Greetings airmen, here we are wrapping up as yet another gorgeous, summer week. Lots of things to discuss this time up, so let’s get started.

I want to thank all the wonderful fans who showed up at last week’s Chelmsford,MA one-day con to say hi, talk comics and get their books signed. One fellow brought along a copy of the GREEN HORNET hardback edition for me to sign and that was a treat. (David, it was terrific meeting you and thanks for the e-mail later in the week. Hope to see you again soon.) One fellow, who had earlier purchased a copy of my pulp book, BROTHER GRIM, made a point of telling me how much he enjoyed it and then proceeded to pick up a copy of my second book, THE HOUNDS OF HELL. With that kind of loyalty and support,is it any wonder why I love doing what I do? Fans, not just mine alone, are the finest people in the world and going to cons affords me the opportunity to meet them and to thank them.

Which is as good as any way to segue into my busy convention schedule coming up. The last weekend of Sept. I’ll be at the three day Wizard World Boston. Looks to be a blow-out show and I hope all you New England readers will make it down. I’ll mostly be hanging out between the Digital Webbing tables and those of my favorite comic shop, the Paperback Bazaar. I’ll have plenty of copies of both BROTHER GRIM and THE HOUNDS OF HELL on hand, so if you still haven’t latched onto a copy of either, or both, now is your chance. The Saturday after the Boston show, I’ll be in Manchester,NH doing a store signing at the Double Midnight Comic shop. So if you live or around the Queen City, hope to see you there. On the 13th November, it’s back to the Redhook Brewery Convention Center at the nearby Pease Tradeport in Portsmouth and finally, I’ll be on hand at the two-day, Halloween comic show in Nashua,NH along with tons of other cool guests. There will also be an advanced screening of Derry,NH filmmaker Rob Fitz’s fantastic GOD OF VAMPIRES movie. Believe me, if you like horror, you won’t want to miss this.

One of the joys of last week’s Chelmsford show was being able to get my hands on Digital Webbing Presents #24, the amazing, full color anthology edited and published by Ed Dukeshire.
This is the issue with my MASK OF THE GARGOYLE story and it looks fantastic. The comic should be in all your various comic shops this coming week, so please, hunt one up.

After getting home from the con, I dove into the new week and was almost instantly flooded with all sorts of positive highlights to many of my varied projects. Craig Shephard, the new artist on my CAPTAIN HAZZARD comic series, turned in some great sketches and I’m really excited about how this is coming out. I’ve assembled the entire team now, with an inker, letterer and colorist all on board. Things are on the fast track. Speaking of HAZZARD, I finsished Chatpers 7-8-9 of the new pulp thriller featuring this classic hero and have sent the manuscript to writer-partner, Martin Powell, to continue. We each do several chapters each before bouncing the script back to each other. Happily our styles are complimentary and the book is going to get done fast. Meanwhile, artist Rob Davis turned in another spot illo for the serialization of the first ever Hazzard book, PYTHON MEN OF LOST CITY, which Brian Meredith hopes to have up and running on his website, Modern Pulp.com, in a few more weeks.

Javier Lugo turned in more pencil breakdowns for our vampire comic and John Polacek finished the first page of the new Brother Grim comic.
All in all, a great week production-wise.

But by far the biggest event of the week was my writing a curriculum for a new 8 week course in how to write and draw comics. I put this together at the behest of Ralp DiBernardo, of the Paperback Bazaar, where the classes will be held, starting in early October. I will be teaching along side JOHNNY RAYGUN artist, Rich Woodall. The class will be an informal study of sequential graphics and our goal is to give our students a complete understanding of what it takes to be a working professional in this field today. Obviously, all of us involved are very excited to see how it all evolves. To the best of my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been tried before on a local, community level. I’ll keep you posted as it gears up.

So there you go, lots of great cons, busy at work on dozens of projects…and getting ready to venture into the world of teaching.
Man oh man, and they call this retirement!
Take care, Ron, over and out!