Yet another whirlwind of change and activity...

Good God, y'all...your Fearless Blogger (me) has yet again found himself unemployed.

It was pretty undramatic; my boss just called me in one Friday and said, "Sorry, we can't justify keeping you on - not enough work to do." That was it. I think he threw a little something extra into my last paycheck, so that was nice, but otherwise it was a bit of a gut-punch. I've got a UIA appointment (that's The Dole in Michigan) next week - casting myself on the tender mercies of the State here - but I'm pretty soured on all that. Anyway, I've got a couple of good job prospects; I'm planning to work for the summer, then take a month off in September and travel.

"But what about Blind Alley Comics?" you ask, bodices heaving with hungry anticipation for the latest news. Well, you'll be glad to hear we have some pretty...titillating...developments. Enough to satiate your unholy lusts, you beasts.

1) Tales to Befuddle #1 - Yes, the amazing new comics anthology is due to come out this June. I just uploaded the teasers for FB and the website; hopefully they aren't so befuddling that nobody gets what the hell is going on. Tryin somethin different here, folks - don't get all bent outta shape. "What's it mean, Rick? What's it mean?!" It means I spend too damn much time on you people...!

Kidding. Here's the teasers:

Nice thing about teasers is, you can experiment a little bit and it doesn't matter so much if nobody gets it. Once we reveal the cover next Tuesday, I'll switch to a more conventional marketing campaign.

2) Newsletter - Our amazing new Marketing Director, Laura Carr, has agreed to ~~put up with our shit~~ manage our e-newsletter for us. The newsletter will feature updates on convention appearances and new releases, as well as plenty of our lovely faces for you to pin up on your wall and sigh dreamily over. We're planning to add some more "staff" to our "payroll" soon, to handle the day-to-day whilst we float around in the creative clouds.

3) New Issues - The Human Cannonball #8; Bone Boy #6; Louie, Kid Prodigy #3...we have a lot on our plate. Not sure when these all will be released, since Tales to Befuddle #1 was a bit huge; but fear not! We're planning to do a couple before I fly off into the wild blue yonder, and naturally a whole lot more starting in October. Die Kätze Act III is planned for December 2017 (for real this time! Not January '18), and then...stuff. Lots of stuff! More stuff. I think I'll go have a lie-down...

4) Crowdfuding - Not sure when this is going to happen, but I hope it happens soon. I'm not too big on crowdfunding, as it's always felt like a lot of razzle-dazzle for what essentially amounts to panhandling...sorry, I'm just kind of ambivalent about it. We're looking at GoFundMe, which seems like the most fluid and accommodating of the different platforms; but this doesn't rule out multiple campaigns. We're hoping to bring on a Crowdfunding manager of some sort, but it might not happen very soon...we'll see. We'll see!

5) Extracirricular Activities - All of this is a bit off-the-record, or not official BAC business, but I'm still kind of excited about it:

Joe is helping a prison inmate with his comic...might even print it? Everything's up in the air at this point; I hope it works out. Our Fearless Leader is also working on recording his melodious voice, reading Jeff Smith's Bone for the deaf. He's got a big heart, that Joe.
I'm waiting to hear from Essence Cartoon (Columbus, OH) about a possible writing job. Sounds like a great gig, and they seem excited...we'll see. Wish me luck!
I might be helping Geek-o-Rama.net with their website rebuild and rebranding...that's an iffy one, as the directors are super-busy, but I'm hoping to help all I can. Kat Roets has been awesome letting me review comics for the site, and I'm bummed that my job situation has put the kibosh on that for now.

So much happening! Let's just throw the cans into this tornado and see where they fall down. I'm excited (perhaps a bit manic...), and I hope to pound some opportunity out of an unpleasant job situation. Stay tuned!

Rick Out.

The Problem with Reconstructing Deinonychus

So as you may know, I am partly obsessed with dinosaurs. Scratch that - there's a small lobe of my brain devoted to dinosaurs. I love em, God help me. I even have a super-double-plus-top-secret dinosaur comic maybe in the works...but you didn't hear it from me. Anywho... Part of my problem is in the reconstruction of said prehistoric beasties, namely those icons of American dino-obsession, Deinonychus ( Velociraptor to you Jurassic Park aficionados...it's not just a Hollywood bastardization, there's a complicated story behind it which I covered in this old post ). Now, we all know what Deinonychus looked like: wolf-size, sleek, toothsome head balanced by a long tail, grasping front claws and of course the eponymous "terrible claw" on its hind foot. The shape is burned into our collective unconscious; you could construct the most fantastic amalgam of different bits and pieces, but as long as you include the sickle-claw, you're golden. The devil, of...

Artist Spotlight: Tom Eaton

I wanted to do a quick artist spotlight on Tom Eaton, best known for his work in Boy's Life Magazine. I used to have a subscription to Boy's Life when I was a kid; unfortunately I didn't keep any of them, as they just weren't...I don't know, not really worth keeping. I just remember it as being 90% toy advertisements, some "how to get along with others" advice, the same camping article reprinted 20 million times, and some half-funny comics. As the years went on, the advertisements got bigger and louder, the articles became less interesting, and the comics section got shorter and shorter. But there was one gem hidden in the midst of the mediocrity: artist Tom Eaton. He wrote and illustrated "The Wacky Adventures of Pedro" ( BL's burro mascot), "Dink & Duff", and myriad other comics, crossword puzzles, games, and short pieces. He was the magazine's resident cartoonist, and about the only reason I actually read the magazi...

Raptors II: I might owe Luis V. Rey an apology...

Hello, patient readers. I've blogged about Raptors before, specifically Deinonychus and the problems of depicting dinosaurs in general. In an earlier post, I was wrestling with the then newly-popular preponderance of plumage on our favorite Terrible Lizards, and while I finally conceded that Deinonychus and Co. were probably fully feathered, I whined and hemmed about the amount of feathers and griped about how dinosaur lineages with no evidence for feathers at all were now being given fabulous coats. In the midst of this, I decried the new crop of bad paleo-art, using this image as my piéce de resistance: Credit: Luis V. Rey, from his blog . Essentially my big scientific argument ran along the lines of, "Looks dumb, therefore wrong". It seems now that I might have to eat that argument, slathered in Nelson Muntz' Gourmet Ha-Ha Sauce ...with one important caveat, which I'll get to later. Since writing that blog post - in fact, several years later - I'...

The Penguin

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