Back to School!

The long summer is over, and it's time to get back to work. It's been a good break--lots of traveling (Texas, Alabama, Chicago, Slovenia, France), got a lot of quality work done, and recharged my batteries for the upcoming school year.

I'm teaching three courses, as usual--Introduction to Political Science, Introduction to World Politics, and Middle East Politics, and all three of them are pretty large. So lots of students, which means lots of tests to grade, lots of questions to answer, and lots of papers to read.

One of the things that's imperative for me this year is not to spread myself to thin. I did WAY to much last year, and I could feel the fatigue, both physically and mentally, at year's end. So I've dropped a committee, tried to loosen a bit of responsibility, and don't have a couple of South Africans to help out.

Too Much World of Warcraft Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

School starts on Wednesday, which means it's time for me to go back to work. Fortunately, I am pretty well-prepared at this point. Syllabi are done, courses are ready to go. It's a good feeling not to be scrambling at the last minute.

What this has meant, however, is that I have been playing a lot of World of Warcraft this week. A LOT of WoW. Now, I am not what you would call a hard-core WoW-er. I play once a week with my friends (on Tuesdays) for about four hours. That's very mild my gamer standards.

But...

The last three days or so I have been averaging around seven hours a day. Hey, why the heck not--I have the time, I enjoy the game; why not cut loose a little for a few days of hard-core dork-dom? And I've gotten my highest toon from 61 to almost 64 in that spell.

Good stuff!

Olympic Fever? You Bet...Sort of.

The Olympics are here--and, relatively speaking, I'm happy and enjoying them. Being an internationalist by trade, I like the color, the different countries, the competition, and seeing sports that I don't normally get to see in the USA.

There are some things I absolutely HATE about the NBC broadcast, though:

1. The American bias: yes, I know this one is something I probably can't change, given where I live. But I am interested in people and athletes regardless of what country they are from. To sound sappy, the human spirit goes beyond any artificial borders.

2. The announcers and commentary: shut up, already. Let me watch the competition and come to my own conclusion. And the color commentators, who usually are ex-athletes in whatever event is being broadcast, are just loudmouthed know-it-alls who hurt the quality more than enhance it.

3. The focus on particular sports: beach volleyball does nothing for me. I like gymnastics, but not to the degree everyone else seems to. And I'm ready to fight Michael Phelps as much as he's on the boob tube.

There is redemption for NBC, however, and it is the internet broadcast. Not only is there a wide selection of sports to choose from (I've been enjoying Archery, which is almost NEVER on network TV), but it is commentary-free, which means you can hear the same sounds that you would if you were there without some tool telling us what to think about it and what it means for someone's medal hopes. So it's a nice, pure way to watch the event.

Overall I'm enjoying it, particularly because I have a choice of how I want to watch.

I Think We're Working Again

Okay, I think everything computer-wise is fixed. At least I hope so.

My computer is back to normal, and in fact is running better than it has in a long time. Of course, much of that is due to there being a new, unspoiled hard drive.

The bad news, however, is that I am terrible at remembering to back up my hard drive, so I lost a lot of data. Most of the really important stuff I had on my laptop or one of my thumb drives, but the biggest casualty was my music. I'm not sure how I will get it all back yet--I wish iTunes would just let you re-download songs you've bought previously. Hell, they keep a record of it.

My PC is Broke-ded!

Yesterday my PC was slain by Microsoft.

We had some bad weather in the area, and I was involved in my weekly World of Warcraft session. Windows was doing one of those irritating automatic updates, and then the power flickered, causing my computer to shut off.

Not thinking much of it, I turned it back on, only to be greeted with blue screen hell that indicates your CPU could explode at any minute. I tried to use Safe Mode, also to no avail.

So I called tech support, and after talking to someone from the Philippines for an our and pretty much getting nowhere (other than a confirmation that the brownout during the Windows update was probably the culprit, I feared the worst--a zapped computer with unrecoverable files. I'm bad at infrequent at backing up my files, so I'm terrified of the possibilities.

Ironically, the same thing killed my wife's computer about a year or so ago.

I took the unit to a local repair joint, where they told me the hard drive was responsive, and they felt optimistic that everything could be recovered. They'll run a diagnostic, put the hard drive contents on my external drive, and reload Windows, assuming that everything goes smoothly.

Here's hoping it can be resurrected. And I'll definitely eliminate that automatic update shit (and buy a battery update) so this won't happen again.

Wizard World Chicago Report

I know I am doing this out of order a little, but I thought I'd give a brief report on Wizard World Chicago, even though it's already been a week since I was there.

The wife and I arrived in town on Wednesday, for the primary purpose of catching a Cubs game at Wrigley field. We're both baseball fans, and a visit to Wrigley (or Comiskey) is a must when we are at the show. For once on a visit to a ballpark, the home team won, and I gorged myself on ballpark food, which is always a good thing.



At the show itself, we had a large booth--20'long, and in a nice spot. Setup was pretty easy, although there are always a few snafus along the way.



Sales were good, as Chicago is always our best show of the year, and we had lots of creators to help out, although we were a little short on artists this year.

I did manage to snag sketches from all three of the artists I wanted. Bob Layton, Art Baltazar, and (another) Matt Kindt.





The highlight of the show, however, was spending a little time at the bar with Bob Layton, the creator whose run on Iron Man in the late 1970s and early 1980s is what turned me into a permanent comic book fan. We hung out and talked for like three hours, and I gave him a little Ape swag in hopes that he'd dig our work. Overall, a fun show, and I look forward to next year as well.

Getting Caught up on Things

I'm back from Huntsville, and am actually going to be around for a couple of weeks before my next excursion. I'm not going to San Diego this year, but SubCulture artist Stan Yan will be at his own booth in Artists' Alley, plus I am sure he will make a few appearances at the Ape Entertainment booth to sell and sign any copies of the SubCulture comic that you might wish to purchase.

Speaking of, supplies of the comic mini-series are starting to dwindle, so if you haven't read the original story yet, now might be the time to pick it up. You can get all four issues for only twelve bucks in the online store.

Work on the TBP continues to go smoothly. We're lining up a few new pinups for the book. So far confirmed are David Dwonch, Super Ugly, Lonnie Allen, David Hedgecock (Gargoyles) and Alex Robinson (Too Cool to be Forgotten)! I'm also working on deals with Pat Lewis (The Claws Come Out) and John Lucas (Exterminators). I'm also sure that a couple of chaps from Stan's Squid Works studio will come through as well. Keep your eyes here for more updates.

Stan and I also are still deciding how we want to collect the webstrips. We are approaching 50 strips, which means we have enough to put into floppy form, should we so desire. If we do floppies, we'll end up putting out two a year, given the current frequency of the strip. A book, should we go that route, clearly would be more infrequent.

Heroes Con Report: And Next Stop--Wizard World Chicago

Heroes Con has come and gone, and it remains one of my favorite shows of the year. Not only is it close to my home, but it has a spectacular guest list. This year I really wanted to meet and get a sketch from Guy Davis, artist of B.P.R.D. The fact that his sketches ended up being free was icing on the cake.

I was set up with the booth for Ape Entertainment, and I couldn't have had a worse location--I was in the far corner, in a dark recess, with a lower ceiling than the rest of the hall. The place was warm as it was, but the lower ceilings made it that much hotter. Fortunately I was next to the guys from ComicGeekSpeak, which made things more bearable. Sales were good, which helped as well. I got some great sketches, which will be posted at http://www.comicsketchgallery.com/pages/kfreeman.

It's always nice to see old acquaintances and fellow publishers--Danielle Corsetto, Jim Mahfood, Chris Pitzer, Matt Kindt, and others. I'm sure I will cross paths with them at Wizard World Chicago this weekend as well.

The wife and I head out to Chicago on Wednesday. We're catching the Cubs game that night (vs. the Orioles--I hate interleague), then it's to work thereafter. We've got 20 feet of table space, same as last year, so the Ape presence should be sizeable. It's always our best show of the year. And, to make matters even better, Stan and I will be together at the booth, signing books for your pleasure. Drop by and say hello!

On my sketch list for Chicago: Bob Layton, Art Baltazar, Bruce Timm (yeah, right). Wish me luck!

I'm Interviewed on Comicrelated.com!

Chuck Moore, a friend of Ape Entertainment and a follower of my webstrip, took the time to interview me for his podcast, ComicRelated, on Saturday at Heroes Con. You can listen to the podcast in its entirety at

http://www.comicrelated.com/audio/relatedrecap012.html

His talk with me is right at the tail end of the podcast. Chuck is a genuine fellow and has given a lot of Ape books, including mine, a lot of love over the months.

Bats in My Belfrey

The Orkin man dropped by for his monthly checkup, where he sprays for all sorts of bugs. He told us today, however, that we have bats in our chimney. Now, I have heard squeaking in the fireplace for the last couple of weeks, but I assumed it was our gas hot water heater, which gurgles, bubbles, and whistles on occasion (and is immediately behind the chimney in the house). However, we did the two-person check, and sure enough, the noise wasn't coming from the hot water heater.

We were told by the previous owners of the house that the chimney had been plugged. But there definition of "plugged" might not be the same as mine.

While bats in and of themselves don't bother me, there is a small risk of them swooping into the house, and a small chance of mites, which bats often carry, getting in the house as well, which is a much more serious problem.

So we're going to investigate what we can do to get them out of there. It might be as simple as shining a light in the chimney, but it's never that simple, is it?

Heroes Con This Weekend!

The summer convention season begins in earnest for me as this weekend is Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. It's both the closest con to my house (it's about a two hour drive for me) and arguably my favorite con of the year. Why? Lots of reasons. For one thing, it's a very friendly con--Sheldon and his crew take very good care of the guests and exhibitors.

Second, it's an accessible show. That means that it's not overly crowded. Anyone who has been to San Diego knows exactly what I mean--it's so crowded there that you can't move on occasion, much less meet guests, go to panels, or heaven forbid, go through the dollar boxes on the floor. Heroes Con doesn't have that problem. The number of people, and the space available for those people, is just about perfect.

Third, it has the best charity auction in comics. Everyone, from the big names to the small ones, usually do a piece for the auction. Granted, stuff from Adam Hughes and a few others goes for ridiculous money, but many of the pieces are very affordable and very good. You'll even get a chance to see some of the people creating their charity pieces before your very eyes--it's fun to watch.

Fourth and finally, it's a very indie friendly show. Tons of small press people are there, and the crowd is very indie-appreciative. That usually makes for a profitable week for most of them.

If you're at the show, I'll be at table SP-31. Come by, say hello, and buy a few books!

Summer Travel Schedule Heats Up

Well, we've five weeks into summer now and so far it's been pretty relaxing. I've been able to catch up on both my sleep and my reading, which were two things high on the list for summer. But starting this weekend, the major traveling begins. Just look at this mess:

June 17-20: Heroes Con, Charlotte, NC
June 23-28: Wizard World Chicago
June 30-July 4: wife's family reunion, Huntsville, AL
July 17-20: My 20-year high school reunion, Kansas City, MO
July 21-25: World International Studies Conference presentation, Ljubljana, Slovenia
July 26-Aug 1: Short holiday in Paris

Needless to say, I will be on the road more than I am at home for the next six weeks. Most of it will be fun activities rather than work, per se, but still, it's a lot of time out of the house, and a lot of time on a plane. I dislike flying.

Europe, One Way or Another

Soccer fans will note that Euro 2008 started earlier this week. While the World Cup may be a more "exciting" tournament due to the worldly nature or it, Euro 2008 is arguably a tougher one to win. There are no patsies here--every team is talented. And the best thing is, for the first time, all of the games are broadcast live and free (assuming you have cable). It used to be pay-per-view.

Finally, my Europe trip is taking all kinds of twists and turns. Originally, I was going to Slovenia with a colleague, then we were going to take a few extra days to visit Prague and Vienna. My partner had to cancel, leaving me by myself. As we all know, traveling is more fun with friends, so I thought about going to Istanbul, where a good friend of mine lives. Unfortunately, she was going to be in China then.

I have another old friend from college who usually is in Europe at times during the summer, so I emailed him with the longshot hopes of him being somewhere in Europe when I am going to be there. Turns out he'll be in Paris, and would love to see me for a few days. And to make matters even better, the wife is going to go and meet me in Paris as well. Looks likes things are going to turn out pretty good!

I'm Going to Get Better About This: I Promise!

I keep forgetting that I have a blog. Things come up, I get distracted, and simply forget. But those are bullshit excuses, I realize.

One thing is going to help, though. I finally have linked this blog to the SubCulture webpage. That means that every time I post a new SubCulture strip, I will see that BLOG link staring me in the face and it should remind me to update.

No promises to do it every day, but twice a week--the same amount I update the webstrip, I think is reasonable.

We'll get started on this officially tomorrow :)

Home Alone...and Staring at the Computer and boob tube WAY Too Much!

My wife is spending the week in Panama City, Florida with her mom, sister, sister-in-law, and niece, which means I am here on the homefront by myself. But am I living the bachelor's life? Hardly. Most of the time has been spent watching TV--particularly the Euro 2008 soccer tournament (I am a huge soccer fan) or working on comic-related stuff, whether it is this website, a couple of scripts I am working on, or editing future releases for Ape Entertainment or Comics NOW!

It has been so damn hot here that I really don't want to go anywhere. I gassed up the car, picked up some Pepsi, and went to the post office once, but that's about it. I guess a good part of that is that I am staying out of the fast food joints, which is easy to do when I am by myself for prolonged periods of time.

New Blog...You can Leave Comments now!

I hope for everyone's sake this works...

Here's the backlog of old posts just so everyone can stay up to date.

Friday, March 21, 2008

March Madness is Here!

This is way off topic, I realize, but this is my favorite time of the year for sports. Not only is baseball season about to start, but soccer season is starting to wind down and relegation and promotion battles are heating up, and, of course, the annual college basketball tournament--arguably the greatest annual event in sport--has arrived. I love it when the cinderellas win, except when it's my team that's playing, of course.

So if you have a kind shred in your soul and/or heart and root for Vandy as we play the Siena Saints tonight. You know it's the right thing to do ;)

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Advert Space Now Available!

SubCulture now has ad space available, via Project Wonderful, for anyone who would like to promote their stuff, whatever it might be, with us. We've got our fingers crossed that this will generate a little income and help us to keep the strip going for as long as possible.

Stan and I also completed our first full-color strip for ComicsNOW! Magazine. Look for it in Issue 3, which is solicited in this month's Previews.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Help Us Out!

We're trying to get more hits for the webstrip and make more people aware of it being around. One of the things I did was register SubCulture with a bunch of the Webstrip circles and sites on the internet.

If you're bored, and have nothing else to do, go to the links below the blog and click on them. Give SubCulture a vote, or add it to your favorites if you are so inclined. It will move SubCulture up the list, and hopefully result in even more its and even (dare I say it) advertisements at some point.

Thanks again, and we're glad you're enjoying the strip.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Back to Work

I'm back from Aruba and back to work again. I definitely could have used another few days, but hopefully I'm recharged enough to get me through the rest of the semester. I highly recommend Aruba as a place where you can do very little, and still feel satisfied.

On an unrelated note, it doesn't look like either of us are going to make New York ComicCon. However, Stan has added the Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland to his schedule. I'll be in Pittsburgh that same weekend.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Still On Vacation!

Heading home tomorrow, but I really don't want to think about that right now. Spring Break has been great, and my batteries are recharged to (hopefully) get me through the rest of the school year. Enjoy today's strip, and please, tell Stan and I whether or not you are enjoying them.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

I'm On Vacation!

I'm in beautiful Aruba this week for Spring Break. But never fear. Today's and Friday's new strips will go up without fail. So sit back and enjoy!

Friday, February 29, 2008

Things Looking Good!

Judging by the number of hits we got on Tuesday, there certainly does seem to be some interest in the goings-on amongst Jason, Arthur, Noel, and the gang. Here's hoping momentum continues, hits continue to rise, and we can sustain the strip indefinitely. We've already gotten a nice writeup from the friendly folks at comicrelated.com. SubCulture also was featured on the comixtreme podcast, Episode 57. Give it a listen! It's about two-thirds of the way into the podcast, in their featured picks.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Welcome to the SubCulture Webstrip!

Stan and I have been talking about this for a while--turning SubCulture from a traditional comic to a full-time webstrip. We both believed that the subject material would translate well into this format, and there certainly are tons of untold stories that are begging to see the light of day. So, with the blessing of our friends at Ape Entertainment, today marks the official launch of the SubCulture webstrip.

We've decided to start the strip out at twice a week. This is enough for us to have regular updates, but not too much so we can have time to do other things as well. Should demand warrant more, and, should the strip start to generate a little revenue, we'll discuss increasing the frequency with which we create this. Twice a week is enough for us also to gauge whether or not it will be popular enough for us to keep things going for a while. So much of this depends on you, our current and future fans.

We do have plans to print these strips on paper, whether it be through a regular floppy or a more infrequent book format. We love working on SubCulture, and hope you all will enjoy the ride with us.

Thanks for watching!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Webstrip Officially Launches February 26!

Stan and Kevin have been working hard on new strips, and they are tickled to announce that the first new strip will launch February 26th, and new strips will follow every Tuesday and Friday. In preparation, the first six promotional strips, done last summer, will be rerun and serve as the first in what we hope to be a long, continuous streak of new material. Hope you join us!

Sunday, February 15, 2008

SubCulture to be Strip in ComicsNOW! Magazine!

Beginning with issue 3 of ComicsNow! Magazine, SubCulture will be a regular strip. Stan and I are hashing out the details..in particular, do we want the strip to be in color? I would love to get everyone's take on this--should we go with the norm and have the strip in black and white as the comic series, or should we do something a little different and have the strip in color, similar to what Danielle Corsetto is doing with Girls With Slingshots? Keep up with all the action at www.iwantmycomicsnow.com.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

SubCulture Named Indy Series of the Year by ComicFanatic.com!

The good folks over at ComicFanatic.com have given SubCulture one of their year-end Fanny awards as Best Indie Series of 2007. To quote the site: "One of the best stories I have read in years, SubCulture is a book like no other. No super-powered superheroes. No horror or sci-fi. Writer Kevin Freeman and artist Stan Yan's SubCulture is just a book about the all-too-real life of the comic book geek. Think "Clerks" for the comic book set, or "The Breakfast Club" for the comic book bunch. If you can't honestly see something of yourself somewhere in SubCulture, you must not be a true Comic Fanatic." See it for yourself here.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

SubCulture Named Indy Series of the Year by ComicFanatic.com!

The good folks over at ComicFanatic.com have given SubCulture one of their year-end Fanny awards as Best Indie Series of 2007. To quote the site: "One of the best stories I have read in years, SubCulture is a book like no other. No super-powered superheroes. No horror or sci-fi. Writer Kevin Freeman and artist Stan Yan's SubCulture is just a book about the all-too-real life of the comic book geek. Think "Clerks" for the comic book set, or "The Breakfast Club" for the comic book bunch. If you can't honestly see something of yourself somewhere in SubCulture, you must not be a true Comic Fanatic." See it for yourself here.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

SubCulture to become Webstrip!

Stan and Kevin have agreed in kind to continue SubCulture as an ongoing, twice-a-week webstrip. This frequency could increase, depending on the ultimate popularity of the strip and sales, via advertising or merchandise, that is generated as a result. Stay tuned for a site update. Look for strips beginning the first quarter of 2008!

Click here for Archived Announcements and News

Test

Test, test. This is only a test. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.