Monday, February 25, 2013

Emerald City 2013 Scheduling News

Emerald City Comic Con is less than a week away!

Gabriel and I will be holding down
Table K-04 Friday through Sunday.

We'll also be signing at the
Dark Horse booth Sunday at 1:30

You can catch our panel too, where we'll be talking Star Wars in Comics with Brian Wood in
Hall B (608-610) Sunday at 12:10

Gabriel still has room for a couple of commissions but slots are filling up fast. If you want one, email him at gabrielhardman@gmail.com or contact him on twitter.

Hope to see you in Seattle!

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Emerald City Comic Con - One Week and Counting

I can't believe another year has passed, but it must have because it's just about time for the Emerald City Comic Con again.

Gabriel and I will be at
Table K-04 
for the entire weekend of March 1st - 3rd at the Seattle Convention Center. We'll have copies of our books and Gabriel will be doing sketches. If you'd like to pre-order one you can contact him at gabrielhardman@gmail.com

Curious about prices? Here's his breakdown:
$125 for 1 character 9x12 inked
$200 for 2 characters 9x12 inked

$60 for headshot 9x12 inked.




Seattle's a great city full of great books and great food. Is it any wonder that it has a great comic book convention too? 

Hope to see you there!

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Slug Safari

The Columbia River - That's Washington on the other side!
My birthday was two weeks ago so we took a mini-vacation to Portland and the Columbia River Gorge. Holy cats, it's gorgeous up there.

A major highlight of the trip was hiking all over the trails around Horsetail Falls. The countryside there is jewel-like. It's also full of slugs. I of course kept a sharp lookout for invertebrates of all varieties as well as for salamanders, but since it was early February and rather chilly we didn't see too many.

European Black Slug


Eventually I spent more time looking at the view than under rocks so I wasn't expecting it when I came face to face with a slug sitting right in a hole in a tree at eye level. Being black, he was difficult to photograph, but I knew I'd want to identify him later so I took a shot at it. I was hoping he'd turn out to be something rare and exotic.

Well, I was half right. He is exotic. In fact, I think he's European! It seems that the European black slug (Arion ater) is an invasive species that has become established in Washington and Oregon to the point of being a real pest. Despite that fact, my slug is a pretty interesting animal. He (she?) is a hermaphrodite, meaning that each slug can fertilize itself even though mating with another slug is preferred. That helps explain why the species has been able to spread over such a wide area.

Lucky for me that I belong to the look-don't-touch school of animal watching, because my slug is apparently also covered with a foul mucus goo that is very difficult to wash off. If I had picked him up, he would have curled into a ball and rocked side to side in an attempt to get the nasty stuff all over me. This is another reason these slugs do so well outside of their native environment. What predator in their right mind wants to take a mouthful of something so vile? Even so, this mucus used to be used to lubricate the wooden wheels of carts in the slugs' native Sweden, proving that humans really are the most indiscriminate predators of all.

So my slug-finding mission was something of a bust. Guess I'll just have to return in the fall, when the leaves change and the banana slugs are out!
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