ICBW: At SPX in Bethesda MD

This weekend I attended the Small Press Expo in Bethesda MD and brought a flyer to each and every exhibitor in the hall, telling them about the idea and the site. I met people who ere aware of various aspects of the idea: They had heard about it from Tony Shenton, or they were aware that Diamond was not shipping books that week, but few had all the info.

I talked to everyone I could. If I saw someone wearing a retailer or press badge I called them to my table and hit them with the concept. We should see Indy Spinner Rack doing something on this idea soon.

I asked everyone to talk to their local retailers about getting their books into shops the week after Christmas. Time is shorter than we think. We need to contact our retailers directly, and ask them to put flyers up in their stores. I have a PDF of the flier I handed out that I can email to anyone interested.

If some inspired artist wants to design a poster that can be printed out to display in stores, that might be a good idea. I also think some tee shirts could be made available on a site like Zazzle (and you can set the price so that there is no profit to make them available as cheap as possible.)

The important thing: Over 300 Indy Comic creators were directly approached by me, handed a flier with this websites address, and given a personal pitch about how important this event might be. The next step is to harness the talents and energies of these people into a true grassroots phenomenon that makes Free Comic Book Day look like an old style Marvel skip week.

Solomon Azua 03: Villains!

Not finished turnarounds per se, this is more me working up to them through a design. My Schedule for the book is rather precise, and because of that I'm front loading with all my design work and such to minimize problems in the drawing pages process.

Here I'm working out the design and flow of Cephalopod mechsuits. Mainly it's about finding the proper silhouette and sweep for the design, to keep the weird, alien element of an undersea creature, while still allowing it to convincingly travel on land.

This will be the first book where I upload my entire process from start to finish (probably including each stage of my pages) so I hope everyone digs it. Later in October when I'm working on pages proper I may even live cast while I work.

ICBW: Retailer Update 01

Hey everyone, well ICBW is still growing in fits and starts. We've confirmed now with four shops in the Dallas area. In no particular order: Zeus, Titan, Madness , and Keith's are all willing to put indy books on their new rack for the week of Dec. 30th. To contact any of the aforementioned shops you can call using their numbers provided on the contributors page, visiting the websites of any of the shops and emailing, or just dropping by the stores in person.

If you have a shop in your area and would like to participate in Indy Comic Book Week, tell hem about it! Let them know we will link them here if they support putting indy books on the rack Dec 30th.

Also, remember when you contact shops about your books that every shop will be different in how they want to support, and what kind of deal they're willing to work out with you on your books.

When I'm Good, I'm Good. When I'm Bad, I'm Better!

Girls Love Bad Boys... by Samax. click to enlarge
whaddup, Party people! my name's Samax (pronounced suh MAX) Amen, and i'm trying to drop a couple things for Indy Comicbook Week, but I will DEFINITELY release Spontaneous:2009 my artbook/sketchbook/freestyle comic for all the world to see, adore, and (most importantly) purchase! if you like this pic, rejoice, cuz it will be included, in all its CMYK glory! i'll make sure post some more tidbits here, so you can get pumped for the blessed event, and hopefully i'll have more ICBD news for you before then! if you have any questions, feel free to comment... i'll be around!
holla!
-samax
ghettoManga.com

ICBW: Creators/Retailers

Attention ICBW creators, we need to know which retailers are willing to promote indy books. Any retailer that wants to put indy books on the new comics rack Dec. 30th will be listed on the site as a supporter of Indy Comic Book Week. We'll give the shop location as well as contact information so creators can reach them.

I will be making weekly updated posts on the blog as new retailers join up and we will put their contact info on the site proper as time allows. The first retailer update will be Friday the 25th, so go out there and get me some names.

Retailers may contact me at JakeEkiss [at] gmail.com with the subject line "Indy Comic Book Week Retailer" to be listed on the site.

Thanks everybody, keep working!

SPX this weekend in Bethesda MD

I'm Steve Ahlquist, and I'm hoping to have a book ready for ICBW.

The Small Press Expo is this weekend in Bethesda MD and I will be attending and I'd be willing to hand out fliers about the Indy Comic Book Week. There are likely to be many like minded people there. If any artsy creative types want to come up with a flier, and make it available as a PDF, I'd be more than willing to hand them out table by table.

Check out the Small Press Expo site here.

You can check at my work at steveahlquist.com

Macabro

Hello, everyone. My name is Jose Esquivel. I'm an artist based in Dallas, TX, and I'll be joining in for Indy Comic Book week with a short story called Macabro. Written by my brother, Macabro is a horror story in the vein of Italian films by director Dario Argento. Here are the first two pages of the projects:

This story is 15 pages long, and it will be done in color.

I'll be posting a couple more pages in teh next few weeks.

Thanks!

Solomon Azua 02: Turnarounds

Well, I said there'd be more character stuff coming. Today we've got June Vooday, companion to good ole' Sol throughout the story. Trying to keep a "lived in" sci-fi feel for the costumes and characters here. While I love outlandish sci-fi, and this book will definitely go there, I want the characters to have a rough edge to them.

Next time, VILLAINS!

Solomon Azua 01: Turnarounds

Good day everyone! Since we've got a little over 3 1/2 months until Indy Comic Week I figured I'd start the ball rolling with updates. My name is Jake Ekiss and I'll be contributing a book called Solomon Azua. It's a Pulp sci-fi adventure tale starring the eponymous Solomon, otherwise known as the "luckiest man in the universe".

First post today will be turnarounds for my main character. I'll post stuff for the remaining cast as the week progresses and eventually I'll start uploading layouts and pages for everyone to preview. Thanks for looking, and I can't wait to see what everyone else brings to the table. Let's all make ICBW amazing!

Indy Comic Book Week!

The other month Diamond Comic Distributors announced to comic shops that Diamond will not be shipping comics on the last week of December. That means on Wednesday, December 30th, there will not be any new comics on the shelf of your local comic shop. There has been some talk about Diamond's firm hold on the comic distribution industry, but I want to look past that and look at the opportunity this creates for small publishers and local comic book creators. This is a perfect storm that opens up those new release shelves for the independent community. We don't have to be set aside to the small publisher shelf for once and can stand tall in the spots that the big, national publishers usually take. Not only is this an opportunity for creators, it's a great opportunity for the reader as well. Instead of picking up their usual books, they can check out something new, different, and most likely something local.

So, I'm putting forth this idea to the comic book community. Let's turn "No Comic Book Week" into "Indy Comic Book Week". Creators, let's step up and put those books together. This is our chance to show the world that our books and creations can stand strong on those shelves as well as any major publication. It doesn't have to be a 22-page full color affair; it can be a small black-and-white ashcan. But it has to be new, it has to be a product of your own creation, and it has to be awesome. Then talk to your local comic shops about putting your book on those shelves for the week of December 30th. Comic book readers, go to your local comic shops and tell them you want to see "Indy Comic Book Week" on the new release shelves. Tell them you want to see something new and different on those shelves. Comic book retailers, show some support for your local creators by filling those new release shelves with great indy books and hopefully open up your patrons to something new that they would not have read otherwise.

Let's get the news out there guys. For you twitters out there, use the hashtag #indycomicbookweek to show your comics, your progress shots, and your support for creators and comic shops. This is a great opportunity so let's step up and get it done!