I recently set up a new page at Blogspot. MySpace seems a bit too unweildy to me and there may be too many distractions and bells and whistles. So, I'll be shifting my focus to the Blogspot page and updating things there much more than here. Go check it out and peek at the promotional trailer for "When Drive-Ins Attack!"

http://tinstarstudios.blogspot.com/

Anyone heading to HeroesCon in Charlotte this weekend, swing by and see me at booth 534 in the Indy Island section. I'll be hanging out with Al Dorantes of Luchador Productions and Mike Wood with his book "Hate Your Friends".

HeroesCon is a great regional show and always attracts tons of great pro artists/writers. It's very comics centric and focused. A good show for the whole family as well.

Swing by and say hi!

Archie Manning must be the proudest father in America today. He raised two sone who grew up to play in the NFL. Both sons play at the gloryhound position of quarterback. The position that takes a lot of blame when things go wrong but also get the glory when things go well. They're also the ones you're most likely to be able to recognize with their helmets off.

They play quarterback and start at that position as well. On top of that, one of them leads his team to the SuperBowl last year and emerges victorious. That's incredible. Then, this year, the younger son leads his team through a series of teams expected to easily defeat them and makes it al the way to the big game. Not content to appear, the younger son rallies his team to defeat a powerhouse team that hadn't lost all season.

Archie Manning, father of two SuperBowl winning quarterbacks. Short of curing cancer, that's about all an American father could ask for from his sons.

My buddies over at Imperium Comics recently saw the movie based on their "Trailer Park of Terror" property premiere as a feature film at the Slamdance festival.

Fangoria had someone there to check it out and write up a review. Check out the whole thing in the link below, but long story short is...3 1/2 skulls for the flick. Congrats to JD and Chris at Imperium!

Read the review at Fangoria!

My secret fall/winter project "When Drive-Ins Attack" is moving along and I recently did the first interview regarding the project. Hop over to ComicMonsters.com to check it out...

ComicMonsters.com interview

I recently licensed my comics to online publisher Wowio. Wowio offers comics (and traditional novels/books) for free as downloadable Adobe PDF files. It's free because each PDF file has an ad attached. If you register as a user, you can download up to 3 books a day. The benefit to me is that each one of my books that you download gets me a royalty payment.

If you go to the site below, register as a user and then look in the "comics/graphic novels" category. Then you can search by book title and find "Furious Fist of the Drunken Monkey". Each page displays five issues so don't forget to go to the next page to check out all of my issues available.

In addition to my comics, there are a few hundred others available. I recommend checking out titles by Dwight MacPherson and the comedy title "Gravy Boy".

..> ..>

	Click here to check out the books at Wowio

For several months the Blog here received few hits. Things really slowed down afetr I had finished posting up the older Drunken Monkey material to view and the "origin of the Species" mini was complete and in stores. Basically, I didn't have much to promote so I posted less.

Recently however, and I mean the past 4 weeks or so, I've been getting all kinds of hits here. No ones leaving any comments or kudos or anything but views have really shot up. So what is it? Who's out there and how did you end up here?

Speak up!

I recently sent off a short story submission to Heavy Metal Magazine. This is oddly one of the first comic submissions that I've made in nearly 10 years. Back in the 90s, at a time when you couldn't just drop an email to a publisher or editor and you couldn't find every wannabe comic publisher on the web, I sent out a handful of submission packets. At the time, I was looking for a publisher for a comic project when I probably should have just been seeking work as a penciler.

I remember getting a nice handwritten letter from someone at No Mercy Comics complimenting my work and saying that Rikki (No Mercy owner-publisher) Rocket really liked the art as well. At that time though, No Mercy had decided to close up shop.

Since then, I haven't really sent out packets or done much to seek work. I've run across various projects and gotten my foot in the door almost by accident at times. For anyone who might read this and be wondering how they get comics work. A very simple answer that many seem to overlook is...you ask. I was included in the Image Comics volume "The Unusual Suspects" because I made a comment to writer Dan Wickline that people don't ask me to help with charity projects. When Dan had an artist drop out on him, he emailed me and said "Remember when you said..." He needed two pages drawn/inked/colored in two days.

So, a couple of days ago I mailed off a submission to Heavy Metal. It's a short story I wrote a few years ago and had hoped for my West Coast bud Jeremy Bear to illustrate. Jeremy never worked it into his hectic schedule (what with the stray kitten rescue mission and all taking up his spare time). I recently ran across an artist named Tim Rocks and he took a shot at it. Tim's vision for it didn't match exactly what I had seen in my own head when writing it, but just because its different doesn;t make it bad. The more I've looked at it, the more I like it and I keep seeing little details and elements in Tim's art that make me even more pleased with it.

According to Heavy Metal's web site, I can expect to wait a couple of months before hearing anything back, but I'll let everyone know as soon as I do, if the long running and respected mag has decided to publish it. 

Last post I forgot to mention that the Plane Babes site is up and running. Plane Babes is a specialty store catering to products related to aircraft. I've been providing artwork to be used on t-shirts and other items. The images are meant as a throwback to the type of cheesecake nose art they used to put on bombers and fighter planes. Some of the designs are related to old military craft and a couple are related to current consumer private planes.

Check it all out at  www.planebabes.com . Buy a shirt or two and put a little change in my pocket. Check out the gallery of cool pics while you're there.

Long time no blog. That's what happens when you stay busy.

The past few months I've been very busy working on a story that I wrote which will be part of a larger anthology book that I am also serving as the editor/organizer for. My profile picture is a sample of my own story "The Pack" for the book. The book will feature stories inspired by and featuring ideas that the creators' feel would make a good B movie or drive-in feature. I'm just one of 10+ writers for the volume and there are a number of artists involved as well. When I'm much closer to having it all wrapped up, I'll start announcing who the contributors are.

I'm also putting the final touches on a deal to provide my Drunken Monkey material to end users of cell phones etc. The books will be available as a free download along with many other comics and traditional novels. as soon as the deal is finalized I'll make an announcement here, along with the deatails as to how you can check it out.

Lastly, I've got my home up for sale, so much of my spare time lately is tied up with cleaning and sprucing the place up instead of working on my comics stuff. There's only so much time in a day and something has to give.

Stay tuned for news as it breaks!

This weekend, I'll be in Salisbury, NC at the Monstore Comics and Toys convention. They've got a wide variety of guests lined up including well known artist Ethan Van Sciver and even Chewbacca himself, Peter Mayhew. The link below will take you to the official site with more details. The skinny of it is... the show is 11Am to 6PM on October 6th and it will be held at the Salibury Convention Center.

Swing by and say hello. I'll be offering the mega-monkey deal where you can get 7 Drunken Monkey comics for only $15 and that includes the limited edition convention special. I'll also be doing commission sketches and selling other original artwork.

Find Out More About The Monstore Convention!

The Ronin Studios massive anthology "Hope: New Orleans" is supposed to reach store shelves this Thursday 9/6 after much delay.

As a reminder, I contributed a pin-up to this volume. The proceeds go to benefit the Red Cross in the Southern Louisiana area. It clocks at 200+ pages and reatials for $18.95. Check it out.

Silent Devil is running a cool special on Drunken Monkey books at their web store right now. You can pick up all three of the "Origin of the Species" mini series issues and also get a copy of "Monkey vs. Lemur" as well for only 9.99! That's right, 9.99! Not 39.99 or 29.99 or even 19.99! It's more primate fun than you can shake a stick at.

Visit the Silent Devil store for Monkey special!

Peter from Comic Geek Speak (a top notch outfit and long running podcast) stopped by the table at HeroesCon as well. Hit the link below to hear more of my mellow voice.

Comic Geek Speak Heroes interviews