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.

(This short story was written by my 4-year-old daughter for Grandparent’s Day.)

Once upon a time, there was Eva, Mommy & Grandma.
They were driving in their car to the beach.
Then they were parked at the beach.
They got out of their car and went swimming.
Then they played on the swings
Then they all went home and got out of their car.

Then Eva, Mommy and Grandma went into the house.
They caught their eye on something.
They walked close and it walked further away again.
It was a shadow that looked like a big monster!
Mommy and Grandma were scared but Eva wasn’t scared because she was brave.
Eva took her Moo-Moo, put on her purple cape and zoomed out there.
Moo-Moo took a bucket of ice cream and dumped it on the shadow’s head!
Then Eva flew out of the house and got help.
She picked some flowers and found a hummingbird.
The hummingbird sucked up all the flowers and grabbed the shadow, picked him up with her feet, flew outside and threw him to the desert!
Then the hummingbird took back the flowers and flew into her house.
Eva, Mommy and Grandma were saved and lived happily ever after.

THE END

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?

My little girl wrote her very first short fiction today at pre-school. It’s better than most stories I wrote in college.

A Train One
by E., age 3

Well once upon a time this train brought mail to everyone. And then when he was done doing that he went home. And then when he went home he played with his friends. He played with his friends some more and more. And then when he was done doing that he took a nap.

THE END

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!

You are a simple mathematic equation:
All the love there is in the world,
multiplied by ten-thousand,
compounded with interest,
invested in Microsoft,
added to twelve,
plus one
equals
you.

We spend our days and nights in each other’s arms with a yearning
And now the whole thing’s falling apart
And all the words we said in bed were all gone in the morning
And now the whole thing’s falling apart
The rushing waves breaking out on the rocks were a warning
That the whole thing’s falling apart
There’s something in your heart you let out and you’re finally learning
And now your whole world’s falling apart

CHORUS

And all the promises we made knowing what it would cost
And all the things that we knew better but we carelessly tossed
They kept us farther from the edges of the lines we had crossed
And now we’re holding on on to something that we thought we had lost

VERSE

Now there’s a string that holds me to you and I’ll never unbind it
Without the whole thing falling apart
Just keep on looking for it in you and someday you will find it
Before the whole thing’s falling apart
And if you hold a hope of mending the string we’ll unwind it
And keep it all from falling apart
We’ll cut the ties to our past and leave our problems behind it
And stop the world from falling apart

CHORUS

TUBA SOLO

SMASH UKE AGAINST AMP AND TOSS INTO AUDIENCE

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.