Wondercon

I'll be bringing a bunch of copies of Wanderings with me to the Wondercon the weekend of the 28th to hand out. I recommend if you've got free time that weekend, to go visit Wondercon. It's a fun, smaller convention than San Diego. There's a little more breathing room, and if you get claustrophobic, you can always head on over to the Cartoon Art Museum and check out the Coraline puppet and model exhibit. I haven't seen it yet, but I hear it's great.

I had a couple of storyboard gigs the last few nights, so my comic production is on pause. I should get back to Xiola by Friday. Stay tuned.

Here's Cho, the Emperor's man-at-arms. He's a completely loyal general who has no ambition for the throne. He's been friends with the Emperor since the Emperor was a young warrior in the previous Emperor's army. Though a trusted and valued leader, he wears the simple helmet of an infantry soldier. This and the fact that he always fights with his men and never behind them has earned the respect of his army. The army obeys the Emperor out of fear, but they would die for Cho because they see him as one of their own.

Robel

I said I was going to post this character a while back, but forgot.

I've designed this character a bunch of times, but I'm really starting to have fun with this version. He kind of looks like a cross between a native american and a Singhalese devil dancer. This character is Robel, the chief of the Flyers, a select group of Sidians who have mastered gliding. As the Sidian live among huge cliffs and rock monuments, they are adept climbers, but over the centuries they developed a method of gliding a short distance down a cliff without doing harm to themselves. They wear a series of robes which are folded intricately over their legs. Two rings clipped to their belts keep their robes in place until removed and stretched out unfolding the robes into their wing-like form.

The Sidian Flyers believe that the great vulture spirit guides taught this skill to their ancestors. The Flyers act as messengers between clans and regions. They are trained in gliding, as well as speech and writing, and are able to recite word for word the orders of their masters. Robel is introduced in the first issue. He is a secondary, but important character in the story.

Every story has a bad guy

This is the main bad guy in Xiola: Sacrifice of the Sidian. He is a mighty leader who is conquering his way across Xiola. The son of a simple farmer, he fought his way through the ranks of Emperor Domon, finally commanding the largest army in the empire and taking over the kingdom in a mighty coup. He ate the heart of the Emperor, claimed lordship over all his lands and declared himself the God of the Rising Sun. He is now set on a quest to conquer all the known world. Only two great cities remain, Persa and Tamil. And between those two cities lies the desert people of Sidia about whom this story takes place.

I've obviously got a Mongolian theme going on with this guy. I'm going to take Mongolian designs and reimagine them a bit, but part of my original concept for the story was based off Genghis Khan, so it is only right that I give credit where credit is due. I love the old European illustrations of Mongols as creepy headless people with faces on their chests, and other drawings of Mongols eating the hearts of their victims. All of Europe and Asia were so scared of the Mongolian raids that the Mongolians were dehumanized in their descriptions. They were thought to be demons.

Yet the Mongols, and especially Genghis Khan had their own strange views on right and wrong. And sometimes Genghis would even show mercy to those who fought bravely against him.

All of these details make for an interesting bad guy.

"Wanderings" is complete

I've had a proof made from a printer and sent it down to the San Diego Comic Con board. I haven't even seen it. My wife Analia picked up the proof and mailed it today while I was at work. I will be checking out a second proof hopefully tomorrow, if not this weekend. Once I've checked the proof I'm going to have a bunch of copies printed up. I'll be handing them out to friends and giving them away to comic book shops to give to their customers as a promotional material.

I am working with a local printer called 4th Street Press in San Rafael. I've only talked to the owner over the phone, but he's been real easy to deal with so far.

I'm not sure how many copies of Wanderings I want to print up. It's kind of a financial decision at this point. How much can I afford to just give away? We used to give a ton of books away and only sell to stores when I was in Xero Comics. We even printed up a preview edition of Xiola one year especially to give away at the San Diego Comic Convention.

I wrote a price on the back of the book as $.95 just in case I wanted to sell them, but at that price I might as well give them away. We'll see. Marketing is a strange game that I haven't fully mastered. I do know that everyone loves supporting a local, so my first plan is just to give away to local stores and get myself known at least in the San Francisco Bay Area. Once I've got some sort of readership/street cred, then I can move around a bit more freely within the comic scene.

So hopefully I'll get the book printed up this weekend and you'll be picking up a copy from me real soon, or you'll pick it up in your local shop. Take it easy.

"Wanderings" is with the printer

I dropped my files off with the printer yesterday. He should have a proof for me by tomorrow which I'll Fedex down for Friday's deadline. Here's hoping everything works out.