Greetings Loyal Airmen, we hope and pray 2011 is off to a good start for all of you.  It has been for the Air Chief, that's for sure.  And we've some really exciting news about a new comic book title we are working on for Twilight Star Studios.  TSS is a studio begun over a year ago by our good pal, Bill Gladman, of Springfield Ohio.  Thing is Bill loves putting together black and white horror comic anthologies.  So on a whim, about the time he was starting up TSS, the Air Chief wrote a short tale called THE DINER and offered it to Bill.  They eagerly accepted and asked me for more.  Alright, we know a good thing when we see it.

         
So we sat down and wrote GRASS ROOTS, a Twilight Zone tale and Bill assigned artist Chris Metzen to handle the art chores.  That's page one above.  Now this is scheduled for a future TSS horror title.  After having done two of these, and watched them come to life by such talented artists, we found ourselves getting in a groove with these small comic stories.
 
         
While at the fun Champion City Comic Con last year, we met artist, Kevin Adkins, who was only too eager to show us his portfolio.  Kevin has a unique style of drawing that incorporates a fluid design motif. The Air Chief was so taken with it, he offered Kevin a five pg. script to work on. The end result was DRAGNET, a page of which you see above.  Again, this was offered up to Bill and TSS.  Obviously clear to see the Air Chief was on a role here.

      
Then over the Christmas holidays, artist Jason Copland put up a truly intriguing challenge over on Facebook. Jason drew eleven pages of something, i.e. characters moving and doing whatever, that had no story.  He was challenging writers to download the eleven pages and write a story that incorporated each of them in a linear, narrative fashion. In other words, make up a story that fit those independent pages. Much to Jason's joy, ten of us actually took him up on his challenge.  In the end, he was thrilled with our script, which we called UNCLE NICOLAUS, and has allowed us to publish it with Bill in a future TSS title.

Okay, so now Bill comes to the Air Chief with this revelation.  It seems we've given him twenty pages of story and art all total.  If we could give him one more four page comic story, he would, after they've all appeared in other titles, put them all together in a single comic book ….named after the Air Chief.   Yup.  Bill was offering the Air Chief his own comic title. This sounded just so freakin' cool, we scrambled back to Facebook and contacted another wonderful talented fellow we had just met there.

       
The result of which was CATCHING THE BUS, a short tip of the hat to the old EC Comics by the Air Chief and the remarkably gifted Mark Saxton.  And there you have it, Loyal Airmen.  We'd actually filled up the first issue of, are you ready?   RON FORTIER'S TALES OF THE MACABRE!!!   Believe me, we are just wound for sound, Loyal Airmen.  Over thirty years in this business and now we are going to have our own comic title.  How cool is that?  My hats off to all these great artists for bringing my stories to graphic life and of course to Bill Gladman for wanting to do this. Oh, and stay tuned as it all comes together.  Artist Mark Maddox is designing our logo, while my good buddy, Rob Davis has signed on to draw the cover to issue number one (and yes, it will feature the Air Chief..hahahah) and Mark here is going to color it when done.   With this team, you have to know it's going to be awesome.

There you go, Loyal Airmen. For the first week of the New Year, 2011 is off to a rocking start. See you back here in seven, so hang in there.
Ron – Over & Out