Monday, November 14, 2011

I really don't understand people who are clearly in "the 99%" who poop on what is hopefully being achieved by the Occupy Movement. I guess I don't understand their motives or where they're coming from.

It's like half the people are complaining that they're being F'ed in the A, while the other half is saying they either don't feel it, or are perfectly happy being F'ed in the A, as long as someday they too, might find themselves F'ing other A's.

Monday, October 24, 2011

I think being preachy is stupid, and being preachy on the internet is doubly stupid. I'm also told repeatedly not to be political or controversial online, or really even be too opinionated on anything, because people might subsequently not buy my work based on my personal leanings. That kind of makes sense, so I adhere to it, because what do I have to gain when I spout my bullshit, given that I theoretically have something to lose?

But here's an observation. I think when you get married, and you have someone that you call your wife or your husband and not something more general like partner or girlfriend/boyfriend, and you wear a ring to show everyone you have this specific relatonship with this person, you either find yourself so happy you want everyone to be able to share that specific feeling, or you're so happy that you don't want to share it at all with people who aren't like you if you can find a loophole.

I don't have any gay friends. Like, legit, I cannot think of a single person whom I would consider a FRIEND friend, who I know is gay. Well, except one, but he's more a friend of my sister's. What I'm saying is that I'm not really speaking on behalf of anyone other than myself and my, granted, VERY limited point of view, defined pretty much by sitcoms on nbc and abc.

But I know what having a husband or a wife means. And I know it's different from having a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Or a partner. No one thinks about being buried next to their girlfriend or boyfriend. Or visiting grandchildren with their partner. You don't grow up thinking it's about legal titles, you grow up knowing it's a very specific relationship that being a husband or wife, or having a husband or wife entails. And gay people have this relationship too, right? I don't know, maybe they don't, I've never had this conversation with a gay person. I talk to my sister's friend about X-Men, mostly.

I guess my point is there isn't a reason good enough that says a person can't call someone their husband or wife if both people really want to.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Auction is over!

$11,006 going to the American Red Cross to help the people of Japan. Better news: no more auction updates.

Thank you to everyone involved, Rebekah Isaacs, Eric Canete, Rick Remender, Humberto Ramos, Jewel Staite, Jo Chen and Mindy Lee for their donations, and Jason Schachter for dealing with the headaches. You guys are awesome.

Thanks also to everyone who helped promote this, with retweets and facebook updates, mentions in blogs and podcasts, you guys took a little time out to do a whole lot of good. You guys are awesomer!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Hiccup

We apologize.

We had to cancel the second round of auction items due to a hiccup which we didn't foresee from the last round of auctions.

Missionfish, the organization through which we donate the money to the American Red Cross via eBay, is looking for 100% of the sales of each item in the auction, which would be fine on paper, and is what we said we would do.

None of us are doing this to make any money whatsoever.

Unfortunately they do not take into account the 3.5% cut off the final sale price that Paypal takes when they accept the money before they forward it to Missionfish.

Jason has spent the last 24 hours trying to get a hold of the people at Missionfish and they have been uncooperative to say the least. I can understand where they're coming from, but from a principle's standpoint I do not see why they don't see where we're coming from.

To say the least we're a little upset at the way things are turning out. We're being asked to pay money out of pocket to make up the 3.5% for the right to donate the money to Missionfish, which is the only way you can do charitable donations through eBay directly.

Because of the generosity of the bidders and donaters in the last round, and $5855 in sales for the eBay items, we're having to pay over $200 for the PRIVILEGE of donating it directly to the American Red Cross.

We're probably just going to restart the auctions of this next round and say that we're donating 96.5% of the sale to charity. Please know that this is why, and the 3.5% isn't to pay for strippers or anything.

Thank you.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The auction

Hi.

If you're new, this auction is to benefit The American Red Cross, in helping the victims of the devastating earthquake and tsunamis in Japan. They still need our help over there, and this is just me and a few good (emphasis on good) friends in the comic industry's attempt to help out. Some of them had already helped, and a lot of people I asked donations from had already helped out by raising money and awareness to the cause. I was only late in getting my butt in gear because a) I'm really self-absorbed and if it doesn't involve me, I don't usually care about it, and b) my mom was late in telling me to do my part, so really it's all her fault.

Anyway.

I got quite a few donations of some really cool stuff, which I'll go into later. However, it kind of defeated the purpose of my original idea of combining all of the items into one big lot, given that, in order to get the maximum amount of donation dollars possible (oh yeah, 100% of the proceeds go straight to the cause) the winning bidder would have to be the biggest fan of too many varied genres, so I followed the advice of many and separated them into many different lots. I think a lot of prospective bidders also preferred that.

So I'm officially stupid.

I wanted to first of all thank all those who graciously made donations,

Eric Canete

Jo Chen and Jewel Staite

Kurt Wagner

Rebekah Isaacs

Humberto Ramos

Rick Remender

as well as my art dealer Jason Schachter, who is actually the one setting up the auction on ebay and had to catalog and scan everything.

He's also telling me we're going to do a promotion where if you mention the auction when purchasing any interior page I drew on his Essential Sequential art website we donate 50% of the sale to The American Red Cross as well, plus you get a 20% discount on the pages you buy. So thanks for that, Jason. Maybe run it by me before you decide on stuff like that next time.

This isn't everything though. There's still a few items like my X-Men #204 cover and Uncanny X-Men 495 cover, as well as a few awesome things still coming in that haven't been scanned in yet, but I wanted to get the ball rolling. We're going to be splitting the auction into two parts, with the first part starting EVENING of SUNDAY the 24th of APRIL.

Stay tuned!

Remender the Titan



Yeah, I'm sorry about the title. But it's 4:30 in the morning and I've been at my desk all day and all night.

Anyway.

I have to admit that I'd originally had my doubts about this storyline. I'm a huge fan of the incredible Garth Ennis Max run, so the idea of The Punisher becoming a Frankenstein's Monster-type thing really did not appeal to me. But way too many people were recommending it to me so I buckled and finally bought it.

Holy frig.

Okay, if you're familiar with Rick's writing, he has this uncanny ability to slip "holy crap" moments into a story without drawing too much attention to it, which could take a reader out of the story. He does a perfect balancing act of making the really incredible also believable in the context of the story, and that's the whole awesomeness of this book. It's a definitely MARVEL story while being completely true to the character of Frank Castle as the Punisher, which starts off with a "I can't believe they did that" moment gorgeously rendered by John Romita Jr. and plunges him face-first into the world of the Marvel Monsters. As a re-animated cyborg.

But you can bet your sweet a$$ it's still a Frank Castle story.

So in short, I loved it. And here, you'll have the opportunity to get a signed copy of the beautiful hardcover edition. You will not want to take this baby into the bathroom. Nope, this is the kind of BOOK book that you read in the study, in your robe, while carefully sipping on a champagne flute of Mountain Dew.

It's Frank Castle as Frankenstein's Monster. And it totally makes sense. You'll love it too, I promise you.