It’s been around a month since I last posted, and for good reason. Lots of stuff on the family front – three kids in the throes of fall sports season, along with evening practices and weekend travel – plus a quick trip to SPX in Washington DC kept me on my toes.
Oh yeah, and I’ve been putting a couple of zines together.
I already mentioned the Heroes Now #4 is finished and ready to print. I can now report that not only is it ready for the first printing through Comics Well Spring, but it’s also entirely ready to release on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. It’s just a matter of synchronizing the launch of the two editions.
All the details on the contents of Heroes Now #4 are in the above-linked post, but here’s the final iteration of the cover…I worked some of the logos and text to get closer in line with Frank Miller’s iconic Dark Knight Returns cover:
Strange Times #4 is all but complete. I’m waiting on one final piece to come in. Everything else is laid out around it. You can see from the cover image above that we have a fantastic lineup of creators, and they each took the challenge of portraying “The Road Back” in a different direction.
My current plan is, once ST4 is complete, I will get both off to the printer and work through the ST4 submission with Amazon concurrently to save time. My goal of seeing the zines in the mail in October isn’t going to be met, but I will always go for quality over speed. For in the end, who remembers whether a good zine was a week or two later than some arbitrary deadline?
Inktober 2023 and Inktober 52 have fallen by the wayside. I never started the daily sketching this year, and I have a LOT of catch-up to do on the weekly edition. But that’s not to say that I stopped drawing.
Something in the Water #3 is fully drawn. I now need to do some post-production in Photoshop and InDesign, including lettering and layouts. It’s close, though, and I’ll be jumping on that once I get ST4 put to bed and place the big ol’ printer order.
The SitW3 cover is finished, though. Want to see it?
So there you have it, the update on all things related to Phoenix Productions. Hang tight, we’re going to have another banner fourth quarter of the year!
P.S. While I’m thinking about it, run on over to Amazon and pick up a copy of John Muller’s tremendous HORRENDOUS! Halloween Special 2023.
John drew a fun little semi-autobiographical short of mine about trick or treating as a kid. But there’s a lot more to the zine, including other short stories, illustrations, games, and puzzles.
Quite the nifty package, just in time for perhaps the most fun of holidays!
Phoenix Productions 