Tarzan A to Z | Zorro

Kill All Monsters at SpringCon

As I mentioned yesterday, my next convention appearance will be at SpringCon in Saint Paul/Minneapolis. That's always a fun, creator-focused show with lots of opportunity for fans to interact with legendary talent from the Golden Age to today. This year's group includes people like Howard Chaykin, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Phil Hester, Dan Jurgens, Ryan Kelly, Pablo Marcos, Ron Marz, Amy Reeder, and Trina Robbins.

There are also lots of great, not-as-legendary creators from the thriving local scene, which is where I come in. I'll be there with some copies of Kill All Monsters and some great prints that Jason made of the book's wraparound cover. Mark your calendar!

Tarzan A to Z | Yeates

[Make sure to visit the Thomas Yeates gallery at Tarzan.org]

Back from C2E2

C2E2 was amazing. It was great to hang out with Jason in person for the the first time in a few years. It never feels like it's been that long, because a) we talk quite a bit online, and b) that's just the kind of friendship we have. It's a similar deal with artist/RPG-creator Grant Gould. I've been going to conventions and rooming with Grant for almost a decade now and he's as nice as he is talented. It's always great to visit with him and catch up.

Also got caught up with a lot of other folks, met some new friends, and got to put faces to names of some other online pals. I'm fearful of starting a list for fear of leaving anyone out, but C2E2 is always like a big family reunion for me and this year was no different.

Kill All Monsters did extremely well at the show. We almost sold out of our supply, but still have several for SpringCon next month. I'm a little concerned about selling out early at SpringCon, but we'll see how that goes.

To clarify: these were a small run of print-on-demand copies that we printed just to have at conventions a little ahead of the official, retail edition. The official version will be printed on an offset press in large quantities for shipment to stores and Kickstarter backers. In terms of content, the two editions are identical and neither are marked to make one more special than the other. The only difference will be a slight upgrade in print quality on the offset version. The POD version looks great, but the offset version should look even better. The only advantage to the POD is getting to hold it in your hands a little sooner.

Let me know if you have any questions about any of this. We're not trying to pull a fast one on anyone and want everyone to have access to exactly what they want as quickly as we can get it to them.

We talked to a couple of retailers at C2E2 and were pleased to hear that it's not just our local shops that are ordering the book. We also had a lot of readers stop by to tell us that either they'd already backed us on Kickstarter or had heard about KAM online. Even people who didn't buy a copy right then were very complimentary and it was just a really pleasant experience meeting so many comics fans. I'm usually running around covering panels and talking to publishers and creators during C2E2, so it was a change getting to sit still and just meet readers for three days. I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Tarzan A to Z | XXX

I am so sorry.

Tarzan A to Z | Weissmuller

I'm at C2E2!

Just a reminder that Jason Copland and I are at table M6 in Artist Alley all weekend at C2E2 with copies of Kill All Monsters. Come say hi!

Multi-taskers hate cephalopods

I feel bad about posting an entire Wondermark strip, so please go enjoy lots more where that came from. Incidentally, my wife will happily tell you that she is the woman this strip is about, so we bought a print of it that's hanging proudly in our foyer.

Tarzan A to Z | Van Dien

Tarzan 101 | Tarzan Triumphant

Celebrating Tarzan's 101st anniversary by walking through Scott Tracy Griffin's Tarzan: The Centennial Celebration.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was experimenting in hyperlink stories long before movies like Pulp Fiction, Magnolia, and Love Actually made them popular. In Tarzan the Triumphant (originally titled Tarzan and the Raiders and then The Triumph of Tarzan; no relation to the Weissmuller film Tarzan Triumphs), Burroughs follows several different characters who start out on separate adventures, but ultimately converge in the jungles of Africa. There's an Amelia Earhart-like aviatrix, a young gangster on the run from the Chicago mob, a Soviet assassin seeking revenge on Tarzan for his actions in Tarzan the Invincible, a hapless geologist, a deserter from the Italian army, and a big game hunter from England. All of these stories intersect with a lost tribe descended from a deranged disciple of the apostle Paul.

It's a lot going on, with barely enough room for Tarzan who flits from story to story rescuing the good characters when needed and interfering with the bad ones.

Griffin's supplemental chapter for this story is about tales of lost races, starting with H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and talking about why the genre became so popular as Western cultures began filling in the blank spots on their maps. Burroughs was obviously in love with the idea and included lost civilizations in all but five of the Tarzan novels. The trend continued into the Tarzan films and even exists in more recent work like Michael Crichton's Congo and the Dinotopia series.

Tarzan A to Z | Ungawa!