Todd’s Blog

Yesterday Ellen and I went to the big fireworks display in Atlantic City put on by the Borgata and Harrah’s casinos on the bay side of town. I had brought my camera hoping to get some pictures, but the batteries in the camera were dead, so instead I’ve had to steal this photo from the web, taken from across the back bay, and probably last year. The display was put on by Grucci, and was indeed spectactular with two or more streams of shells and displays running non-stop for 20 minutes. Certainly the best fireworks I’ve seen in a long time.

We arrived at The Borgata earlier in the evening, as I’d made a dinner reservation there at Ombra, and the latest one I could get was for 5:30. We rushed out of the house a little after 4 PM, as I wasn’t sure how much traffic we would hit on the Atlantic City Expressway, but in fact there wasn’t that much, and we got to the casino, parked in the garage, and to the restaurant by 5 PM, where they were happy to seat us early. The restaurant is rather cool, it’s downstairs from their more formal Italian restaurant, and actually in the wine cellar for it, and they’ve played it up by making the entrance to Ombra down a winding arched tunnel made to look old. Once in the restaurant, which was rather dark, but atmospheric, we had a delicious meal, and especially enjoyed the desserts. Ellen had the Ricotta Zeppole, little donuts coated in a honey glaze with creamy dipping sauce, and I had the Affogato, vanilla ice cream with lemon liqueur and espresso. Ellen took a first bite, paused thoughtfully, looked at me, and said, “This is REALLY good!” A rave review, folks. Mine was just as yummy. Dinner was expensive, but a fun splurge.

We had some time to fill after dinner before the fireworks, so while Ellen wandered around the casino and looked in the shops, I sat down at a poker table and won enough to cover dinner and more, so that worked out really well. Later we went outside to watch the show. They had a DJ set up from a local radio station, and the music was too loud for my taste, but otherwise I thought it was a fine Fourth celebration.

My website, and this blog were launched one year ago today. In my very first post, I said I was hoping to feature some in-depth content on both, rather than just idle chatter. While there has certainly been some of the latter here, I feel pretty good about the content in general.

I spent about six months creating the website, and tried to include as much content as I could about my career, some of my collaborators, comics in general and lettering in particular. If one should choose to read it all it would take a few hours, I think. I haven’t added to that initial offering except to update my CURRENT PROJECTS page and the LETTERING ARCHIVES at the beginning of this year. I had originally planned to do more, but there never seems to be time. The website still gets plenty of traffic, though, so I guess I’m okay with it as is for now. My web host reports that, for the month of June just passed, there were 1,188,416 total hits on the site, and 75,476 total visits. I’m not sure how they arrive at that, and it seems impossible, but their numbers have been similar most months since the site went up. Most of those visits must have come from search results, leading to particular pages, because the front page of my site has only registered a total of 21, 785 hits for the entire year it’s been up. I’m still pretty happy with that.

Most of the traffic to the site is for the Blog. I’ve only been tracking that with separate software for about two months. Visits to the blog are averaging about 800 per day, with a high of 1,998 and a low of 375 in the past two weeks. Every time Neil mentions me on HIS blog I get a big jump in hits, but over time the most popular blog entries are the LOGO STUDIES. Those include:

Batman, 5 parts (still the most popular, gets dozens of hits per day)

Legion of Super-Heroes, 3 parts

Action Comics/Superman, 6 parts and update

X-Men, 9 parts and update

Green Lantern, 5 parts

Tarzan, 4 parts

Wonder Woman, 5 parts

Spider-Man, 5 parts

The Flash, 4 parts

and Iron Man, 3 parts, as well as various single posts.

I’ve enjoyed writing them, but they do take a lot of time. I’ll do more when I can.

Other topics that I’ve posted a lot about are NATURE, with a focus on birdwatching, and RECIPES, the latter being vegetarian recipes we like that are simple and easy to make. Both categories seem to have their fans. And I also have posted quite a few REVIEWS of comics and books mostly, with a few movies as well. The HOW TO category got a lot of hits with two articles on coloring comics old school, and more recently with my series on the creation of Neil’s print.

Speaking of prints, my BUY STUFF page, and the prints I’ve been selling there, have been much more successful than I ever imagined possible, thanks to many of you! I haven’t worked out a total, but I think I’ve sold about 2000 prints thus far. Many of you took my advice and joined my MAILING LIST, and thereby learned things that I think were to your advantage about new print releases. Your support has been very encouraging, and plans are underway already for a third signed print collaboration. More on that when I have something definite in hand.

That’s my year in review. Thanks to all of you once again, and I hope to continue to provide content and entertainment here throughout the coming twelve months, as time allows. This is my 309th post on the blog to date, pretty good for a year, and I do enjoy writing them. Sometimes I can’t think of anything to say, but usually it’s more a matter of having time to say something worth posting. That will continue to be my goal.

©George R.R. Martin.

I’m a long-time reader and fan of Martin’s fantasy and science fiction, and especially like his “A Song of Fire and Ice” series of medieval fantasy novels. THE HEDGE KNIGHT takes place in the same world as that series, though the focus is very different. The novels cover a huge landscape and cast, with a variety of royal and high-born factions struggling for control of an entire continent. These graphic novels (this is the second) feature a low-born peasant who becomes a sort of knight-for-hire through circumstance and raw strength. Mentions of the larger world are just that. The focus is on Ser Dunk and his squire in this book as they take up the offer of employment in a lonely castle for an aged and somewhat feeble master and quickly run into trouble with a neighbor who is stealing their water. I’m not sure whether Martin wrote an outline for this, or a complete short story, but the adaptation by Ben Avery shows a strong understanding of the comics medium, yet the words, plot and characters are pure Martin. However the franchise is handled, it works very well. The characters are memorable, the world they live in has the trappings of romantic knighthood, but with all the grim realities and consequences of unromantic real life. A very good combination!

The art by Mike S. Miller is attractive and shows strong storytelling, good anatomy and other art skills. The layouts are bit sedentary, but there is never any confusion as to what’s going on, and in a character-driven story like this that’s an asset. The coloring by Rob Ruffolo and the lettering by Bill Tortolini are both fine, contributing to the overall thoroughly professional look.

Actually, the only thing I don’t like is the cover logo. No expense has been spared in the printing of this book’s dustjacket. It features silver foil printing on the logo and Martin’s name, plus spot varnish on the art, both expensive extras. I find the logo very hard to read and poorly designed, though. Part of the reason can be seen inside the book, where the logo looks like this:’

Here the logo is painted with tones in Photoshop, giving a more three-dimensional look to the letters, and separating the circle symbols from the H by color. It’s a bit easier to read, but still a rather confusing design in my opinion. They made it worse on the cover by removing the textures and printing the whole thing in one flat layer of silver foil. Fortunately the main draw is Martin’s name, and that’s clear as day, and large enough to be read across a wide room!

If you like stories about knights of old, you’ll enjoy this one, and even if you don’t I highly recommend it as a fine piece of storytelling. By the way, you don’t need to have read either the first HEDGE KNIGHT book or any of the “A Song of Fire and Ice” novels to enjoy this one, but if you have, you’ll get a little more out of it.

©Mike Mignola.

Mignola continues to expand the Hellboy franchise at Dark Horse Comics with this spinoff collection written by him, with art by Jason Armstrong. The layouts for this book look very much like Mignola’s own art, so I’m guessing he delivers at least thumbnail layouts to his artists to work from. This gives the art by others continuity with Mignola’s own work that provides an effective way to keep the franchise unique. Kind of the way Jack Kirby had a hand in many Marvel comics of the 1960s that he didn’t have time to completely draw himself.

The character and story is pure 1940s pulp fiction in the mold of The Shadow or Doc Savage, and it’s a fun romp through the genre, with everything from gangsters to ethnic villains to weird science and Nazi submarines. The main character typically takes beating after beating, but always comes through, though worse for the wear. Mignola’s dialogue is sparse in places, and I did find some of the action scenes hard to follow.

For instance, on this page, I’m not sure where Johnson came from, or what’s supposed to be happening in the black panel. But one can always pick things up after pages like that, it doesn’t really detract much from the story. There are also some nice text pages telling the back story of the character in magazines and media of the time, which were fun to read.

Well done, though I have to say my favorite Mignola stories are the ones he draws completely himself.

©United Feature Syndicate, Inc.

I’m continuing to thoroughly enjoy these collections of the classic comic strip by Charles M. Schulz. Like everyone in the world, probably, I grew up with PEANUTS, but missed a lot of the actual strips. I was in high school when these came out, and I think we only got a Sunday paper at the time, so all the daily strips in this book were new to me, and I didn’t remember many of the Sunday strips either. Schulz was at the top of his form in these years. Not all the strips are laugh-out-loud funny, but there was at least one of those every few pages for me. Hey, there are even a few lettering jokes:

And there are ice skating jokes Ellen enjoys, topical references that are still somehow funny today, familiar themes like Snoopy and the Red Baron, and Charlie Brown and the Kite, and quite a lot of great Lucy and Linus strips like the one above. I can’t think of a more rewarding read if you want to relax and have a laugh. And Fantagraphics is doing a super job on the printing and production of these volumes (even if there was a duplicated strip in this one). My highest recommendation!

Is it possible to be both an excellent comics artist AND an excellent bird photographer? In the case of Stuart Immonen, the answer is a resounding YES. Have a look at his wonderful Bird Blog.

©Michael Chabon

This is the fourth book of Chabon’s I’ve read, and I’ve liked all of them. The first was the comics-related “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” probably still my favorite, but I also enjoyed “Summerland” and “Gentlemen of the Road” which I reviewed here earlier this year.

Like all but “Summerland” above, this new novel is deeply rooted in genre fiction. The overall framework is the hardboiled detective novel, such as those written by Mickey Spillane, not a genre I’ve ever been much attracted to. Here, Chabon combines it with a sub-genre of science fiction, the alternate history novel, in which the path of historic events have diverged in some key way from our own, creating an alternate version of the present. In TYPU, if I may so abbreviate it, in the aftermath of World War II the state of Israel was not formed in the Middle East. Instead the homeless and persecuted Jews of Europe were given the large island of Sitka on the Alaska coast to live in, and have a degree of autonomy over, though as the novel begins, the District is soon to be dissolved, leaving the residents once more without a home.

The book takes some work from the reader, but if you persevere, you’ll find it rewarding. First of all, Chabon postulates that the language spoken is Yiddish, and many Yiddish words and phrases pepper the text. There’s a glossary in the back for many of them, but not all. I knew some from my ten years working in New York City, but others were unfamiliar, or newly made for this story. Second, the social and political background has to be explained, especially the hierarchy of various Jewish families and sects who control the District and its commerce much like Chicago gangsters in the Prohibition era, or perhaps like factions in Gaza. Third, Chabon has to introduce his characters, the detective Meyer Landsman and his partner, their boss (Landsman’s ex-wife), their families and complex relationships. Fourth, he introduces the main crime, a murder, and gradually reveals how important it is to the entire plot and all the characters in it. Another element that runs throughout is the uneasy relationship between the Jews, the local Tlingit indians, and the rest of the United States.

Lots of things to cover, and the first half of the book is a slow, gradual build with not much action. By the time Meyer gets on a plane and flies to an inland location where the murdered man may have been visiting just before his death, things are really cooking, and lots of action ensues. The rewards overtook the effort of reading, and I became completely absorbed in the story, which continued to surprise and entertain me right until the very last sentence.

If you like either of the genres described above, or are already a Chabon fan, do give this one a try. Even if you’re not, it will reward you if you put a little effort into the first half.

Oh, and the cover art for this paperback edition is an interesting blend of 1940s detective pulp typography with the art of Tlingit indians in a creative three-color design by Will Staehle. I can’t say I love it, but it gets high marks for creativity.

All print orders received by 10 AM this morning have gone out. A more typical variety of blog posts resumes here tomorrow. Going to the beach this afternoon.

©Neil Gaiman, all rights reserved.

The print run of 1000 copies of “Before You Read This,” my new print written by Neil Gaiman, were sent to him in two halves for his signature. While he was signing the first half, using, as he reported to me, “tanzanite” ink, which has a purple/blue color, I was still painting the moon and candle flames on the second half. While he was signing the second half, I was prepacking the first half into mailing tubes, 300 single copies, and 100 doubles. When Neil was sending back the second half, he emailed me that they were “signed–with tanzanite and a respectable pen until I got bored, when I changed to Pelikan brown ink and a 1922 Watermans flexnib pen.”

This was fine with me, I was just happy to have them signed. When I got the second half back I went through them and found about 300 were signed in brown. I decided not to announce this, though (except to my mailing list), for two reasons. One, if I did, some people would want to choose their color, and in the rush of orders I was expecting the first day, that would have been nearly impossible. Two, I had all those purple ones prepacked and needed to send them out first to anyone who just wanted one or two of these prints and nothing else.

For those on the mailing list, I told them if they were ordering other things WITH Neil’s print they could choose their color, and a small number did. Otherwise they got purple if they ordered one Neil print and other stuff, one of each color if they ordered two Neil prints and other stuff. I did the same with all the orders like that I received, so some of you may be getting a brown print, and now will know why.

As of tomorrow morning I am allowing each person to order up to FIVE of Neil’s prints. If you already have ordered one or two, you can reorder up to that number, and specify your signature colors. I will fill those requests as long as supplies last. I have roughly the same amount of each color at the moment.

Sandman ©DC Comics, Inc.

I’ve also printed a new batch of the “Library of Dream” print on the same pale gray paper as Neil’s print. If you order at this point you will get a gray one, at least until I print more.

Processed 48 more orders this evening. If I received yours by 7:20 AM Monday, my time, it will go out tomorrow. I should be caught up with orders by Saturday morning, and after that be able to turn them around within two days.

Sorry this blog is all about the print shipping this week. After lettering all day (Simon Dark #11) and three hours of order processing after dinner, no…energy…left…

Processed 50 more orders this evening, 89 to go at the moment. If I received your order by 6 PM Saturday (my time) it will go out tomorrow. And tomorrow evening I will have news about reorders and some useful information about Neil’s signature.