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Josh Elder! -:- Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Josh Elder is going to be at the Vault of Midnight tonight from 5pm-7pm. He writes Mail Order Ninja for TokyoPOP, and Batman Strikes for DC Comics. He also has a project coming out for Platinum Studios and reviews graphic novels for the Chicago Sun-Times.
The guy started out working with Wizard Magazine, and it's perfect that I met him at this year's Wizard World Chicago! He's a pretty cool guy, and his books aren't a bad read, either. Also, since he used to be a Wizard staffer, he knows where all the great parties are at the con. In any case, if you're in the area tonight, stop by the Vault of Midnight and say hello, buy his book, chat, and hang out. I plan to be there as soon as I get out of work, and want to get the second volume of his book (volume 3 is not yet available). Hopefully see you there! T 
To move, or not to move? That is the question before me at this time.
The housing market in Ann Arbor is at an all-time low right now, which is great for people like me looking to rent or buy. However, when McKinnley Properties owns half of the apartment options in town, finding competitive rates becomes a tricky feat. Despite doing competitive research for my complex, Park Place Apartments, they seem unwilling to work with me on adjusting my rate to remain competitive. I have until October 1 to decide if I want to stay for another year. Other options include the following: Eagle Pointe: I came from there, as they were in the middle of a class-action lawsuit and undergoing a change in management. However, they have aparently changed to Lakestone apartments and have lowered their rates to something very affordable. I remember enjoying my time there - the grounds were secluded, they had plenty of parking, the placed seemed safe enough, and the apartment was spacious. They're 10 minutes from downtown Ann Arbor, conveniently located 2 minutes from a grocery store, my bank, and the high way. I could also potentially negotiate for a free washer / dryer. I wouldn't mind moving back there at all. Harbour Club: This is in Belleville, and would be a trek from Ann Arbor (however, I would be about 20 minutes closer to work). I would get a spacious place, a decent rate, and a free washer / dryer. Leases are 16 months, though, and I'm not familiar with the area, so I'd have to figure out where to do my booze and grocery shopping. However, I've know people who have lived here (and still do) and they love it. Not sure how available the parking is, but I think it's closer for many people to come over for Movie Nights (ie: Justin, Jo, Laura, Lauren, and all of my other friends from Canton). It's a nice place, a nice price, and a decent option. I'm going to check them out on Saturday, 1 and 2 bedroom options. So, what does everyone think? Obviously I don't have a roommate lined right now, but I like having the extra space of 2 rooms (also, if I get a roommate down the road, I won't have to wait for a lease to end or share a room). Granted, moving to Belleville would involve more work and I'd have to rent a truck, but the place is nice and I probably wouldn't have to move again for a while (I hear their renewal rates are favorable, assuming they go up at all). I'd of course need help moving, like last time: I would also provide beer and pizza to all who helped out. Give me your thoughts and feedback.
Movie Night #64: Bon Fire Night 1 -:- Monday, September 24, 2007
Bon Fire Night (which immediately followed the very fun Body Shop foot thingie at Laura's) was a great time had by all who attended. Combine the following elements: good friends, fire, cider and doughnuts, and Justin's "oatmeal cookies" drink (something that I will have to learn how to make myself), and follow it all up with some N64 action in the basement, and you get one kick-ass time!
The conversation during the bon fire was good. I was able to cuddle with my lady (who I hadn't seen in a week, and who was going through a bad time of things), chat with friends, and enjoy that good old camp-fire smell! After a while it started to get cold outside (at least the part of me that was touching the ground), so we ventured indoors for some Mario Kart and Smash Bros. The night ended around 1:30am, with Mia taking the title as champion of Smash Bros (damn you Kirby! Why do you plague me so!) Saturday was an emotional rollercoaster for Laura and her family, no doubt. They attended a funeral for a close friend of the family - while I babysat a 2 year-old out in the lobby. Laura was with me, sure, but I encouraged her to go pay her respects and go through the mourning process. Afterwards was productivity time, during which I completed many more pages than expected for The Temple of a Thousand Tears: Definitive Edition which will appear on Drunk Duck. A direct link will be avilable soon. I just need to get a cover finished up for this edition, which should be made easier by the fact that I ordered a new scanner off New Egg over the weekend. It should arrive this week. Sunday was another day of celebration, as Laura's family celebrated Karen's birthday. There was much food and football watching (during which I finished "Wicked," since I have no interest in sports). I loaned my copy of "Wicked" to Laura's mother in exchange for the last Harry Potter book, which I've already gotten about 50 pages into...and I'm a slow reader. My plans to go out of state this weekend may have been foiled. It appears that less than half of the regular group of people is attending Pokagon this year, and my room has been cancelled. My mother encouraged me to come down for a single day, but that just doesn't seem worth the time and effort (and cost) in my mind. I think I may attend Justin's alterative Movie Night, and then use Saturday as another productivity day to get the Definitve Edition up and running. Also, I'm without a roommate as of this week, so I may also reclaim the second room as my office.... If anyone would like to help out with that, let me know. There could also be hanging out involved. Maybe some friends exchanges of words and a few high fives! :D Anyway, new comic news will be posting soon. A few people at Movie Night were surprised / impressed that I managed to secure a guest strip over at Multiplex. I met Gordon at Wizard World this year, and listen to the Triple Feature pod cast all the time - he's a good guy, even if we do disagree on a few points when it comes to movies. He's a great guy, though - very knowledgable, and fun to hang out with. I'd do another guest strip for him in a heartbeat (and who knows - maybe he'll be able to return the favor sometime down the road). If you'd like to meet Gordon and most of the boxcarcomics crew, then I recommend attending Wizard World Chicago with me in 2008! Last year was a blast, and I'd love to actually be able to attend the con for all 4 days! Scott's even priced out some booth space for Exile Comics - but we might be a few years off from actually getting it. Maybe a Motor City Comic Con first.... Anyway, I'm gonna get back to work now. Later! T
@$$hole #29: The Prisoner (Part 7) -:- Friday, September 21, 2007
Well, it's been a crazy crazy week, but there's more comic goodness to talk about. I recently signed up for an account on Drunk Duck and plan to re-release all of my comics on there. Temple will have a "definitive edition" released, with chapter dividers and possibly some new artwork (when it goes up, go check it out, rate the pages, comment, and vote! I'll make a formal announcement shortly). I'm excited for all the stuff I plan to do, which should improve the quality of the pages without altering anything too much.
More on that, later. I also posted a guest strip for Gordon McAlpin (whose last name I miss-spelled on the page, so I'm going to have to do an edit tonight and get it to him) over at Multiplex, as he's been having internet problems lately. I tried a new coloring technique with it that I hope you'll enjoy (solid, bold shadows). I enjoy reading his strip when it goes up, and listing to his opinions on movies during the Monday night TripleFeature podcast (hosted by Theater Hopper's Tom Brazelton). Here's a little sneak at the guest strip, but click on the link above to see the full-sized image.  And now on to the main event, the thing you come to read every week when I post something like this: @$$hole!  I have been playing with the new shading style, trying to make it less abrupt and more subtle. I think I have made leaps and bounds imporvement over last week's strip, but there's still some more refinement that could go into it. Also, I've been playing with the pen tool in PhotoShop to try to get the balloon tails more smooth, and I thik I've come a long way there as well. Still not perfect, though. The neat thing about this page is that we finally get to see what has been going on this whole while that Trevor is in The Village. Apparently, Susie and Charlie have just been standing there looking at Trevor's unconscious or possibly deceased corpse. Or have they...? In any case, I'm going to be working my butt off this weekend trying to get pages ready for Drunk Duck, as well as pages for this coming weekend (as I will be out of state), and help me get a start-up on the following week's page. The funny thing is that I'm going to be at Laura's all weekend, so we'll see how that affects my productivity. Thankfully, she was kind enough to let me bring my tower (which hasn't been on the internet in about a year) so I can download updates and drivers, and some new brushes and stuff for PhotoShop. She's so thoughtful that way :D Also, Movie Night this week has been replaced by a bon fire at Laura's place in Canton. I'm going to try to take some pictures so I can share with people, but no promises...I may be distracted by the fact that I haven't hung out with my woman in a week. Enjoy the pages, and I'll see you all later! T
@$$hole #28: The Prisoner (Part 6) -:- Friday, September 14, 2007  So, I tried out two new things with this page, as I had been talking about previously (however cryptic). The first is the coloring. Many people will notice that the images are lighters, but also a little more jagged when going to darker colors - this is something new for me, so it's not quite perfected yet. However, what happened was instead of using black and various opacities and layering them on top of each other (thus maintaing the color underneath, and getting darker as I layer more on top) I had layered darker version of the base colors. I'm told this is what professional colorists do, and was given a critique from one of the pros that I met at Wizard World Chicago, who suggested that I start trying to do this. Personally, I think it helps brighten up the image and compliments the work. I like it, and am going to try to work with it on future strips to make it look better. The second is the balloons. I was making the balloons in my own way, which was taking a lot of time. I was thinking to myself one day, "There has to be an easier way to do this," and started researching online how the pros do it. I found a technique using the "pen tool," which I had never used before. I wanted to get some curves into my balloon tails (which is still a work in progress), and this is the first step. Now comes the practice...and the patience. In any case, I plan to spend any freetime I have this weekend perfecting my craft, so that next Friday's page can be stellar! I also finally finished writing this story arc, which will take up the bulk of the 20 pages that I want tot do between story arcs - don't worry, I'll extend this round a bit before requesting more guest strips from people. I'm also conducting some super-secret meetings with other web comic artists for some possible cross-overs, and / or doing some of the other projects that I want to get underway (like a Temple prequel or two). More on that much much later. Enjoy this latest installment of @$$hole, and I'll post more about it next week when the new page goes live! T
Movie Night Movie List -:- Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Because several people have requested it (and it's been a while since I posted the complete list), here's what we've watched at Movie Night so far:
1: Cecil B. Demented 2: eXestenZ 3: Wet Hot American Summer 4: True Romance 5: Logan's Run 6: Serenity 7: Underworld 2: Evolution 8: Grandma's Boy (Non-Movie Night 1) 9: Evil Dead 2 10: The Boondock Saints (Unrated) 11: Willow 12: Clerks and The Adventures of Baron Munchausen 13: Clue 14: Dark City 15: Cowboy Bebop 16: The Crow 17: Equilibrium 18: The Lost Boys 19: The Astronauts Wife 20: South Park and Austin Powers 3: Goldmember (Non-Movie Night 2) 21: Big Trouble in Little China 22: Beverly Hills Cop 23: Animal House 24: Labrynth 25: Seven Samurai 26: Family Guy and Steam Boy 27: Flatliners 28: Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker 29: Alice in Wonderland and Tenchi Muyo! in Love 30: Shaun of the Dead 31: Titan AE and Top Secret 32: Mission Impossible 3 33: Memento 34: Spirited Away 35: The Last Samurai 36: Shiri 37: ___? 38: Alive 39: Dawn of the Dead (2004) 40: Slither and Blood: The Last Vampire 41: Sleepy Hallow 42: Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed 43: Le Pacte des Lupes 44: The Fifth Element 45: The Dark Crystal and Transformers (animated) 46: Die Hard 3: With a Vengeance 47: Spice World and La Blue Girl (Non-Movie Night 3) 48: Serenity 49: Versus 50: Game Night 1 51: Azumi 52: Fight Club 53: Bubba Ho-Tep 54: Not Another Teen Movie, Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, and Van Wilder (Non-Movie Night 4) 55: Pump Up the Volume 56: Night Watch 57: Ringu 2 58: Man on Fire 59: The Incredibles 60: Oldboy 61: ___? 62: Lethal Weapon 63: Buffy the Musical You'll notice that two of them are missing - well, either I didn't blog about them or I suck at counting (the later of which is more likely). But now you have a complete list of the Movies we've watched so far (Serenity twice, very nice). I'll try to make My Movie Database (MMDB) publically available for everyone, so they can see it in advance. However, who knows when that may be.... T
Exile 3: Page 41 -:- Monday, September 10, 2007  Here's my PhotoShop job. I think it might've looked less like a Photoshop job if I had actually drawn and colored in the background myself...or put Pam Anderson's head on Clistro's body! :P Seriously though, I like the fire and sound FX in this shot. I thought it best to keep it simple, since I had already done the previous week's page. Only one more Exile 3 page for me, and then this story should finish up around November. After that, Exile 4 baby!
Movie Night #63: Buffy the Musical -:-
Movie Night 63 was far from your typical Movie Night. For one thing, we didn't watch a movie at my place. Second off, Laura and I went to go see "Once More With Feeling," the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode, at the Michigan Theater. And what a show it was.
First of all, I should mention that upon doing research on this showing, I found out that people as far as Virginia were coming to Ann Arbor to watch this (apparently, the die-hard fans go to see every viewing of this episode across the country). This made me nervous about how available tickets would be, what with students back on campus and all. I pre-ordered tickets for Laura and myself (stomaching a small surcharge), and we left for the event (prior to that, the few people that showed were chatting and hanging out in my apartment). The line for people buying tickets was about 30 people - the line for pre-orders wrapped around the block! This event filled a 1,500 seat theater! It was pure luck that we ran into my old college friend Foy, and his wife Steph. They saved us seats, so we could sit next to each other. To start off, why would anyone pay $12 for a 43 minute episode? Well, it's not just an episode viewing, but an event. Like the Rocky Horror Picture show, they have a pre-show where people from the audience come up and reinact scenes, fill in missing dialogue or character thoughts, or sing. They also have homage reels (some of the actors from Buffy have passed on or they make fun of characters, like Riley), trivia, and a summary of the entire show. It's a good, interactive show. Plus, during the show, you're provided with props and promps when to use them. Occasionally, people will come out on stage and perform on stage, mimicking what the actors are doing on the screen. Laura, having memorized all of the songs from the soundtrack and being a HUGE Buffy fan, sang along with just about every song. I had a good time waiting for the promps to use our props, and shout "Shut up, Dawn!" at the screen every time she showed her face. It was a hilarious time. The whole show lasted about 2 hours, and by that time Laura and I were exhausted. With a big day ahead of us on Saturday, we both went back to the apartment and crashed hard.  For more information about Buffy to Musical, or to see if it will be in an area near you, check out www.buffysings.com
@$$hole #27: The Prisoner (Part 5) -:- Friday, September 07, 2007
This week has been absolutely insane, and the weekend does not look much more promising in terms of slowing down. I've been working my ass off on this project at work (which I hope is finally done, so I can move on to something else), and I've been trying to get a lot of comic stuff done at home - but haven't had the time, and also my scanner is still broken.
I did receive some good feedback on my webcomic from some of the artists I talked to at Wizard World, however, so expect some further changes in the next few weeks. I hope changes for the better. However, this page got thrown together in post as quickly as possible so I could try to catch up on some much-needed sleep.  Next week, it appears that #2 will finally be revealed! In that last panel, that's supposed to be a bubble chair, by the way. I guess my short-comings as an artist could make that somewhat confusing for readers. I couldn't quite remember the color scheme of the command center from The Prisoner, but I remember that it has some pretty bright and vibrant colors to it. I picked some greens and yellows to decorate with, even though I'm fairly certain there was blue in the show. Oh well, so long as no one reads this post, no one will ever know.... This weekend, I'm going to be hosting a short Movie Night tonight, followed by attending "Once More With Feeling: The Buffy Musical" at the Michigan Theater tonight at 11pm. Tomorrow, Laura and I are going to drop off my car to get an oil change and tire rotation, and then we're going to Detroit for a few hours so she can take pictures for one of her classes. Afterwards, any time that I have will be geared towards drawing the next few pages of @$$hole so I can scan them in on Sunday. Later on Saturday night, I'll be attending a bachellor party for Brian (Laura's sister's fiancee). Sunday is all about playing catch up, trying to get comic stuff done and possibly washing my car. Definitely spending time with my lady, who's been stressing this week because she just started classes again. Summer certainly has spoiled her. :D Anyway, enjoy the new comic and look forward to some changes next week! T
Exile 3: Page 40 -:- Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Sorry, I've been so busy lately that I haven't been able to promote the fact that new content is going up like CRAZY! My latest Exile 3: Serpentine page went live on Monday, and I have another one going up next week.
 I've been really bugged by the fact that, although someone decided to keep Clistro on top of a mountain to fire a cannon that hasn't been firing, he hasn't been doing anything. As such, I decided to give an explanation for this - and make it a motivation to kill the latest Wally. In any case, I hope you enjoy it and be sure to check out next week's page, also done by me! T
Movie Night #62: Lethal Weapon -:- Tuesday, September 04, 2007 It feels like it's been a while since our last Movie Night where we actually watched movies. And it was a lot of fun, talking with people before hand about what we all think Movie Night is and what it could be. I got a lot of great feedback from people, and I liked many of the ideas that were presented. And then we got on with why everyone was there (because it certainly wasn't to hear me rant), and popped in a DVD.  Movie Night #62: Lethal Weapon (1987) Director: Richard Donner Cast: Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Gary Busey Plot: Sergeants Martin Riggs (Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Glover) are two very different LA cops. Murtaugh has just reached his 50th birthday, and has a cool and collected way of dealing with situations. Riggs is a lose cannon, on edge, and quite possibly psychotic. However, when they are both partnered together to solve the muder or one of Murtaugh's friend's daughters, they stumble upon a conspiracy of ex-mercenaries and drug smuggling that could threaten the lives of those they hold most dear. Filled with fast paced action (and even faster banter), this is one of the great action classics and signature buddy-cop movies from the late 80s. I was surprised that two people hadn't ever seen Lethal Weapon all the way through (and unfortunately with the level of conversation going on during the movie, that number may still prove true), but everyone seemed to enjoy it all the same. While it's true that there was more conversation going on than I would've liked (or more to the point - it was a little louder than I would've liked), I think that everyone was still able to follow the plot enough to get some enjoyment from the experience. I must admit that it's been a while since I've watched these movies, and they still hold up as some of the more extertaining and exciting action flicks. The franchise that it spawned just further shows the level of depth of the characters and how much audiences wanted to see them evolve. Heck, Danny Glover and Mel Gibson were both making cameo appearances in each other's movies for several years, even after Danny Glover "retired." I understand that we have a birthday coming up for one of our "regulars" this week (yes, Kelly, I'm talking about you), and I'm hoping that her and Shane will be able to make it this coming Friday to celebrate. There's talk about attending the Buffy Musical show at the Michigan Theater afterwards (which takes place at midnight, so Movie Night #63 will have to end early). I'm looking forward, as I've heard about this touring reel but have not had the opportunity to be a part of it. I've heard that it's comparable to a 60-minute Rocky Horror Picture Show! Only with Buffy, instead of Tim Curry in drag. :P Until then, later! T
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