If you’ve seen IDW’s solicitations for September, you may have seen a one-shot entitled “Doctor Who: Black Death/White Life”. If you did see that you may have noticed that I wrote it. This is my first writing gig and its on Doctor Who, if you know me then you know how big this is for me.

This issue also made it onto Preview’s “Certified Cool” list.

Since I’m not a well known writer IDW wanted a few big names on the issue and they asked me if I had anyone in mind. Since Guy Davis is a friend of mine he offered to do the cover back when I pitched this so I made him fulfill that promise (which he did beyond my expectations). For the interiors I immediately thought of Tom Mandrake who I had worked with on Zombie Prom and the cover of the Safest Place OGN. He agreed to do it because he thought it was fun so this issue is going to look amazing. I’ll of course be providing the colors to it as well.

Here is the actual solicitation for those of you wanting to know what its about:

DOCTOR WHO: BLACK DEATH / WHITE LIFE

Written by Charlie Kirchoff, art by Tom Mandrake, covers by Guy Davis and photo.

After the Doctor and his companion Martha mistakenly land the TARDIS during the Great Plague of London, the discovery of a healer draws them into a mystery that could mean the end of Martha!

32 pages, $3.99.

Since this is my first writing gig I really would like this to do just as well as the rest of the one-shots that have been coming out. So I really hope that you pick this up. If you like Doctor Who or comic books, I think this will be a good buy.

If you haven’t checked the guest list yet, I will once again be at HeroesCon. So, if you’re going to be there this weekend, come say hi. I don’t know my table number yet so you’ll have to look me up in the program. I’ll have prints for sale, cheap comics, and plenty of new Dr. Who and Zombies That Ate The World stuff to check out.

I look forward to seeing everyone there but if you can’t make it you can still join in the fun because I’ll be twittering about it all weekend.

Edit: I’ll be at table 534

Just a reminder to everyone, tomorrow is free comic book day so go to your local comic shop and get your free comics! If you’re in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia come visit me and a few other local creators at Amazing Fantasy Comics.

Click on the image to enlarge

If you can’t make it or you’re not in the Hampton Roads are you can still see what’s going on because I’ll be twittering about it. I’ll probably be twittering via text so I probably won’t reply immediately if you send me a tweet but you can still see what’s going on.

Happy Free Comic Book Day everyone!!!

If you’re in Hampton Roads and would like to see me and other local comic book creators on Free Comic Book Day, here’s where we’ll be at:

Click on the image to enlarge

Angel # 20 comes out this week and here is a preview. I colored the 5 interior pages shown here but not the covers.

This was posted on Lying In The Gutters and RyallTime yesterday so I thought I would do my own post today.

This is a cover I colored last week for Rich Johnston’s up coming Doctor Who: Room with a Deja View one-shot. It was a bit of a rushed job but I’m quite pleased with how it came out. The line art was done by Tom Mandrake. This isn’t the first time I’ve worked with Tom and I should mention it won’t be the last. Keep an eye out for us collaborating again later this year.

I just discovered that the GrandLAN Comic Video Blog reviewed issues 1 and 2 of Zombies! They’re both very positive reviews though I get the impression that they don’t realise that these are reprints but I think that’s a good thing.

With all this talk about Watchmen lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of debate amongst fans as to whether it’s a comic book or a graphic novel. Many of these debates seem to get quite heated. So I just wanted to say to those people, with all due respect, you’re all dumbasses! It’s the same f*cking thing! Arrrrgggg!!!

I think the problem is that the term “graphic novel” has never been well defined. To me a comic book can be either a floppy or TPB but doesn’t need to be a complete story. A 22 paged issue in the middle of an arc is a comic book but not a graphic novel. A graphic novel is a comic book of longer length, I’m uncertain as to what that length is, and contains a full story or arc with a beginning middle and end. So ALL graphic novels are comic books but not all comic books are graphic novels.

Watchmen, in the collected form, IS a graphic novel. So calling it that shouldn’t bother anyone. What should bother you is when people use the term and think it somehow demands more respect than calling it a comic book or if someone says, “It’s not a comic book, it’s a graphic novel.” Because that’s just a fanboy being pompous. But it’s not any less pompous when people rebut and say, “It’s not a graphic novel, it’s a comic book because it was originally released as a 12 issue series.”

I think that’s the crux of the debate. Some people use the term graphic novel to give Watchmen and other TPBs more validity and other fans take offence because they feel that all forms of that comic book are valid. I just hope that they all soon realize that this debate is moot because graphic novels and comic books are the same thing. Once they put this all behind them and get along they can start having fun and go out and get glomped by an cute anime fangirl dressed as Sailor Moon. Good times.

I’m so addicted to my iPod touch. I just got it tuesday and I’ve been using it constantly ever since. I may be on my computer working but when I need to check my email I start up this little sucker! It also let’s me keep up with all my tweets on twitter as well as my messages on myspace.
I originally got this so I could check out the ecomics (or is that iComics?) available on iTunes (that makes this device tax deductable, right?). I had heard that these comics are the future of comics so I figured it was important to check them out. They used to say the same of webcomics but I never liked reading anything in bulk off the computer screen. However reading things off my iPod is very comfortable. I still prefer comics in print but the convenience of reading via a device is undeniable.
Anyways, I just wanted to put that out there and let everyone know how much I love this thing. I would post a pic of it but I’m writing this on my iPod so I’m not sure how to do that yet. I may edit this on my computer later so I can do that.

Edit:

My new baby:

If you want one you can get them on Amazon.com and choose between a 8GB:


Or step up and get a 16GB:


Or go balls to the wall like I did and get the 32GB: