Edmonton Collectible Toy and Comic Show 2010

by Jeff on March 26, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Posted In: Blog

This Sunday is the annual Edmonton Collectible Toy and Comic Show, which I’ve been an exhibitor at for the past two years. This year should be even more fun, because Rudi Gunther, Dan Schneider (artist of Zenescope’s Merc), and Brad Glenn and I have chipped in to get a pair of tables in the artist alley.

I’ll be there promoting HEAT and my new print comic, Hell, Inc. I also still have a few copies of Rent-A-Thug: First Offence left, as well as some leftover Rent-A-Thug hats. I’m also trying to come up with some kind of contest to boost readership. I have a pretty workable idea, I just need to fine-tune it a bit.

Hell, Inc. is  my newest print comic, which released at Happy Harbor Comics during Indy Comic Book Week on December 30th. I’ve been describing it to people as The Office with demons, although I’ve consciously tried to avoid just recreating The Office with monsters instead of people. Our protagonist, Doug, works for Hell, Inc., which is the company in charge of running Hell. Hassles and awkwardness ensue. You should buy it.

I’ll also be part of a panel discussion with Dan Schneider (Merc), Bob Prodor and James Davidge (The Duchess Ranch of Old John Ware) at 11 AM. We’re going to be regaling the audience with yarns about the glories and pitfalls of independent comicking. I imagine there will also be some shameless plugging of our books and Q and A with the audience.

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HEAT on Twitter

by Jeff on March 22, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Posted In: Blog

Just a reminder to follow @HEATcomic on Twitter to get special preview images of upcoming comics. I posted the preview image for #24 earlier tonight.

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12 Hour Comic Challenge Recap

by Jeff on March 18, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Posted In: Blog

Last Saturday I participated in the 12 Hour Comic Challenge at Happy Harbor Comics. The goal is the same as the 24 Hour Comic Challenge, except you need to complete 12 pages in 12 hours instead of 24 in 24. We did it to raise money for Big Brothers & Sisters of Edmonton, and we kind of kicked ass at it, to the tune of roughly three thousand bucks.

I also kicked the ass of my story, in the sense that I finished all twelve pages in ten and a half hours. I also beat it hard with the ugly stick to get it done that fast. It was a Hell, Inc. story which was specifically designed so that I wouldn’t need to draw backgrounds, and could accomodate whatever random elements I drew at the beginning of the challenge (we had to include a randomly selected character, event, and theme in our story). There’s some decent jokes at the start, but as it progresses the art gets a lot more hurried and the plot stops making sense. The best part of the story is my friend Dan’s idea to do a Mexican bootleg version of my comic instead of coming up with his own story. He recreated my pages, but added moustaches, sombreros and ponchos to all of the characters. And “translated” the dialogue into “Spanish”. Which he recently dubbed “Danish” on Twitter. I’m not sure he’s aware that Danish is a language already.

When read together, I think our comics turned out to be hilarious. Apart… well, not so great. Dan’s looks better, because he’s all a pro and stuff, but makes absolutely no sense on its own, while mine doesn’t look as good, has some mediocre attempts at humour, and doesn’t look as good. So really it just comes down to Dan made a good comic that makes no sense and I made a mediocre one that makes slightly more sense.

Also, Twitter. Follow me on it. @HEATcomic. There’s a preview of Saturday’s strip up there already.

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So… RAW is still a wrestling show, right?

by Jeff on March 3, 2010 at 12:02 am
Posted In: Blog

I watched WWE RAW last night and uh… four matches in two hours, totalling about half an hour of TV time (probably not even that much). Now, I know that WWE has gotten even talkier since I stopped watching it a few years ago, but seriously, four matches in a two hour show? And Jack Swagger vs. Santino and MVP vs. … whoever MVP fought barely combined to break the one minute mark.

Ted DiBiase vs. Randy Orton and DX vs. ShowMiz were okay, and I guess a decent length by modern TV standards, but considering that the other hour and a half of the show were nothing but yakkity yak yak, it was pretty disappointing. Despite also being a WWE show, Smackdown seems to have a much higher wrestling-to-talking ratio, which I approve of. Until it was canceled, that was my favourite part about the modern ECW: it was almost entirely wrestling, without a whole lot of promo time. Which is also why I was a huge fan of Ring of Honor when it was running on the Fight Network: lots of really good wrestling. Except that when they did talk, the audio was so terrible a lot of the time that it was basically unintelligible.

I think where I’m going with this is that I watch wrestling for wrestling matches, and thus am excited to see Monster Pro Wrestling live in Edmonton this Saturday. All wrestling, no fifteen minutes of John Cena and Batista nattering about their upcoming match, which resolved nothing. So yeah, if you’re in Edmonton, check out Monster Pro Wrestling on Saturday night. Should be a good time! Vance Nevada is taking on Massive Damage in the main event.

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Madness!? THIS IS DODGEBALL!

by Jeff on February 5, 2010 at 9:13 pm
Posted In: Blog

This afternoon, the Univeristy of Alberta shoved the Guinness World Record for World’s Largest Dodgeball game into the mud and stomped on it’s balls until it’s face turned blue. The record, previously held by San Diego State University, was 450 people. Today in the Butterdome, I participated in a dodgeball game with 1200 people. TWELVE. HUNDRED. It lasted almost an hour, despite it being almost impossible NOT to hit somebody early on. I’m used to larger dodgeballs (roughly basketball-sized, and made out of rubber), so trying to throw these little rubberized foam things was tough. No matter how much heat you tried to throw with, the ball sort of just floated to it’s destination. Standing on the court was like being in that scene from 300 where the Persian arrows blot out the sun. Except instead of arrows, it was red balls.

U of A Smashes World Dodgeball Record

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