Wordless Wednesday featuring Sleepy Vera

Possibly the Worst Musical Ever - We Watched It So You Don't Have To!

Well, it's official. We may have reached the absolute bottom of the Netflix Streaming barrel. Heaven help us, we actually watched Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the movie.

In case you're not familiar with it, it's a loose (okay, incoherent) narrative told using the unbelievable device of Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees singing Beatles songs. There is no dialogue, save some weird narration by George Burns who plays a mayor (named Mr. Kite, of course) and ends up bound and gagged in a wax museum.

What's it about? Who knows? Here's what I do know:

*There are  cameos by Earth, Wind, and Fire, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Carol Channing, and Carel Struycken (who I recognized as the Giant from Twin Peaks).

*There is a distinct lack of choreography despite the mind-numbing number of dance sequences.

*There are ladies wearing rhinestones on their eyelashes and lame shorts.

*There's Billy Preston playing the grandfather of Peter Frampton (?!) who doubles as a fantastical weathervane that turns into a gold-lame-suit-wearing magic man who can shoot lazer beams from his fingers and bring the dead back to life.

*There's an strange fetishization of boy scout outfits and dollar signs, as well as two scary black massage-giving robots with shifty eyes.

According to Wikipedia, the film's producers hoped it would be "This generation's Gone With the Wind". Take my word for it, it's not.

Emerald City Comicon - Just One Week Away!

One week from today Gabriel and I will be at Emerald City Comicon in Seattle. It's one of my very favorite cons so I'm really looking forward to it. We'll be at

table F-22

in Artist Alley, selling books and art and signing things. Click here for a map of the show floor.

Gabriel will be selling sketches too. You can see his prices and get on his list here.

Drop by and say hi if you're in Seattle. I can't wait to see everyone at the show!

Wordless Wednesday featuring a Gray's Monitor

The Wondercon Wrap-up

Not a comic book, but I love it.

Wondercon is finished! Gabriel Hardman and I spent the last two days in Anaheim, signing and selling stuff, but for once I took the time to walk around a bit and explore. There were cool things to see despite the fact that the weather the first day had little kids whimpering and crying about "hurricanes" and "the wrath of the gods". Personally, I was ready to sacrifice to the traffic gods by the time we finally found parking.

Once we got inside it was great to see so many familiar faces and to finally put faces to some twitter handles. The con was BIG, but not big enough to fill the entire convention center. We soon learned that two other conventions were also underway, one about volleyball and one filled with cheerleaders. This made for some very odd cultural mash-ups in the common areas, as you might imagine. 

Hey, extinct tapir! 

I was lucky enough to nab one of Sawdust Bear's last little squid-slug guy figurines on Sunday, after multiple people told me I should find her booth. I also picked up William Stout's new dinosaur book. And look, he drew me an extinct SoCal tapir! 

At long last I picked up a physical copy of the special edition of ELDRITCH!, the (otherwise) digital comic by Drew Rausch and Aaron Alexovitch. I wish I could get a good photo of the cover Drew created for it, but it seems to deny my camera. Check out the link instead to see what all the fuss is about!

Special thanks to Matt Maxwell of Highway 62 Press for sharing a table with us all weekend. If you haven't read his books STRANGEWAYS and THE THIRSTY, you're missing out. Weird westerns both,   and full of smart writing.

Now, back to work for a few days. Then we're off to the Emerald City Comicon, where we'll be at Artist Alley table F-22, where Gabriel will be doing sketches and we will be selling and signing stuff. More details about that next time!

Where We'll be at Wondercon

Wondercon is here! This year it's in Anaheim instead of San Francisco so Gabriel Hardman and I will be driving down for the weekend. We'll be sharing space in Artist Alley with Matt Maxwell, the amazing creator of STRANGEWAYS. Ready for that booth number? Here it is:

AA-240

Still not sure? It's listed as "Highway 62 Press". You can see a map of the show floor here. That booth number again? 

AA-240

Gabriel will be doing sketches (click here to see his prices or get on his list) and selling original pages, and we will be signing, well, whatever you bring us to sign. We'll also be selling copies of our books. 

We'll also be doing a signing at the BOOM! Comics Booth #311 on Saturday from 2pm to 3pm. Please stop by and say hi! 

Signing EXILE ON THE PLANET OF THE APES - This Wednesday!

Look! Alternate covers!

Wednesday, March 14th is just a few days away. And so is Pi Day! You know, because pi = 3.14... And March 14th can be written as 3.14, so this Wednesday lots of math enthusiasts will be making pies and eating them to honor the coincidence. Isn't it nice when a math joke results in dessert?

Okay, so I'm not actually half as excited about Pi Day as I am about the debut of EXILE ON THE PLANET OF THE APES #1. It's our follow-up miniseries to BETRAYAL ON THE PLANET OF THE APES, from BOOM! Comics, with art by the wonderful Marc Laming. To celebrate, Gabriel and I will be signing copies at Collector's Paradise in Pasadena. You can map it and find all the relevant details here. And, Gabriel will be doing quick free sketches! We'll be happy to sign whatever else you have with you too. So, consider yourself invited! And if you must have pie, there's a Whole Foods right down the street with an excellent bakery.

Wordless Wednesday featuring Franz and a Classic

Tardigrades, Again

The cutest symposium logo ever

Tardigrades! Everyone loves tardigrades! That's what I conclude from my blog stats anyway. I last wrote about these weirdly cute tiny invertebrates back in October of 2010. And yet that one post continues to get more daily hits than anything I have ever written on this blog. Are tardigrades really that popular?

Well, they do have their own symposium. Or maybe its just a symposium devoted to research about them (the International Symposium on Tardigrada, taking place in Portugal this July). There are a lot of species to choose from too (around 1,150 at last count). And they do occur literally all over the world (deep in marine trenches, high in the Himalayas, in the sweltering tropics and at the frigid poles). But even so, surely they can't be more popular than, say, kittens? Or baby monkeys?

Guests of honor at the Tardigrade Symposium

I don't know, but I'm guessing it has something to do with assigned homework. Tardigrades are deeply strange (they're microscopic, adorable, crazy tough survival machines that can withstand the vacuum of space, temperatures near absolute zero, and pressures near 6,000 atmospheres) yet common. They make interesting research subjects that can teach us a lot about the limits of biology. Just the other day I read a news item about how a biomedical company is pioneering new ways of preserving DNA and RNA at room temperature, based on tardigrade chemistry.

Of course, some people may be looking for something else entirely when they stumble on my previous blog post. If you google "tardigrade" one of the first things that comes up is an article about how to impress your girlfriend's family over dinner. More than once it says "don't be a tardigrade". People may just be trying to figure out what the heck that could possibly mean.

Stuff is Happening in March!

Fun fact: Bechko rhymes with "echo", really!

Leap Day is over, so it must be March already. Wasn't it just New Year's?

Anyway, March is a month of much Apes madness. There's hardly a week when Gabriel and I won't be somewhere talking or signing something related to EXILE ON THE PLANET OF THE APES.

Where, when, why? Read on, and all shall be reveled.

First up, we'll be at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on March 4th for a mini comic book convention. We'll have copies of HEATHENTOWN and BETRAYAL OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, and Gabriel will be doing sketches ($125 for one character fully inked, $250 for two characters, or $60 for a head sketch) Click here for more details about the show.

Marc Laming sure draws a nice ape!

On March 14th we'll be at Collector's Paradise in Pasadena for a release signing. That's the day EXILE ON THE PLANET OF THE APES #1 will hit stores, of course! We'll be signing copies of EXILE and of whatever else anyone wants our signature on, and Gabriel will be doing free quick sketches. You can read more about it here.

Next up is Wondercon in Anaheim the weekend of March 16th. We'll be sharing a table there with the incomparable Matt Maxwell, proprietor of Highway 62 Press. Gabriel will be selling sketches here as well.

And then it's back to Seattle for the Emerald City Comic Con the weekend of March 29th. We'll be at table F-22 in Artist Alley. More about this show as it gets closer...

So that's our March. Four different cons/signings, a new miniseries, and fitting in work on our not-yet-announced sci-fi creator-owned project. The only thing I forgot to schedule is time to sleep!