Archive for ‘Blog’
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I picked up my first comic book in a while yesterday, and I have to say: I absolutely love Ultimate Spider-Man. I’ve never really been able to get into the really dark comic books, but frankly, Ultimate Spider-Man is my favorite of all time. Absolutely love it.
I picked up the hardcover copy of the first six issues since a recent reboot that they did. It is, quite frankly, amazing. The art is charming and awesome. The writing is superb. Its basically a super-hero comic and a high school drama all wrapped into one perfectly told tale. Holy crap do I love this stuff.
Basically, by the end of the first six issues, you have Spider-Man, Iceman, and Human Torch all living under one roof with Aunt May and Gwen Stacy. Throw in Mary Jane, Kitty Pryde (Shadowcat), and Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman) all going to the same school with them, and its absolutely incredible. I just love it so much. If you aren’t reading this comic, shame on you.
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I’m excited to announce a new podcast, A to Zed, that I’m starting with Alexis Santos, a friend who I met while doing the Infendo Radio podcast. As the name implies, we’ll be covering from A to Z with a geeky twist.
Zac Erickson, the creative mind behind Team Jetpack 104, and Alexis Santos, the mastermind behind VG Tribune, are teaming up to bring you a brand new podcast for your ears! A to Zed will be an informal podcast covering a variety of topics, with special guests, and guaranteed hilarity.
After reading a very poor review of this web comic, it prompted me to write one of my own.
If you don’t know what Axe Cop is, its a comic written by a 6-year-old boy named Malachai, and brought to life by the awesome art skills of his 29-year-old brother, Ethan. Its, as you might imagine, about a cop with an axe, and all of his adventures. With heroes such as Dinosaur Soldier, Fire Slicer, and Uni-Man, its full of delightfully random comic book fun that could only come out of the mind of a child. Imagine those cool scenes you and your friends came up with at recess (I know my friends and I did), except created in beautiful comic book art.
Now, as you can imagine, this is full of tons of violence. Head chopping, explosions, blood everywhere, tons of death. The comic was recently criticized (by someone who I would rather not give any traffic) for exploiting Malachai for his stories and being much too violent, and encouraging the kid to pump out these stories. I call B.S. The charm behind Axe Cop is that you can almost hear Malachai’s excitement as the story is being told. He is so excited and eager to have his older brother tell his cool stories to the world. Do I know if that’s true? Heavens no, but if you understand that this comic was never intended to be anything more than an inside joke for their close family and friends, you can understand that this comic is purely a celebration for the genius and creativity of one cool kid. Its not like a kid of that age could ever comprehend the gravity of everything he’s talking about. Its just innocent fun.
If there is one thing that I would say, its that Axe Cop needs to stick to its roots, and not get too worried about all the publicity, excitement, and hub-ub. Its only been two months since Axe Cop was created at all, and its exploded. If its going to keep going, its going to need to slow down, enjoy the ride, and just have fun with it. Honestly, once a week would be fine if it meant that we could have Axe Cop for a long time. The current schedule of daily episodes is fun, but setting a pace that could be hard to keep up with. It would actually be fun to have an interview with Ethan sometime about this topic. Maybe on some yet-to-be-announced audio type fun fest. 
Alrighty, so here’s the scoop. I wanted to do a little step-by-step on how my process went. All in all, the process probably took four hours or so. I’m putting it after this link so that it doesn’t clutter the front page.
Step 1. Draw it with paper and pencil, then either take a picture of it or scan it into Photoshop. In this particular case, this was the drawing for my Daily Doodle, so I used the picture. As long as you can tell what you drew, the quality of the picture doesn’t necessarily make that much of a difference.
After finishing the final strip for Season 1 of Team Jetpack 104, I threw together a book on Lulu.com for those who may want to purchase it. There is also a link for a free download for those who would like to check that out.
Back in 2004, I worked in a call center doing telephone surveys and would draw a lot. I drew this and stashed it away for a long, long time. This picture is what inspired me to use the team in my web comic. Notice that not alot has changed with the team. The little dude at the bottom is Blink (ability of teleportation), and I’m thinking about introducing him some time soon.