The Rumors are True!

Heroes Con, the friendliest con around. Heroes Con, where it really is all about comics. Heroes Con, where the nearest pizza is not only edible but actually pretty good! Well, I am happy to report that the rumors are true!

Gabriel and I made the trek all the way from Los Angeles to Charlotte, NC last weekend to promote our book Heathentown. I'm from the South, so I was looking forward to spending some time soaking up the ambiance and the humidity. As it turns out, I spent much more time talking to creators and fans and shopping for comics! And best of all, my good friend Tricia was able to join us on Saturday. It was her first convention, so I was thrilled that it turned out to be such a nice one. 

Gabriel spent almost all his time doing sketches for fans, many of whom have been following his work on Agents of Atlas. We also met lots of people that we had only known "virtually" in the past, like Nikki and Derek Davis of Bitter Tea Studios . Thanks to everyone who stopped by booth #530! 

We were lucky enough to share that booth with Ken Marcus, the writer of Super Human Resources , available from Ape Entertainment. It was a perfect pairing. Ken's book is very funny, so visitors to our booth had a range of options: laughter, tears, and if they bought both, the opportunity to stay up all night reading some damn fine material if I do say so myself! 

Needless to say, we are already thinking about attending Heroes Con 2010. See you all in Charlotte next year! 

Return of The Crooked Man

Last year Gabriel and I wrote and Gabriel drew a webcomic for Zuda.com called The Crooked Man. Set in San Francisco in 1906, the project involved a huge amount of research  and attention to detail, especially for Gabriel who had to accurately depict The City before the great quake. 

We had a great deal of fun with it and put in a ton of work in a very short time, but then let it languish for months. Now that nearly 

a year has passed we aim to fix that.

We are currently throwing around story ideas and getting the rest of the tale in shape. Hopefully before too long we will have some fresh pages to show off and a proposal for a complete graphic novel. 

  If you would like to see the work we did last year, visit

 Zuda to see the first 16 pages of the story. 

In the mean time, here is an early synopsis: 

Early April, 1906 - San Francisco's residents have no idea that their world is about to be engulfed in chaos. Vice cop Piter Rassmussen has a comfortable home with a wife and daughter who love him. His beat is Chinatown, a place both uniquely American and very foreign. Amon Pen is a disfigured Veteran just returning from China. More than five years have elapsed since he fought there in the Boxer Rebellion. He and Rassmussen couldn't possibly live more different lives, but now Amon is hunting Piter throughout the young city. Loyalties will be tested and broken as secrets from the past are exposed to the harsh light of day in a city first shaken by the Great Quake, then stripped bare by conflagration. Even when society is reduced to its most basic components, the need for vengeance remains.

So, very soon I will be thinking a lot about the past!

Monkey Trouble!

Usually my job as a zoo keeper is pretty mundane: scrubbing food dishes, chopping vegetables and fruit, raking up hay, getting pooped on, etc. Of course, there is always the chance that something might bite me, but in fact I get along with my animal charges pretty well so that seldom happens. Once in a while though, we have a real challenge. 

Now is one of those times. One of 

our squirrel monkeys gave birth unexpectedly to a tiny female. Unfortunately, she rejected the baby. We tried to foster the infant with another female, but she wasn't able to produce any milk. So now it's our turn to play mom! 

It isn't easy. She needs to eat every couple of hours, day and night. She needs a specialized formula, and must have a stuffed animal to cling to at all times because in the wild, squirrel monkeys carry their infants at all times. The babies continue to nurse for 6 months and stay with their mothers for a year. So raising a baby monkeys is no easy task!