The Emporium of Wonderment – Now Open!

The Delilah Dirk Emporium of Wonderment is now open! Come in and browse our fine stock – for the first week only, to celebrate the arrival of The Seeds of Good Fortune, said book will be only five dollars (regularly six)!

The first edition of Seeds is a print run of 1000 and the book completely sold out at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival – don’t wait! Comic books are in aisle 1.

Grab your copy now!

TCAF 2012

I’ve never been before, but I’ve heard it’s the best comics convention in the world. Whether that’s true or not, I’ll be doing my part to make it awesome! The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is this weekend – May 5th and 6th (not 6th & 7th as I’ve dumbly included in the image above*) at the Toronto Public Library! As I may have mentioned previously, The Seeds of Good Fortune will be debuting at the festival. I’ll also have beautiful prints and – for those of you who like the behind-the-scenes extras – the rough pages and thumbnails for Seeds, and on Sunday I’ll be taking part in a Draw-Off moderated by Wondermark’s David Malki! More details on everything right here.

If you can make it to the festival, come by and say Hi! If you can’t, but you’re interested in Seeds and the prints, don’t worry, they’ll be available for online ordering soon enough. I look forward to meeting you guys!

*Thanks, @Kid_Nemo!

Seeds of Good Fortune – Six-page Preview!

As you may be aware by now, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival is just around the corner, and that means it’s almost time for The Seeds of Good Fortune (among other things, I assume). The book is off at the printers being a-printed right this very moment. Just between you and me, how would you rate your excitement level? On a scale of 1-to-10. Yeah? Not 11? Well then, it’s time to stoke the excitement-fires. Check out this preview! To be honest, I’m surprised you’re even reading this. You saw the headline, you saw your cursor turn to a pointy-hand as you rolled it over the image. Why are you still here?

But I Won’t Be at TCAF!

(…and when I say “I”, I mean “you”. I will be at TCAF.)

Don’t worry! The Seeds of Good Fortune will be available for purchase online starting on May 7th. It’ll be mailed right to your door. Gauge carefully whether or not you should kiss your mailman when he/she hands you the package. Some may not be open to such earnest affection.

Stay tuned for more details and news! If you have any questions, you know how to get ahold of me. The Twitter/Facebook/Email links are all to the left there.

April 4th, 2012

Eisner Awards Nomination!

Three things! First, The Turkish Lieutenant has been nominated for a Will Eisner award, in the category of “Best Digital Comic“!

This is pretty exciting stuff, especially considering the quality of the other nominees. I am also happy that the “Digital” category makes it easy to view everyone’s work – it’s hard to have read all the books in all the other categories, but I am proud to know that whether DD wins or loses against the other nominees, it won’t be for lack of exposure or availability.

That said, get thee to the Eisner Voting Site and cast that vote!*

The Seeds of Good Fortune!

Second, Delilah Dirk and The Seeds of Good Fortune is coming along well and is on-schedule. Assuming no unusual problems with printing (and assuming the printer can deliver in time), you’ll be able to get your hands on it exactly one month from today – May 4th, at TCAF (and elsewhere thereafter).

I’ll be sending out a preview to newsletter subscribers in a few weeks!

Portland Mercury Column!

Ben Coleman at the Portland Mercury has composed a great writeup on The Turkish Lieutenant. I answered a few questions for him on the topics of character design and crafting action sequences. I could perhaps have been more coherent, but they’re complicated topics. Enjoy!

* …if you can – for what it’s worth, I understand Eisner Voting is only open to “Comics Industry Professionals”.

Your Champion!

Guys, I’m proud to announce that design #2 from the multiple-choice challenge has received the most votes and will be the basis for the cover of The Seeds of Good Fortune.

“Hmm”, you say, “that’s a strange way to put it. Basis? What does that mean?”

Simple: generally speaking, the cover will look like design #2. I may change or add some things, though, and you’ll just have to stay tuned to find out what they are. For what it’s worth, I drop all the sweet reveals on the newsletter subscribers first.

Thank you to everyone who took a moment to add their vote. I’ll even thank those of you who ignored my explicit directions by thinking about your answers and providing thoughtful feedback. You’re bad at following directions, but what is DD about if not bucking the system? Good job.

As mentioned, #2 received the most votes, though I was surprised to see such a strong desire to have Selim integrated into the design. I love that guy, but I hadn’t even considered making him a significant compositional element. Obviously, you readers must feel a fondness towards our tea-loving Lieutenant, and I take that as a very high compliment. Will he end up on the cover? You’ll have to wait and see (the pic above is just a work-in-progress capture).

Design #1 fared very poorly in the vote, but I’m glad to see it had a few ardent fans. Interestingly, the few people who have already read the story were most likely to opt for #1.

Design #3 did almost as well as #2, falling just a few points behind. The ratios were pretty consistent between voting methods (Twitter vs. Facebook vs Mail etc.), though commenters on DeviantArt favoured #3 over #2 by two votes.

Thanks again to everyone who took part!