Certified Cool, baby! It's official.

It's Diamond time again, and look what's in it: Love and Capes #9. And guess what, it's "certified cool" by Diamond Comics. Certified. It's official and everything.

Here's the actual cover to issue #9. Since #8 is out, I figure I can show it for realz now. I didn't want to spoil the "My Two Marks" aspect of the ninth issue until people had actually read the eighth issue. Yeah, I made one continued. Don't hate the player, hate the game.

The Certified Cool is always a pleasant surprise. Love and Capes #9 is being mentioned in the same breath with some really fine books, like DC Comics Gen 13 and Haunted Tank, Marvel's Scourge of the Gods, and IDW's Complete Terry and the Pirates. It also gives the book a little extra pop in the Previews section, which is always a good thing, especially given the volume of product in the catalog.

So, it's order code NOV084203. Order big. Free Comic Book Day is next!

All the leaves are brown

Page sixteen is done, which brings to a close our second lyrics quiz, too. I'll post those answers tomorrow, but I'll warn you I wasn't as good with it as I should have been.

This page came out much better than I thought it would. It was a little rockier in my head and when I drew it than when I scripted it. There were a couple of jokes that didn't make the cut, like when Mark made a goofy suggestion about the wedding. It would have gone like this:

Abby: Not my wedding.
Mark: I thought it was our wedding.
Abby: Not when you're talking crazy.

It's a cute scene, but it just didn't work for what I needed to accomplish.

With this page, I am officially on the Back Eight. Two-thirds of the way through. Time to get crazy and knock some more pages out.

I've been sent to spread the message

By my original plan, I should be on page 16 at this point. I'm not. I'm only on 15. I'm one page behind, but that's okay, especially since at the beginning of this month, I was five pages behind. I'm mildly impressed with myself that I was able to catch up even that much. November is a month fraught with busyness, including Wizard World Dallas. So it's good that I'm down to single digits by now.

I can't show much about this sequence, but I'm sure we all guessed that a scene like this was coming.

In other news, it took a lot of calls, including three hours on the phone with AT&T, but I managed to restore the internet service that was destroyed by my foolish attempt to upgrade to the AT&T uVerse package. Oh, sweet Lord did that go badly. I'll share that later, after I get through some of the work that piled up as I was handling that crisis.

Wherever Cooler Comics are Sold

What? In stores now? Awesome!

Commishalicious

I did a boatload of commissions at Mid-Ohio-Con this weekend. According to my list, I did a couple of Power Girls, a couple of Supergirls, an Alfred E. Neuman, a Wesley/Fred/Ilyria, an Abby from Love and Capes, an Elektra, an Amazonia, a Devil Girl, and a caricature/wedding sign. Whew! That was a lot, and that doesn't include any quick head sketches or the inevitable things I forgot, too.

I took some photos of a couple on my wicked cool iPhone, and some are being sent to me so that I can color them and finish them up. I'll post them over the next couple weeks and show them off. Some of them came out particularly well, and they were all fun. In particular, I really liked this Devil Girl I did. It was fun having a generic theme, rather than a specific character, and playing in that world.

The other commission here is Power Girl, and she's always fun.

Brave Brave Sir... er, Madam Robyn

A while back, Paul originated a sequel to the Robin Hood myth, Robyn of Sherwood, with Robin's daughter catching up with the gang fifteen years after the end of the original. I'm not doing it justice, but it was a great series. It's going to be coming back, remastered with all sorts of newness.

I inked the second issue of the original series back in the day. And I'm still connected with it, as I've created the new Robyn of Sherwood logo. Paul was pretty easy to work with, which is always nice when you're navigating that minefield of working with friends.The logo came out pretty well, too. Click on the logo to see it bigger, or click here to read more about Robyn of Sherwood.

Life's more painless, for the brainless

The hard part in starting Love and Capes is always the first few pages. Getting back on that horse is always rocky and hitting my stride is rough. Hence why when my non-LNC workload spiked over the last couple of weeks, it was a little too easy to put it off.

But, I'm back plugging away and I think I'm good for the next few issues. Right before I went to bed, I had an epiphany about page four which I jotted down on my shower wall with my bathtub crayons. I didn't want to forget the note. I have to say, though, that it is kind of horror-movie-esque to wake up in the morning and see DOES HE NORMALLY KEEP SECRETS? scrawled in green crayon when you stagger to the bathroom.

And yes, here's Mark drinking, beer even. There's been a lot of hubbub and hulabaloo about the recent Action Comics that was pulped because it showed Superman drinking a beer with his Dad. Now, I'm convinced it said ROOT BEER, not BEER on the artwork, and Clark is 29 and can have a beer with his father if he wants. But my friend Paul Storrie (click here to read his blog, and maybe then he'll post more) and I discussed it in the course of one of our regular phone calls, and he won me over to the "Superman shouldn't be drinking beer on the cover of a comic" side of things. He's right, it's just the smart move. And a good lettering job would have prevented all of this.

Speaking of which, I'm more offended by seeing the bad Photoshop job that DC did to fix it. It offends my artistic sensibilites. And, Kansas is Midwest America, and I'll bet they call it "pop" and not "soda pop". Heck, it should have been Soder Cola.

Now, I'm an Ohio Boy, but I admit I do call it "soda". Three years of internment in New Jersey beat the "pop" out of me.

Anyway, here's the panel from page three. And there are two reasons which you'll see when you read the comic why it works.

Sixteen Boxes of Comic Book Sitcom Goodness

Hey, look what fell off the truck today!

Books will be in stores in the beginning of October, and for sale on the store site shortly thereafter.

More on Board

Indie Comic Book Noise's Angie has given a recommendation for the Love and Capes trade on the Indie Comic Book Noise Podcast, number 212. Hey, what can I say, she's righ. If you'd ike to check out the podcast, click here.

Reason #1 to Buy the LNC Trade from IDW

First, let's recap the previous answers:

10. If you don’t buy it, Memphisto may erase Mark and Abby’s relationship from existence. Don’t let him win!
9. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have identical positions on Love and Capes.(Neither have read it.)
8. It’s on page 293 of Previews, and you know they only put the best stuff there.
7. Gail Simone says, "A book full of rare delights–bright, lively art, a fun and clever story told with perfect pacing…Thom’s doing great work on an irreplaceable book."
6. Every time you buy a copy, a Victoria’s Secret Angel gets her wings.
5. Kurt Busiek’s one thing, but how many people get the coveted ANN Busiek recommendation?
4. Remember how you said you’d wait for the trade? Wait’s over, champ.
3. No crossovers. No angst. No pointless deaths. No kidding.
2. It’s easily 100 times funnier than that Seinfeld/Gates commercial.

and finally, the number one reason to by the Love and Capes trade.

1. It's a good book and you'll like it. What? Is there a better reason to buy a book than that?

Diamond Previews order code SEP084142E.