posse of gunmen with special abilities must come together and defend against a tribe of ghostly warriors, an advancing army led by a deranged Colonel, and the perils of the valley itself.

The Guns of Shadow Valley is an exciting new Western adventure series from the creators of Scar Tissue [my other comic series]. Set in the 1870s in the Oklahoma Territories, Guns is a tale of intrigue and adventure that puts a new spin on the Old West.

Check it out, won’t ya?

This year’s SDCC was a great show for me. We ended up selling out of the preview edition of the new book I’m working on called The Guns of Shadow Valley. The people who checked it out seemed to really like what we had put together. That kind of feedback is always nice.

The rest of the family had a good time, too. There was lots to do for the little ones, surprisingly… I think they liked the Lego booth the best, and getting pictures taken with Superman and other costumed heroes walking around.

I usually sit in the booth playing the ukulele, but this year I brought a banjo. I figured it was more appropriate, what with the western book and all.

More pictures (mostly of the kids) are in the online gallery. (Click here.)

It was great seeing my compatriots again. Until next year!

I’m back from another trip to Comic Con. What a great show!

We made a lot of sales of our comic books this year and had a great time. It was good to see all our friends and fans from online and elsewhere. And all the weirdos. They were everywhere.

The most notable highlights for me were:

A few celebrities stopped by the booth and hung out with us briefly. That’s always fun.

A zombie army marched on the downtown area on the first or second night of the show, I forget which. There were about 25 or so people made up to look like the walking dead.

I liked their shtick. The leader would shout, “WHAT DO WE WANT?”
“BRAAAAAINS.”
“WHEN DO WE WANT ‘EM?”
“MUUHHHHH…”

On the last day of the show, a young guy was holding up a sign that read: “I WILL SELL MY SOUL FOR $10″. So I gave him ten bucks and asked for his soul. He was a bit unsure how to transfer it to me, so I said “just put it in your hand and give it to me” and he promptly did so. I put it in my pocket and walked off, promising to take good care of it. At first I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but then someone told me that he put the sign back up as soon as I was gone so I took the soul out of my pocket and ate it.

Apparently the hotels nearby do not have mirrors. That’s the only explanation I have for the way some people were dressed. Seeing a 300-pound Wonder Woman is never a pretty sight.

I played ukulele for the crowd almost the entire time, just like I do every year. A few people stopped to comment on my playing, a few of them actually bought books, and there were a couple musicians who brought their own instruments by and jammed with me.

(They were pretty good, too.)

Lisa brought the kids on the last day. It was so cute to see them wearing their little exhibitor badges.

I put up a bunch of pictures in my online gallery. Click here to see ‘em.

I can’t wait until next year.

Now go buy a copy of my comic book. It’s been endorsed by the Big Guy.

Come one, come all, to read the first installment of the World-Famous, Internationally Renowned publication of amazement known as:

Genius J’s
Technicolour Almanack of Graphical Wonderment
Wherein Things Begin and Summarily End, The Past Catches Up To The Future, Strange Creatures Are Bought And Sold, Freud Is Discovered To Be More Wrong Than Not, And Other Wondrous Events Of Happenstance Happily Chance To Happen In Stances.

In this substantial, full-colour 52-page tome ye shall find a spectacular variety of stories to shock, fright, confound and delight! Tall tales are woven of love! War! Life! Death! Science and its Fiction! Westerns! Monsters! Magicks! Mystery! And other such silly nonsense!

Featuring stories written by Yours, Truly (in other words: me) and illustrated by such talented magicians as Chris Fason, David Wachter, Bill Koeb, and others.

There is Something for Everyone and Nothing for No-one, and it makes an excellent Lining for all manner of Gilded Cage containing Fowl or other Winged Creatures.

So step right up and get your copy today^*!

^* or rather when it goes on sale, which is next month at San Diego Comic Con and then online at www.scartissue-comic.com shortly thereafter

Rate this comic!
Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

If all goes as planned the book will be ready in time for San Diego Comic Con in July and then available for sale on the website soon thereafter.

I just wrote this little jingle yesterday for my comic book publisher Dial R Studios for their New Year’s podcast. It’s not Grammy material but I like to think it’s not bad for my first venture into songwriting and recording.

I call it “Luau at Dial R”. (I apologize for the quality.)

Happy New Year, everyone.

Download audio file (Luau_at_Dial_R_Studios.mp3)
Download “Luau at Dial R.mp3″ (Right Click & Save As, Mac:Ctrl-Click)

Rate this song!
Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.