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!

Wordless Wednesday featuring Cooper in a Box

A Trip By Aerial Tramway

See the little yellow car? It's coming for us!

Palm Springs is an odd place. It's in the middle of a desert and yet it's full of golf courses and rich people. It's also full of interesting mid-century architecture and fancy chocolate shops but that's not what we went there to see last Friday.

No, we went to see the Aerial Tramway. And now that I've experienced it, I can happily proclaim it to be the oddest thing in all of Palm Springs. It's basically a big tram car on a cable that whisks you up from the valley floor to 8,500 feet in just over 10 minutes. You stand up for the whole trip, facing big picture windows, watching the valley recede below you. Really, really far below you. It's a bit like watching out the window of an airplane, in fact. Oh, and did I mention that the floor of the tram rotates? Perhaps I should stop explaining and just show some photos. Keep in mind that it was nearly 80 degrees in the valley the day we visited.

Looking down towards the visitor center

When viewed down the mountain, everything looks very arid and hot. And far away.

Two feet of fresh snow!

But at the top it's another story! 54 miles of hiking trails, or so they said. We didn't hike nearly that far.

A three-legged dog. In sunglasses.

The altitude apparently makes people do strange things. This dog's human was giving a monologue about why the dog only liked to wear human sunglasses, not dog sunglasses.

There were also quite a few lovely snowmen, built by people who had apparently only heard of snowmen before but never seen one. The one on the left was one of my favorites. 

Here's one to prove I was really there. Look at all that snow!

And here's one to prove that Gabriel was there too.

And here is the end of our hike. You can tell it's the end, because that's the edge of the mountain. Look carefully... See Palm Springs way down there, in the distance? That's where we went next. And yes, I had a piece of super fancy chocolate before we headed back to LA. 

Crazy fancy key lime chocolate