I wish I could say that I had some sort of elaborate April Fool’s Day prank lined up for you guys today. But truthfully, I’ve been so busy preparing for the Kansas City Planet Comicon comic book convention, I didn’t have time to plan ahead.

I wonder if Zach and Mitch are as uptight about preparations as I am?

I won’t have a lot of stuff to sell at the con. I never do. I’ll have a few shirts left over from previous pre-orders to give people a sense of stuff they can buy. If I don’t have their size or the color they would like, I’ll ask them to join my mailing list (no link just yet) and I’ll send out a message to everyone letting them know when I’m doing another round of shirts.

The once facet that I am really prepared for are button sales. I’ve been working overtime the last few weeks putting together packaging for 2 different sets of buttons. I don’t know how well they will be received, but I hope they are a hit. If not, I’ll probably never have to work this hard assembling button packages ever again. I should be set for a long time.

As a side note, once I get back from the convention, I’ll probably start selling merchandise again on the site. So keep an eye peeled for that.

Anyway, if you’re in the Kansas City area tomorrow or Sunday between 10AM and 5PM, come say “Hi.” It should be a good time.

Now onto comic stuff…

I don’t know why, but Wednesday’s comic really seems to have struck a nerve. People in the THorum were complimenting it left and right and it actually got a couple of write ups at I’m Just Sayiny (a web comic review site – scroll down a little to see my entry) and more surprisingly, but no less enthusiastically, Film Rot.

I’m not bringing this up to brag. I’m just not used to people taking notice of the strip outside of the “web comic community” much less writing about it. This must be what it feels like for Jeph…

I feel kind of skittish taking any credit for these compliments, however. Because as I stressed yesterday, Frank Miller is the one who has inspired this work. All I did was parody it.

Odd, isn’t it that I’m apologizing for Wednesday’s strip but doing the exact same thing in today’s strip? I dunno. I guess I picked a winning horse. I’m gonna stick with it for a little while.

Can you believe people wanted me to put the splash panel of yesterday’s comic on a t-shirt? Bordering copyright infringement there, I think!

At any rate, I hope you’ve enjoyed these last two strips. I know I’ve had a lot of fun drawing them. As you can probably tell, I’m a big Frank Miller fan and a big Sin City fan. I actually used to practice by looking at some of the Sin City stuff and drawing replicas. So this has been a little nostalgia treat for me.

I’ll probably do another similarly-styled comic on Monday to capture reactions of the film after I see it on Saturday. So if you like what’s been going on, you have that to look forward to. Maybe I’ll cast Jimmy as The Yellow Bastard!

As for the movie itself… What can be said? Critics really seem to be on board with this one, which pleases me to no end. Not only because it is such a powerful and singular vision brought to the screen. But also because it further legitimizes the artistry of graphic novels.

Besides the recently deceased Will Eisner (R.I.P.) I can think of no other creator than Frank Miller that has done so much for the medium. I mean, between Sin City and The Dark Night Returns, there’s just no comparison!

The film production, too, is so far outside the boundaries of conventional film making, I’m willing to bet film schools are going to cite it as a textbook study in the next 10 years. If this thing takes off, Robert Robert Rodriguez’s “digital backlot” technique could spin things on its head.

I could go on, I suppose. But I think it’s time to let sleeping dogs lie. I’ll probably be back later in the day to discuss the donating incentive artwork I created for February and March.

If you recall, I did Constantine for February and Robots for March. Well… I kinda never got around to coloring the Robots piece, and now it’s April.

Anyway, I have to make reparations for that and will probably be taking this promotion in another direction. More on that later. Stop by again today if it fancies you.

Love to all.