WEDNESDAY, MAY 26…

VICIOUS WHISPER, infamous rockstar/sorceress and friend to all the planet’s freaks, will return to answer all your freakish questions once per Wednesday from within her floating greenhouse home… just like old times.

WHAT CAN I ASK HER? Anything. All questions and subject matter are fair game. Ask her about her life, your life, her world, your world, her favorite CHUD, your favorite CHUD, anything and everything, she will answer it all. Once per Wednesday.

HOW LONG WILL SHE DO THIS? Until the start of Serenity Rose Volume Three. Maybe longer. She’s pretty much like the Silver Surfer heralding the arrival of Galactus. Prepare your world for eating!

WHY IS SHE DOING THIS? Because it’s FUN, that’s why! And it’ll also help us raise funds for Serenity Rose Volume Three (through print and art sales, mostly). What a sweetie, eh? (By the way, I hear there might be some original Serenity Rose Volume Two pages up for auction right this very moment… LINK!)

WHERE DO I SEND MY QUESTIONS? Send ‘em in this direction:

VICIOUS@HEARTSHAPEDSKULL.COM

See you May 26th!

SERENITY ROSE VOL. 2: GOODBYE, CRESTFALLEN!
	A BUBBLING HORDE OF SERA’S WORST NIGHTMARES COME CLAWING AT YOUR FACE – IN FULL(ish) COLOR! FROM SLG PUBLISHING.
	ALL THIS AND MORE:
BUY IT FROM AMAZON – $19.95
- SLG – POWELL’S – BARNES & NOBLE -

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HERE ARE THE GOODS… Five of them this time, including CRAZY AIRBORNE WITCH ACTION!

BIdding ends on Sunday, March 7th. Roundabout Six-ish, California time.

Good luck, everybody, and thanks in advance for helping support the impending existence of Serenity Rose Vol. 3!

* Seven hundred dollars??

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As those of you who follow my twitter feed will no doubt recall, I finally saw the 1993 Merchant Ivory production The Remains of the Day (starring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson) early last month, enjoyed it tremendously, and then began weighing every movie I saw from that point on against the The Remains of the Day Scale (TROTDS).

As you can see, among all the movies I saw from start to finish in the month of February, not one of them successfully reached TROTDL. Among the contenders, only current Oscar hopeful The Hurt Locker, Yasujiro Ozu’s elegiac Tokyo Story, and 1950’s “camp” classic Sunset Boulevard came anywhere near TROTDL (although Boris Karloff’s 1968 swan song Targets did make an unexpectedly strong showing, due partly to its surprisingly realistic tone, partly to the undeniable KARLOFF-ness of Boris Karloff, and partly to a murderer who remains terrifying not despite his ill-fitting pants, but because of his ill-fitting pants).

I should note here that I DID, in fact, see the Lon Chaney version of Phantom of the Opera in February, as well, but as I saw it BEFORE The Remains of the Day, its proper place on the scale would be purely conjectural and, therefore, not within the purview of this experiment. It was real bad-ass, though.

Roger Ebert wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. For more information on Roger Ebert, go here.

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As promised, the Sera t-shirts are up in the SLG store right now. Click the image and prepare your eyes to enter paradise:

And of course, the Vicious ones are still available right HERE. In all the sizes of the rainbow.

Thanks for looking and hopefully buying several dozen!

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The answer is no, it’s not ALL “peeing Calvins.” In fact, there’s some really cool stuff in there! I just don’t do a tremendous LOT of this kind of stuff, is all (I should do more, but I don’t). And quite a bit of the work I DO take on is concept design for various animated projects that don’t end up getting, y’know, made, and are therefore relegated to The Island of Misfit Copyrights forevermore. It’s sort of frustrating, actually. There’s a lot of work piled up on my hard drive I’d like to dust off and put on the site.

Not EVERYTHING gets locked away in the development basement, though. For example…

LYLIAN:

This here is a series of webcomics I wrote, penciled, finished, and colored as sort of a promotional tie-in for a PC game currently in production (check out the cool trailer dealie on the site). Lylian is about a wee kid trapped in a filthy, monster-filled insane asylum with nothing but the whippy arms of her straightjacket to protect her. Each page I’m working on has to do with a different hospital inhabitant and how they may (or may not) have gotten there. Not sure how many of these things we’ll do, but the plan is to put one out every other week or so for a little while, at least. There are two up there right now.

Go check ‘em out, eh? (Lower right hand corner, innit.) They’ve been lots of fun to work on so far.

Three cheers for projects you’re allowed to see!

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Vicious is available RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT at the SLG store…

…And Serenity should be there by the end of the month:

I’ll post another link as soon as they’re available!

And thank you very much to Squeek on our own Bubblegum Noir forum for suggesting I turn that old Vicious print into a t-shirt design. (She did a mock-up and everything!) Looks snazzy, even in grey.

BURN YOUR HEART-SHAPED-SKULL SHIRTS AND BURY THE ASHES FOREVER! There’s a new sheriff in town, and his shirts have CHARACTERS!

*Wow… Ever? Jeez… Sorry about that. What the hell?

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Photographic evidence of my existence (and that of Ms. Gofflin and her big pillowy home-made troll doll, Toofus) can be found on Alakazam’s Facebook thingee RIGHT ABOUT HERE.

And thanks again to Holly, Will and Marco at Alakazam for organizing the event! God, that store is just BLEEDING cool… Nicely designed, well-stocked, not a single CHUD hiding in the corners… Honestly, if everyone in the comic industry had the same enthusiasm, creativity and commitment to detail these Alakazamians have, our business would be bigger than Moving Pictures. We need loads more people like that, so please, if you live in the SoCally-type area, show your support! (I hear they might have some extra signed copies of my books, if you’re into that sort of thing…)

And now a small story…

The first time I ever approached someone with the specific intention of obtaining their autograph was when I spotted Siouxsie Sioux at O’Hare Airport in Chicago eight years ago. We were both waiting for the same flight to San Francisco, and we had a LONG time to wait, so I had PLENTY of time to sit and squirm and just generally work my stomach into thick, twitchy emotional knots over whether or not approaching her would be “the thing to do.”

As we were about to board the plane, I sprang into action:

“Excuse me, I’m, uh… I’m a big fan of, uh, yours… Would you, uh… would you mind, uh, signing… uh, something… for me?” (12 additional “uh’s” removed for clarity.)

“Well I don’t know. What do you have for me?”

NOW. One way of interpreting this question -the normal, not-insane-person kind of way- is that she’s asking me for some specific object upon which to write her name. A sheet of paper, say. Or a Compact Disc. Perhaps even a boob.

I, however, chose to interpret the question as a request for a trade: “I will give you my autograph, strange twitchy kid who’s been gawking at me for the past hour while I discussed Coen Brothers movies with my fellow Banshees, provided you have something of equivalent value for ME.”

I glanced down at my clipboard (the VERY ONE YOU SAW YESTERDAY, assuming you were at the Alakazam signing, which you were because you’re awesome-sauce).

“I um… I could give you this, um, lovely… drawing here.”

She took the clipboard from me and did her swirly little name thing right under the top-most drawing.

“THANK YOU!” I said (probably). She smiled and turned to get back in line.

“THE TRADE, YOU FOOL!” my brain shrieked at me, in the style of Ralphie from A Christmas Story. “YOU’VE FORGOTTEN THE TRADE!”

Thinking fast, I unclipped the drawing -the very one she had JUST SIGNED- and tried to hand it to her. “I was serious, you know! You, uh, you can seriously have this drawing!”

She didn’t even look confused. She just smiled again, said “Not with my name on it,” and strolled onto the plane. I got on a few minutes later and tried not to make eye contact as I looked for my seat.

NO, THIS STORY DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE.

But it does explain why I have, on my wall right at this moment, a framed printout of Mary Ann Mirolette signed by Siouxsie Sioux:

Why did I tell that story? Well, if you are a fan of Serenity Rose or my stuff in general, there is a greater than 50% chance that you are sort of introverted. You’re a shy person, like me. Not the type to go up and talk to one of your favorite artists at a book signing or a comic convention or, y’know, just out on the street. Maybe you’d really LIKE to do that kind of thing from time to time, but you just feel too… I don’t know, intimidated or whatever.

But you shouldn’t feel that way.

I’m the guy who tried to pay Siouxsie Sioux for her autograph… WITH HER OWN AUTOGRAPH.

And I’m not the only artist with a story like that, either.

I’ll see you at the next signing!

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Will Sera get pulled out of a hat, BUNNYSTYLE?

IT COULD HAPPEN!

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To celebrate, what do you say we get down and do a good old-fashioned BOOK SIGNING, comic-style.

The kindly prestidigitators at ALAKAZAM COMICS in Irvine, CA have invited me to come sully the reputation of their fine establishment this SATURDAY, JANUARY 30th, from 4-6 PM. I’ll be chatting with fans, doing sketches, selling original pages, and pulling rabbit after rabbit out of my wee little tophat until we all suffocate under 60,000 lbs. of luxurious angora fur. (Or until 6 PM, whichever comes first.)

Irvine is about an hour down the coast from Los Angeles, so hopefully a lot of you Southern California types will be able to make it. Check out the Alakazam site for more specific directions and so forth.

I think the last time I did a book signing outside of the San Diego Comic-Con was… never? Was it never? Might’ve been never. Wait… No, I did a couple of Alternative Press Expos a long, loooong, lllllooooooooonnnnngg time ago. ENORMOUS THANKS to Holly at Alakazam for her concerted efforts to get me out of my house and down to Irvine over the past few years. (And if anyone else out there happens to own/manage a comic book store in a (especially in the NON Southern California-ish parts of the country) and wants to set up a similar event, it could very well be possible.)

See you in Irvine!

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UPDATE 1/27: The book is in comic shops (and AMAZON) NOW! Hopefully!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, everyone!

I’ve returned from nearly three weeks of self-imposed internet exile and have begun the slow, laborious climb-back to the land of productivity. Which means, among other things, promoting this new full-color book-shaped doo-hickey I have coming out later this month. To everyone who did the whole Christmas pre-order thing, BIG THANKS… I should have those for you in a couple of weeks (keep your eyes peeled for e-mailings).

For everyone else, it looks like my publisher, SLG, has them available through their webstore RIGHT NOW, and AMAZON should have them, at their standard massive Amazon discount rate, very soon (Oh man, how cool would it be if you WROTE A REVIEW?). Your local comic shoppy-type places ought to have the books in stock by the end of the month… I’ll keep you updated.

SERENITY ROSE VOL. 2: GOODBYE, CRESTFALLEN!
	A BUBBLING HORDE OF SERA’S WORST NIGHTMARES COME CLAWING AT YOUR FACE – IN FULL(ish) COLOR! FROM SLG PUBLISHING.
	ALL THIS AND MORE:
BUY IT FROM AMAZON – $19.95
- SLG – POWELL’S – BARNES & NOBLE -

SHARE THIS