San Diego, here I come!

I just got word from the Small Press Committee that I was approved for a table in the small press area of The San Diego Comic Con. YAHOO!

I've got to hustle to get some stuff together by then. Xiola production has been slower than expected, but such is life. If I can get together a Xiola preview book as a giveaway, then I'll be happy. Now I can focus on the goal of getting as much finished on this book as possible before July.

I still have not finished the layout of the first issue. ARGH! Laying out pages takes a long time. I go back and relayout often, finding better ways of telling the story. I recently reread Katsuhiro Otomo's "Domu" and I fell in love with his simple panel approach. He tells the story slowly, over many panels, often nine panels to a page, broken into three three-panel sections, the top, middle and bottom, like this.

He'll often have the splash page or large panel, but the layout is clean. I like this classic looking layout style, and hope to transfer some of this feeling into "Xiola."