Jason

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Well, it’s done now. That book is done and all the set-up, prep, marketing, and sales are all done. I had a week off of work immediately following, and I really needed it.

So now it is back to work at my day job, and back to work on our comics. But now, with so much of that stress lifted, it feels like we are just cruising.

There is this ad that I always hear on the right-wing AM radio that I listen to in the morning. It is an ad for shipping by rail. Not a specific company, but just rail in general. I guess they had extra money in their budgets and decided to convince the average radio listener that rail is a really great way to move goods.

There is a part where they run through some fuel efficiency statistics which are very grim. And then they claim, in reaction to this bad news, that their trains can move so-many tons of freight 300 miles on a single gallon of gas. Or some other equally absurd claim. I am certain about the “one gallon” part. One gallon?

Is that possible? No! Well, ok, maybe it is, but it requires a lot of special conditions. If you took your freight train, loaded it with tons of….let’s say……crates full of Rapid City: B-Sides #1, and drained all but one single gallon of gas, would it go 300 miles? Heck no. Obviously not. I doubt it would even leave the station.

But if you took that same huge load…what the heck, pile some more on…..and got the engine going. Started in low gear and and started those big wheels going. Really slow at first….. Yeah, you could get up to a pretty good speed. That’s how trains work. And then, once you were really barreling along, with all that mass rolling along, then maybe you could check your fuel guage and watch a single gallon slowly drain away as you covered 300 miles of vanishing American country side.

When you have a heavy load, keeping it going is simple. It is getting up to speed that is so damn hard. Just ask Sir Isaac Newton.

Anyway, getting our books, and our booth, and our selves to New York was the hard part. Getting up to speed. But now that we are rolling….we are rolling. Not that this part is easy. No way. But now that it is moving, all we have to do is keep it moving. In fact, now that all of this mass has all of this momentum, the hard part would be stopping it.

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We are fascinated because they don’t just do the right thing, but they take obvious, and drastic, measures to say “now I am doing what is right”. Those costumes aren’t just disguises, they are statements of purpose and belief.

And we love them for it.

Meanwhile, in the real world, some piece of garbage decides he needs a little more money for whatever pieces of garbage need money for. He walks into a comic book store in Grand Rapids, MI, pulls a gun, robs the place, and then cements himself as a piece of garbage by shooting the guy at the register when the haul wasn’t big enough to satisfy him.

Comic book stores scrape by. They stay in business to give us the goods. And this guy got shot for it.

He’s alive, but in the hospital. Folks in the local comic shop community are pitching in to keep his shop open, but hospital bills are piling up.

He’s one of ours, comics fans. This is your chance. Step up and make a statement about what you believe is right.

There is a page set up accepting donations here iFanboy

Thanks for your help.

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On into 2008.
The end of the first decade of The Future.
So, what does The Future hold for us?
Look for first issues of Rapid City to debut at the New York Comic Con in April.

Details about this keep trickling in. I am so excited about this book and this event. I want it to be tomorrow. But, you can’t rush the future.

Josh

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In it he talks about his early career and says “My first published work was way back in the letters pages of Savage Dragon #17; soon after, I did my first book for a small publisher in Detroit.”

Well, guess who wrote that book? Well, some other guy started it, but when he was unable to continue, guess who was asked to come in and pick up the pieces and finish the script?

Yeah. It was me! That comic was called “Wraith”, and even then Jason Howard was blowing me away with style and technique that I could barely even conceive of. He was impressive then, and he deserves every bit of praise that he has been getting lately.

We could not be more proud. Good job, Jason.

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Everyone knew it would be a great time, and it was. The only surprise was how all of us really managed to focus on the festivities at hand and not talk too much about business or comics.

That was nice. But it is all over now. Jason will be back from his honeymoon very soon, and then we will be back on some kind of schedule.

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Getting this album was weird for me, because I am such a big Rancid fan. I have a Rancid tattoo, the story of the Rapid City comic book is structured around the development arc that I imagine taking place from album to album.

It is great, but it is absolutely not what I expected.

If their earlier albums were about defining, focusing, and re-inventing a musical identity, then my comics are about defining, focusing, and re-inventing one’s relationship to one’s own superpowers (this metaphor is just a loose guide for me).

So, if I were to be strict about applying the metaphor, this album could predict the future of some of our characters.
Where does it show them going?
Can I abandon my guiding metaphor at this point?

I don’t have to. This album just drips, snarls, and snorts confidence. To step up and put out an album which is not just unlike anything his band has done in the past (ok, there are hints of it here and there), but unlike any new music released in the US since the 60s, is an amazing display of confidence.

Where does that put the characters and story of Rapid City? The answer is that it doesn’t matter. Because, by the time you get to that point. By the time that all of us have made it through that journey together, the future will be a bold new path to wherever-the-hell-they-want-to-go captained by those with the skill and confidence to pull it off.

Josh Dahl

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Unfortunately, we couldn’t attend with the full MONOLITH representation. It was still a great time. Working a convention as a writer/publisher is completely different from going as a regular attendee. It was exhausting and overwhelming, and I mean that in a good way.

Those of you who were there already know what happened, and those who weren’t have probably read about all the stuff you care about from plenty of reliable news sources. So, I’ll skip the report.

I met lots of really cool people and saw a lot of really cool comic books. There are so many great looking books out there. There just can’t be time or money to read them all.  I was about to phrase that as a complaint, but what kind of person would I be if I complained about too many good comic books.

If you are one of the many cool folks I talked to at the con, I hope you are enjoying our web site. If I didn’t meet you at the con, then I hope that I will see you there next year. I am certainly going back. 

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It is in New York City and I will be heading down to attend.  I am really excited about it. If you are going to be there, let me know. Especially if you are going going to be representing with a table or a booth, I will make sure to drop by and say ‘hello’.

See you there.

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I recently cashed some of mine in. Part of the fun of that kind of shopping is indulging whims and taking chances on recomendations.

I asked my roommate what he thought I should get and he suggested a book of J.D. Salinger’s short stories.

Great! I took his advice and I got the book. It was good, what I read of it. But, I just couldn’t stay into it. I felt like I was waiting for something.

Then I figured it out. I was being entertained, and engaged…all the good things that good stories do. But, I wasn’t really learning anything.

I’ve spent the last few months devouring script writing, superhero theory, film directing, and any other thing I could read that could help me become a better writer.

And now I have gotten used to it. Now I need it. Thankfully, I still had some giftcards, so I have been able to feed my addiction.

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One of the coolest things that is happening as Jason Micah and I get closer and closer to completing is that all of these strange people and places I have made up are not only becoming concrete, they are becoming logistical concerns.

It has gone from “What if there were werewolves who functioned not just like a pack, but also like a gang?” to…

“Ok, So when can Hector reactivate the werewolves, and how long would it take him to establish himself as the ‘Alpha Male’?” to….

“Alright, we are doing a worms-eye-view shot in Chinatown, can we fit all the wolves in to it and make it clear that they are running?”

Hard to describe why it is so cool. It just is.

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