Thursday, February 07, 2013

Got My Books!! Love 'Em!!

Now, about that "typo"... I don't mind the gold Times-Roman font, nor the way it repeats our title above the Teen Ellis's head. I think that's kinda cool.
...But when I saw the gold "Rick Schmitz" smack in the center of interest on the cover, my first thought was, "Geez, did I piss Schmitty off somehow...?"

(I think my scanner needs those color-blindness glasses, huh? Yikes.)

The book is incredible. Everybody's work looks amazing. Everybody except Scott Benefiel's, which of course isn't in there. OOF! Talk about yer classic bait-an-switch...we will have a lot of angry letters from Cork fans who bought this book based on the cover (mea maxima culpa!).

And above all else, a GINORMOUS "THANK YOU!" to Mr. Rick Schmitz. You were the driving force behind this, you did all the heavy-lifting, and you took on the complicated task of getting this thing formatted and printed. Hats off.

Your name will always be golden with me.

7 comments:

Rickart said...

You are FAR too kind. I'm still waiting to hear from Lulu as to getting these bad boys reprinted. If I don't hear from them today I'll go about finding a phone number to talk to somebody.

What do you think of the work inside? Any artists stand out?

Tom Moon said...

Yay Rick! I can hardly wait to get my copy, flawed or not!

MrGoodson2 said...

I'm glad I know about the problem before I get my copy. I'd overheat and throw it across the room screaming "FLAWED!"

Kidding. Can't wait. Maybe I'll get it tomorrow

Davis Chino said...

Number one, the book's bigger than I expected--I mean in dimension--something like 6.5" x 10.25"! Which is cool!

But to reply to Rick's question, ("What did you think of the work inside? Any artist stand out?"), the first thing that stood out is how nicely the whole thing "read" from first page to last. Really nice flow, and great visual diversity, all of it showcased to best effect on the page (lots of times with these books seems like faulty printing is as damaging as any lack of quality with the work...cover snafu aside!).

Loved the way you did the back cover, too.

Loved yr story, Rick--and being the longest, it was a great idea to have it be one of the "bookends."Thought it looked great on the page, too--layout-wise, but also the right mix of white, greys, and rich blacks. Viva Creeple!

Loved Dok's frontspiece tribute to Rick Johnson...really nice.

Great to see a new Gun Nose story!

Loved the pages of Jimmy's girls!

Great to see Jeff Remmer present--I esp'ly loved his ink of the demons dropping the frog, and the lizard man on the bed. So cool!

Ellis and Ron Thompson's stuff of course looked great...loved Mike Christian's one-page of the curly-headed bongo player.

Of the artists I didn't know--all of whom contribute great stuff!!--I really liked the way Monte Michaelis's stuff looked on the page, the silhouettes of Diane Fong (I wouldn't have minded giving it its own page), and the Davis Paul Ryan and Bret Bean stuff looked very pro.

But I gotta say, I needed more of Tom Moon's story! The two page spread worked beautifully, but I wish wish wish we could have had some kind of introductory something on the page before. Not for lack of information, but purely for visual punctuation. Something to better frame the two pages, which really looked glorious (and seemed to translate to Lulu's b&w printing methods better than I would have imagined--certainly better than mine, where the frizzing of the finer lines bummed me out--also looked generally washed-out. Boohoo.)

Awesome stuff!

Rickart said...

Yup, you have named some super talented folks in there. I'm glad you like the "flow". It was a sort of fun puzzle to figure out the order. It was also pretty enpowering to decide with images were going to get a full page by themselves. Well, some folks only sent one pic, so that was sort of already decided, but if something caught my eye then I would just go for it. Getting the comic stories first page to appear in the right place was also a challenge.

Do they feel like stories within the book? Do they feel out of place with all the random drawings?

MrGoodson2 said...

I put a Tank Girl comic on top of the TAG Sampler. Exactly the same size. So it is comic book size. I'm a quibbler. Enjoyed the Creeple story. Too bad Buncake is only present in spirit.

Scotty Buncake said...

Sorry I dropped the ball on adding any art to this. I got so wrapped up in storyboarding deadlines I didn't think of anything else. Looking forward to seeing it though! It had better not suck, so help me Thompson!