2019 was a very busy year!

So, it occurs to me that not only have I not posted here in a bit, but that I've actually been quite busy over the past several months, and the probability exist that I have been remiss about informing all'y'all about what I've been up to during the past year or so.

So, to rectify, I’ve decided to take a few moments and bring all'y'all up to speed on what I’ve been doing.
I suppose that at the top of the list, I’ve been posting movie and comic reviews over at HubPages. You should head over there and sign up to subscribe and receive regular updates as to what I find cool enough to write about.

Some of the film reviews (those dealing with monsters and creatures of the night), tend to wind up over on the We Love Monsters Facebook page as well as in their print editions(s).

As far as comicbook writing goes, I want to start back in 2018 (actually) with the inclusion of my short story Birds of Prey in the Wunderfunders anthology Memorial, The Great War Centennial Anthology The book was published for the 100^th anniversary of the first World War (The war to end all wars).

My short story told the tale of an American who witnessed both the initial flights of Gustave Whitehead and the Wright Brothers, then went off to England to help in the war effort over there prior to the U.S. entering the war. His story (briefly) documents the use of airplanes in the war effort.

My story was penciled by Greg Kimmet, inked by Dustin Pageloff, colored by Melissa Compton, and lettered by Jason Sylvestree, with the splash page colored by Christopher Geary.

Memorial is a sequential art anthology to commemorate those who fought and fell in the course of the first world war, and to benefit the children of the world caught up in the wars still being fought. All proceeds from the book will be donated to Warchild UK.

Next up (in 20190), I was invited by Ramon Gil to participate in a Kickstarter anthology project of his, by writing a short science fiction story (which Ramon then illustrated) for this wonderful SciFies Anthology. My story had kind of a fun twist to it, one which I believe came out very well.

I had previously worked with Ramon on a one-page story for a Phrases to Pages story for Pronto Comics, as well as having contributed the introduction to his first SciFies collection.

Working with Ramon, is always a pleasure (He has also invited me to attend his FIT Diversity Con in NYC on two occasions.)

This was followed by a short Halloween story that I penned for InDELLible Comics’ Tales from the Tomb anthology (The Witch and the Wolf, illustrated by the ever amazing Carl Morgans). InDELLible is comprised of a consortium of writers and artist who have taken it upon themselves to revive the (now Public Domain) characters of the defunct publisher, Dell Comics.

InDELLible also publishes the Popular Comics anthology (which is now up to issue #3). Issue #4 (due out in 2020) will (hopefully) have short story by me included that stars The Golden Age Owl Girl. Other InDELLible comics include Cartoon Cuties by Rock Baker, The House of Spades (which will contain the third chapter of my Wülf Girlz series), and CrackerJack Funnies which carries a Chanukah story of mine (Home for the Holidays), illustrated by the wicked-talented Carl Morgans.

InDELLible also published (in 2019) an InDELLiprose edition that contained prose stories of these same Dell heroes. That initial edition contained a short story of min featuring the Golden Age Owl Girl entitled Byline. A follow-up prose story with both Owl Girl and The Owl (entitled Hate by any Other Name) will appear in the second edition, due out in 2020.

(As soon as these other stories are available, I’ll be posting links as to where folks can acquire them.) In the mean time, just to keep you interested and to whet your appetite, I'll tease you with just a taste of the amazing artwork by Carl.

While these are the most recent, works that I have penned, there is also a short prose story of mine in the Metahumans vs. the Ultimate Evil entitled Northern Lite from 2016. I do have a couple of other short stories that have been written and are slated for publication; more on those as they come to fruition.

In addition to these stories of mine, I have contributed to some other publications, including two articles in Munster Memories, then there is an old interview of mine that I conducted with Mike Grell that was added to the TwoMorrows book by Dewey Cassell — Mike Grell: Life is Drawing without an Eraser, and of course the two Stan Lee books about drawing superheroes, Stan Lee's How to Draw Superheroes and Stan Lee's Master Class in which I wrote four chapters each (allowing me to say, with no ego, and in my best Chevy Chase voice, “I'm Stan Lee and you're not.”)

Then, not only am I a fairly prolific writer, but I’m something of a one-man production company as well in that I have preform pre-press production and editorial tasks for several clients, including Main Enterprises, Stone Island Comics, Red Anvil/JGM, Glass House Graphics, Macrospasm Studios, Hippy Comix, Big Apple Convention, and others. Some of the many books and magazines on which I have worked appear in the image below.

More to follow as the year progresses...

Who says Comics are dying?

 Not us, for sure. We recently spoke to David Campiti founder of Glass House Graphics, and  former publisher of Innovation Publishing (that gave us comics ranging from adaptions of Anne Rice’s novels Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned. Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality, On a Pale Horse; the TV series Dark Shadows, Quantum Leap, Beauty and the Beast and Lost in Space; as well as the movie series Child’s Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street and others. Some of Innovation’s original series included Angel Heat; Dangerous Secrets; Dream Angel; The Experimentals;  Al Rio’s Exposure; Galaxy Girl; Greylore;  Kevin Juaire’s Hero Alliance; Legends of the Stargrazers; and Mike Barr’s The Maze Agency). In it’s day, Innovation was the #4 comics publisher in market share, after Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse. With Glass House Graphics he represented numerous artists that worked for many of those same companies.

Well, he was telling us about a very cool company called Red Giant that is looking to, well essentially re-invent, revive, and completely resuscitate the comicbook industry. Now while this may sound like a very noble cause, we too were wondering how Dave and Red Giant plan on doing this, and well, what he told us came as something of a surprise. Red Giant is looking to develop its properties for not only the comicbook market but for other media as well; such as movies, video games, television, novels, toys, apparel and telephone wireless applications. Currently the company has a number of such properties that it is publishing on the web as web comics, but plans to reverse-engineer itself and go to print, producing a million copies of comics on a weekly bases that can be distributed free of charge in comicbook shops but elsewhere across the country.

Yes, you read that right, a million copies, weekly, free of charge.

Recently, the company was written up in not only  The Orlando Business Journal (several times), but the  The New York Times as well. Personally, while we are admittedly a tad skeptical of their plans, we totally love that they are seriously attempting to “put their money where their corporate mouth is” and give their plan the old college try.

As we have come to learn, they did an IPO last year, as a penny stock, and turned a very nice profit. Now they are working out the next steps to realizing their very noble (as far as we are concerned) business plan.

Needless to say, we wish them the very best of luck in their endeavor, because we know as well as anyone that — while comicbook characters are doing box-office business at both the movies and in the videogames industry, comicbooks themselves are experiencing something of a downturn in numbers of comics printed every month. Hopefully, Red Giant’s plan will play out and  we will get to experience yet another golden age of comics.