Greetings loyal airmen.  Most of you who stop by here on a regular basis are familiar with the comic book above.  It is Days of the Dragon which I did with my good friend, artist Gary Kato, and we had published several years ago.  You can still buy copies of this kid friendly book on our AirFare page.  But as of today, you can also download it digitally for free thanks our publisher, James Taylor, and an outfit called Wowio.   Wowie works like this.  They sell advertising space on their huge website, then they post comics there, hundreds and hundreds of them.  These they make available free to anyone who registers with them (at no costs) and all you have to do is simply download the files to your own PC.  Wowie makes their money from the advertisers and actually pays the book's creators every time their title is downloaded.  It's pretty much a win-win situation for everyone.

But there are some limits.  Certain mail provider accounts like those from Yahoo can't register, nor can people living in other countries.  Hopefully as time goes by, Wowio will address these factors and change them.  Meanwhile if any of you loyal airmen would like to download Days of the Dragon and help me and Gary make a few coins, its really simply.  Go to my AirFare page, click on to the Wowio post of this cover  and it will bring you to its site at Wowie.  There you click on HOME, and proceed to register as a member.  You'll have to take a small survey, but again, there's no charge for any of this.  Once done you simply wait 24 hours to be notified your account has been accepted.  Then you can log on and download up to 3 comics every single day for FREE!! Which of course I hope you'll do.  Taylor informs us the book has been available for downloading for over a week now and 20 fans have already done so making us $10!   I think somebody's finally figured out how to make the internet a commercial success.

The latest Captain Hazzard pulp novel, CAVEMEN OF NEW YORK is really flying through pre-production these days and all of us at Airship 27 Prod. and Cornerstone Book Publishers are getting excited.  My partner in crime, artist Rob Davis, has most of the books interiors all laid out and ready go and a few days ago, cover painter supreme, Mark Maddox, sent along the about crude sketch of what will ultimately become our cover.  When I first got the idea for this particular adventure and the name popped into my head, so did this very distinct image.  It was of Hazzard squaring off against a gigantic, hairy caveman on the snow-covered steps of a modern edifice.  I detailed this scenario to Mark and God bless him, he totally nailed what I was after.  Of course this is what we call a rough sketch used primarily to give both the editor and artist a starting base from which to work and progress the actual cover.  There are elements in this sketch that I've already asked Mark to change or alter slightly.  It is a far cry from what will evolve into our final, gorgeous, eye-popping pulp cover.  Still I thought you loyal airmen would get a kick out of seeing how the process works.  As the painting moves through various stages, I'll try to post them here so you can watch it “become” the cover.

That's it for this week, loyal airmen.  Mother Nature saw fit to dump a slushy mess of rain and snow on us last night and in a few hours I'll be once again getting cold and wet while clearing up the driveway.  Here's hoping for a really early Spring.  Ha.  Oh, and I don't want to forget giving the New England Patriots a huge Airship 27 Hoorah for this continued perfect season.  Only the San Diego Chargers remain to be dealt with before they go to the Super Bowl.  Go Tom Brady and the Pats!!  They've made a miserable winter lots more bearable.

Air Chief Ron, Over & Out.