Michael goes Mondo (Sasquatch)

Casey Criswell (Cinema Fromage) has announced a Bigfoot anthology that he's co-editing with Louis Fowler (Damaged 2.0) and Rod Lott (Bookgasm, Flick Attack). As the title Mondo Sasquatch suggests, it's a collection of sasquatchian short fiction, which would make it worth picking up even if it didn't have an awesome cover by Jim Rugg (Afrodisiac) and I didn't have a story in it.

But it does and I do. So even better!

When Fowler opened the door for submissions, here's how he described what they were looking for:

Anyone can do a typical Bigfoot-scares-teen-campers tale…we want something different. Stories can put the creature in any time or any place or any situation, as long as it is entertaining! Think your story is too “B-movie”? Chances are we’ll like it even better. Think your “take” is too insane? We want to read it!

So, yeah. Should be a lot of fun.

I certainly had fun with mine. It's called "Bigfoot and the Bone Face Murders" and it's a Western steampunk murder mystery with Bigfoot as the detective. The first sentence goes, "Bigfoot came to Wolf’s Creek looking for the man who killed his bear."

The book's scheduled for a May release and I'll definitely keep you updated as new details are revealed. For now, check out Cinema Fromage for the full list of authors and story titles.



Speaking of hairy creatures, new Kill All Monsters! pages are up and the Kill Team runs into a monster considerably smaller than the kind they usually fight. Too bad they aren't in their robot suits at the time.

Land of the Lost: Season Three (Series Finale: Medicine Man)

Season One: Part One, Two, and Three.
Season Two: Part One and Two.
Season Three: Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, and Twelve..

Episode 13: “Medicine Man”

The last episode of the series starts off on the right foot with Holly and Cha-Ka’s cooking dinner for the family. In a reference to a first season episode, Cha-Ka observes, “Cha-Ka like stone soup more better.” We’ve established that these are an alternate reality’s version of the Season One characters, but it’s nice to be reminded that some things are the same.

There’s also some genuinely funny banter between the two of them, but while they’re inside the temple gathering vegetables, someone makes off with their pot of water. When Jack and Will return with firewood, Jack goes into the jungle to search for the thief and is attacked by an American Indian in traditional clothing. Jack beats the Indian easily and it’s only then that the Indian realizes that Jack isn’t who he thought he was.

The Indian explains that his name is Lone Wolf and that he was trying to get back to his tribe with some medicine for a fever epidemic that's killing them. He’d ridden into a dust storm, was thrown from his horse, knocked unconscious, and woke up in the Land of the Lost. He admits to stealing the water to make some traditional medicine for himself, because he also has the fever and the White Man’s medicine he was carrying is in his saddlebags with the horse, wherever that is.

Luchadores Hate Cephalopods

[Brother Cal]

Amazon of the Week: Wonder Woman

Meant to get this posted yesterday. Oops.

I've been resisting featuring Wonder Woman as Amazon of the Week for no other reason than she's an easy, obvious choice. But if I keep putting her off, she's just going to become the Elephant in the Room that I'm trying hard not to talk about, so I might as well get her out of the way. After all, she's obvious for a reason.

I've already talked at length about the comic book version, so I think today I'll focus on the TV version instead. That's the way that most people - myself included - first experienced her.

Like a lot of guys who grew up in the '70s, I had a huge crush on Lynda Carter as a kid. I'd be lying if I said that her costume wasn't part of the show's attraction, but it wasn't the main draw. She was a superhero and I was all about the superheroes. I couldn't afford a lot of comics, but I could watch TV for free, so she and The Incredible Hulk and Super Friends and re-runs of Batman and The Adventures of Superman were my first and primary exposure to a lot of these characters.

In spite of the gender difference, I never saw Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman as being different from the other heroes, which is pretty remarkable considering the times. That's not reflective of any especially enlightened thinking on my part; it's all to the credit of the show and how the character was written. Wonder Woman was as capable and heroic as any other superhero on TV and she never mooned over Steve Trevor or any other man. She was obviously fond of him, but I always got the feeling that she was laughing at him a little bit (and Lyle Waggoner's Steve Trevor was very often laughable in his ineptitude; when he was head of the IADC, his first reaction to a villain's scheme was always, "Let's call the police!"). Without preaching or even really mentioning it out loud, the show taught me that women could be strong and independent and I've enjoyed knowing women like that ever since.

Ben Caldwell's Dracula

Ben Caldwell sent me this picture from his excellent book, All-Action Classics: Dracula, easily the best comics adaptation of Stoker's tale ever published. If you at all consider yourself a Dracula fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

And because Ben's awesome, he also sent some behind-the-scenes designs and other miscellanea for us to look at. It's from an art book he's putting out for all the All-Action Classics he's done. Cannot wait to see that.

Con Tour 2011

I think I've got my convention schedule figured out for the rest of the year:



C2E2 is in a couple of weeks (March 18-20) and I'll be there to write about it for Robot 6. With any luck, I'll have some Kill All Monsters! ashcans with me too. Since I'm there as press, I won't have a table, but there are a few panels I know I'll be going to:

• Archaia Presents: How to Make a Great Indie Graphic Novel (Saturday, 2:30 - 3:30 pm)
• Webcomics Roundtable (Satuday, 4:30 - 5:30 pm)
• The Lost Genre: Getting Wild with Jungle Comics (Sunday, 2:30 - 3:30 pm)

Those won't be the only ones, certainly, but those are my Can't Misses. If I can make it to the Oni and Dynamite panels, I will, and there are a few writing ones that sound interesting, particularly the one on Horror comics from a writer's perspective.

Anyway, if you spot me, please stop me and say hello even if you don't want to buy a KAM! book. Running into people from online is one of the best parts of conventions.



I've sent in my RSVP and confirmed that I'll be attending SpringCon again this year as a Guest Creator on May 21-22. I should have KAM! ashcans there as well to sell. Mine probably won't have a Jason Copland original sketch inside, but you can still own a printed version of Chapter 1 for your very own.

I'm also planning to attend FallCon on October 15, but that's barely a gleam in anyone's eye yet. I don't expect to be able to confirm anything until probably around the end of summer.



Finally, I'm especially excited that I'm going to be one of the curators at the Minneapolis Indie Xpo on November 5-6. That was a great show last year and it's going to be awesome to be one of the people bringing in artists for it this year. I'll probably have more to say about this as I learn more. Right now, I'm just really, really thrilled.

Kill All Monsters! update

Kill All Monsters! continues to update every Friday and if you haven't checked in in a while, now would be a good time. The Kill Team are out of their Bots and exploring Paris on foot. Even though they've got rid of the giant monsters plaguing the city, that doesn't mean all danger is past, as they'll soon see. And their being on the street also means that we get to see Jason's glorious, up-close depictions of the ruins of Paris. If you at all dig post-apocalyptic adventure, this should scratch that itch very satisfyingly.

I think I've finally hit on a nice formula for the KAM! blog too. The original tagline for it was Not Just a Production Blog, but I feel like I went too far in the other direction and made it Not At All a Production Blog, so I'm working to correct that. Next week I'm going to start sharing stories of how KAM! has developed from concept to its current form and I've already started linking to Jason's process posts that he's been doing on his own blog. Not that I'm abandoning the extra stuff like art posts and links to giant monster and giant robot comics.

I'll also link to reviews and KAM! got some cool ones this week. Jay from the Exonauts blog (and a frequent commenter here) has some extremely nice things to say about the comic and Steve Niles gave us a mention in his weekly Creator-Owned Spotlight column at Robot 6. Much thanks to Jay and Steve for not only reading, but for writing about it too.

I am on a drug.

Create your own Charlie Sheen-inspired Stark-Raving Mad Lib.

Captain Cutler Hates Cephalopods

[Admiral Cal] [Captain Cutler]

Cownt-Bat

One of Gavin Spence's early drawings of the Cownt in his bat form. And further proof that Gav is a mad genius.

Amazon of the Week: Deadly Little Miho

I'm not sure I can explain what's so cool about Miho from Sin City.

So cold. So deadly. So mysterious. Trying to describe what makes her cool is like trying to describe why you like Wolverine. "I don't know. She's just cool!" Only she's not completely overcooked the way he is. She's new. She's fresh. She's drawn by Frank Miller.