So before anything else, the Air Chief wants to thank all of you who joined in our joy at being cancer free. And to those who shared their own stories of dealing with that awful disease, your victories and your losses, our hearts to go out to all of you. Let’s continue to pray that one day, God will bless doctors and scientist with a true cure for every single cancer. Amen.
BROTHER BONES PEEK PAGE
Last week we explained how the forthcoming Brother Bones crowdfunding comics will each feature a bonus short strip at the back. Well, the first such, written by yours truly, is currently being illustrated by Rob Davis and we thought you’d like a peek at page one. Believe, when the main artist on the graphic novel, Joe Arnold, saw this page, he flipped out. Oh yeah, we’ve got a winner coming your way, Loyal Airmen. Be patient.
JIN & TONIK # 2
And here we have Pg # 23 if JIN & TONIK issue # 2 by the always amazing Cesar Feliciano. We are still working with a small independent comic publisher to make this series available to all via Amazon. Stay tuned.
BEYOND THE STARS # 5
Finally we’ll end this week’s entry with a bit of behind the scenes on writing a comic page. Our super talented partner on the sci-fi series, BEYOND THE STARS, recently wrote that he was getting set to draw the remaining few pages of issue # 5. Andrea works on multiple series at the same time (like many of today’s artists) and was finishing up on another project. In sending us this e-mail, he included the page 18 panel break-downs he put on paper. At first the Air Chief only laughed deciding that alone would be nothing to post here. But upon further thought, we thought you Loyal Airmen might like to see the corresponding page of script and how the Air Chief wrote it. And that’s above to the left. The sequence is part of the space battle between the Science Warriors and several giant stone warriors. You’ll note our exposition is very, very minimal, as Andrea is already familiar with how all these elements look. Nor do we tell which panel is more important visually than the other four. Again, that’s his call, he’s the artist. We never take that hat. Finally, per our habit of many, many years, we never forget that comics are a visual media and the more panel one has on a comic page, the smaller the artwork will be. Not want any comic fan ever wants. We want big panels giving our artists lots of room to show of their amazing pictures. Do keep in mind, this is only Andrea’s first break-down of the panels. Often time, when he begins drawing, he’ll change them if he’s a better way to compose the page. And trust us, Loyal Airmen, when it is all done, those now empty boxes are going to contain some truly beautiful pictures. Oh, yeah.
ANOTHER I.V. FROST MYSTERY
Finally some really fun news. One of the coolest classic pulp heroes ever created was Professor I.V. Frost. His inventor was writer Donald Wandrei, who during his career, wrote 18 I.V. Frost tales that all appeared in Clues Magazine. Over the past decade or so, the Air Chief has had the pleasure writing several new I.V. Frost stories for Moonstone Books, edited by pal Joe Gentile. Above is a drawing of Frost and his beautiful blonde assistant, Jean Moray. In those years we’ve written two Frost short stories and one full color comic book, which was published by Redbud Studio and contained two I.V. Frost adventures illustrated by our Mr. Jigsaw collaborator, Gary Kato. Anyway, this is our round-about way of letting you know, long ago last year, if not earlier, we actually penned a third I.V. Frost story called “Recipe For Murder” and two days ago were notified by Joe that they are getting ready to publish it. Into what book or anthology, we’ve yet to learn, but as soon as we do, we’ll post it here and where you Loyal Airmen can pick up copies. For the Air Chief, we’re wound for sound. These are great, fun characters and it is going to be great to see them in print once again.
And there you have it for this week, crew. As ever thanks for stopping by, hope you’re all enjoying the warm summer weather and we look forward to seeing you back here next Friday. Ron – Over & Out!
NEW BONES SHORTS