Greetings Loyal Airmen,  there are about to be some major changes in this weekly Flight Log. Why you ask? Well, as of last week, in fact on his 75th birthday, the Air Chief was for the third time in as many months expelled from posting to Facebook. We won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say we’ve had enough of their childish, mercenary little games and will not longer participate on that platform. Thus we are shifting the main thrust of our internet presence to this weekly Flight Log. How is that going to change things? Well for the most part, it is going to expand the topics we’ll be discussing. The Air Chief has tons of great comics and pulp projects in the works, either solo or as Managing Editor of Airship 27 Production, so rest assured you’ll be learning all about every one of them right here, every Friday morning. Some on a weekly basis. Oh yeah, lots of stuff coming way. So what say we can started with our look back on this year’s Rocky Mountain Con held in Denver last weekend.

First of all we have to give giant thanks to producer Tim Moret who puts on the show every year, along with his lovely wife Nicole and their staff of super friendly helpers. That’s Tim above in the red shirt standing with Colorado based artist, Guy Davis. Guy is a fun dude who is so into Star Trek and also happens the fellow illustrating writer Nancy Hansen’s new fantasy series, The Silver Pentacle for Airship 27 Production. Guy is currently illustrating the second volume now in production.

Here’s Valerie and the Air Chief at our table. We met so many wonderful people and sold tons of books both pulps and comics. The two of us love this show and the chance to get together with so many friends.

First of which was the Air Chief’s Official Protege writer/editor Todd Jones. He had copies of his latest two Wicked Awesome Tales comic anthology, including the issue with our character Space Smuggler Captain Jain Marlee on the cover by artist Jolyon Yates. Jolyon was scheduled to be a guest at the show but had to cancel out at the last minute.

The irascible, one and only Mike Baron was also on hand. Mike’s the Eisner winning writer who created and wrote two of comicdom’s most memorable characters, Nexus and the Badger. We’ve become good buddies over the years (as we both live in Fort Collins now) and we even did an hour gab-fest panel on writing comics that was lots of fun.

And then we have the comic dynamic duo of husband and wife team, Zane & Olivia DeGaine. Both professional graphic artist creators who operate Pulp Fission. Two of our dearest friends.

Here’s another pal, artist Jeff Slemons, who does hot-rods and dinosaurs better than any other artist we know. Jeff and the Air Chief recently did a six page comic strip for CARtoons magazine featuring an Alabama redneck named Buck Hokum. While at the show we kicked around an idea for a second story featuring the ex-racing car turned bus driver. Stay tuned for more news as that develops further.

And then we have the lovely, energetic super talented Ms Gabriella Saenz. We first met Gaby when she took our course on how to write comics. She was still in grade school. Now she’s a high school senior whose art had evolved into something truly beautiful. In fact she recently did the interior illustrations for writer Peggy Chamber’s book, Flitiron Death Grip and is now in talks with Peggy about adapting it as a graphic novel. That is something we hope happens.

Of course one of the real joys of attending cons is to meet new talented folks like artist creator Dylan Bloomfield who came over to our table with his wife and showed us his brand new children’s book. Dylan’s a really great guy eager to get into publishing and do lots more. We exchanged contact information and the Air Chief is going to do what he can to get Dylan’s career moving forward.

And all this was a small sampling of the good time Valerie and the Air Chief had at this year’s Rocky Mountain Con. Thank you Tim Moret & Company.

THE BLACK BAT GRAPHIC NOVEL

THE MORTON SCHOOL OF THE BLIND – As many of your Loyal Airmen are aware, earlier in the year we wrote a graphic novel telling the origin of the classic pulp character, the Black Bat which is now being illustrated by Mike Belcher, with his son Aiden doing the lettering and coloring. When completed, Mike will self-publish it via Ka-Blam. We had a great time writing the tale and Mike is doing such an amazing job with the art. Early on Mike had the idea of our previewing sketches by him once a week to hype up the project with all our fans and we created what we called Black Bat Saturday. For the past 22 weeks every Sat Mike would post a sketch of character from the script, or a locale, and we’d do a short write up to accompany. Well, no long on Facebook, Black Bat Saturday has now come to an end to be replaced by this new segment which will appear here in every Flight Log from now until the project is completed and we can announce the release of the book. Our first entry is the Morton School of Blind where former District Attorney Anthony Quinn goes after he is blinded by a criminal who threw acid in his face.

JIN & TONIK

A second comics project we are deeply involved with currently is a huge graphic novel saga called JIN & TONIK. First envisioned by artist Cesar Felciano and further developed by the Air Chief. This is a modern day thriller about two deadly assassins both born at the same minute on the same day; Chinese martial artist Sammy Jin and scientifically enhanced Russian agent Darya Tonikova. As beautifully rendered in Cesar’s sketch above. He’s currently drawing the first opening chapters and the pages are stunning. No definitive plan as to how we’ll get this publish, but it is still early and we have lots of options. For now we plan on keeping all you Loyal Airmen up to date with lots of great artwork.

And lastly in regards to pulps, Airship 27 Productions just released its first every hardcopy book. BROTHER BONES – Grave Tales collects the first two Brother Bones anthologies, “The Undead Avenger” and “Tapestry of Blood.” All 12 stories in this one volume, containing all of artist Rob Davis’ interior illustrations and the above gorgeous cover by the amazing Adam Shaw. The book retails at Amazon for $24.95 with over 300 pgs of bizarre pulp action. We hope you’ll check it out.

That’s it Loyal Airmen, as ever thanks for stopping by and hope you’ll make it a regular weekly visit.

Ron – Over & Out!