Showtime!

FINALLY.... Random Ink #1 has been reprinted as a full-size comic with a new color cover! This is pretty dang exciting for us simple folk. We've been making mini-comics since junior high, but this is the first time one of our books has been professionally printed. Cool stuff.

Anyway, this issue contains all of these stories from the mini-comic version:

-"Bullets and Bedpans": The FIRST Rook City tale. What happens when anti-hero vigilantes get old? It ain't pretty...

-"Leaf": The brief adventures of a falling leaf.

-"Dark Was the Night": The sad but true tale of blues legend Blind Willie Johnson.

-"The Last Martian": Episode One. Not everyone is happy about the Mars Rover project...

-"Intervention": In this illustrated prose short story, a desperate man in a ruined future searches for a way to change the past. But will he find it before his own fate catches up to him?

PLUS... this new edition also includes the "Sleuth" Rook City story and new pinup by Dustin Roberts. If you want to order this issue, just click here to go to our online printer, Indy Planet. You can also see more preview pages there.

Well, we finished posting the "Bullets & Bedpans" story last week, and it has been restored to its rightful place in the Rook City archive: first. This week we begin an all-new storyline with "Showtime" starring the Captain and Dark Star. This is definitely our first real superhero tale in this webcomic, but like most things in Rook City, not everything is quite as it appears...

It's been a blast drawing this one so far. I've tried to just cut loose and have fun. It's a nice change of pace after the "Sleuth" story for the Kansas City Star. That story was fun, too, but the constraints of having some sort of ending on each page were challenging. Speaking of the KC Star, though, I have another project in the works with them. More on that later.

Remember, we're always desperate for feedback about our stuff! Please leave comments here, e-mail us, or whatever... Hearing what people think of our work is the best part of all this. Thanks!

S.P.A.C.E. Bound

Elton, Nathan, and I are busy getting ready for the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo (S.P.A.C.E.) in Columbus, Ohio on May 13. This will be our first convention as actual exhibitors... so I'm sure it will be a learning experience. We've been frantically getting all of our stuff together for this. Not expecting to make any money on this trip... just get our stuff out there and make some connections and hopefully some new readers. The cool thing about S.P.A.C.E. is that it is just for indy comics. So, that's what everyone is there to see. We've heard a lot of good things about this con.

Time for a road trip! Mapquest says it's 11 hours each way from Joplin to Columbus. Maybe Elton and I will finally get that next Vlad Squad story written on the way...

Bullets and Bedpans

The new Rook City story has been running the last couple of weeks. "Bullets and Bedpans" is actually the first Rook City tale. But it's an important part of the overall story, so we're posting it. Once all ten pages have run, I'll put it at the beginning of the archive, so everything is in chronological order. Also, since this is an older story, we're putting up more than one page a week. Four pages are up already!

This is the story that introduced Toby Fox... and the Rebuker. You'll notice it's not quite as polished as the newer stories. I still did zip-a-tone by hand for the grays back then, instead of on Photoshop like now. I think I can draw Toby more consistently the same now, as well.

The Return of the Last Martian

Thursday marks my final strip in the KC Star for this run. It features the Last Martian and it will be posted online next week. In the meantime, you can check out the first Last Martian story. Let us know what you think!

Side note: I guess we won't be participating in the previous mentioned Comics Jam War this Saturday. Our local store had some trouble getting it all arranged. Oh well. Maybe next year.

Remember, a new Rook City story starts on Tuesday!

Webcomics and such

Well, the last page of the "Sleuth" story is up at the Rook City page. We'd love to hear any comments you have about the story now that it's wrapped up. Remember, though... Rook City will continue as a weekly webcomic (updates on Tuesdays).

Here are some other excellent webcomics that I have been checking out recently. Some of these update regularly and some don't. But they're all worth a look!

Copper- An excellent monthly comic by Kazu Kibuishi, starring a boy and his dog.
Count Your Sheep- Cool daily strip that is better than so much you'll see in the paper these days.
Cow and Buffalo- Dairy humor. Gotta love it.
Set To Sea- Drew Weing's current comic about a man forced onto a pirate ship. Great, great stuff.
Pup- This older strip by Drew will expand your concept of what webcomics can be.
Evil, Inc.- Where do supervillains go for customer service? Here.
FrankandFrank- So simple. Sooo funny. You can't look at these without smiling.
Holy Cow! Christian Comics- Dean Rankine's quirky adaptations of Bible tales. Truly unique and well done!
Panda Express- A beautifully rendered story of a girl and a panda.
Welton Colbert- Ryan Estrada (who's productivity puts all of us to shame) made up this cantankerous character you can't help but love.
The Tenth Life of Pischio the Cat- An epic tale starring a cat. Great drawing.
Spacegirl- Travis Charest is one of my favorite artists and this is a really fun comic he does semi-regularly.
Guffman and Godot- I always knew cats were evil. This strip proves it.

Check 'em out! They'll make ya feel good.

Happenings

Page 3 of the current Rook City story is now in print in the Star, and page 2 is online at the webcomics site. I was up (too) late last night finishing page 4 for next week. I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out. I think it has the feel that I was going for. And hopefully it sets up some things about Toby's character for future tales.

It's spring break! Now is when it's great to be a teacher... I'm hoping to get a lot done in this next week. Still trying to get Random Ink #1 ready for reprinting. Dusty has been working on a new pin-up for that book... sort of a preview for his upcoming Pixie Pirate story. It's some pretty dang fun stuff. You guys are going to love it!

More Rook City

Well, Rook City has been in print for a week now. In fact, the second installment was in today's Previews section of the KC Star. It's cool to think that a lot more people are getting to read our stuff now.

The first page of the new story is already on the Rook City webcomic page, along with past stories. Keep telling us what you think, either by comment here or email to us. We're addicted to feedback. Seriously.

I want to thank my wife, Laura, for all her help in writing the current story. A lot of the main plot twists were her idea. She has always served as my "creative consultant" (basically telling me if an idea is dumb or not), but it's been great to actually write something together. Dusty and I are both very lucky to have wives that not only tolerate our obsessions (comics, football, etc) but have become big fans themselves. Laura even won our fantasy football league this year. Oh yeah... I know how to choose 'em!

Rook City Goes Big-Time

The weekly Previews section of the Kansas City Star this week features a full-page Rook City story. That may be how some of you found this site! We will have a story in Previews throughout the month of March... that's five weeks. The first four pages will be one continuing Rook City tale, and the last installment will feature a Last Martian story (he's the guy in the top right corner of this page). We will post the first page of these stories on Tuesday.

But the really big news is... this is only the beginning! We are turning Rook City into a weekly webcomic. Every Tuesday a new page will be put up on the site. For free. That's right. So you might want to bookmark www.rookcity.com and check it every week for a fresh page! You can already read 10 pages of story on there right now. We will still be collecting these stories in print, as well.

Meanwhile, if you found this website after reading the first strip in Previews... we would love to hear your feedback on it! You can leave a comment here or shoot us an email at feedback@threetreesstudios.com.

Thanks for looking!

Major Website Update

Well, if you haven't seen it already... you might want to check out our fancy new opening menu. Finally got that thing colored. Plus, there's some new hidden goodies on there... you might want to click around.

You can check it out by clicking on the nice little picture here. And then come back here and leave a comment telling us what you think!

Ugh... I'm pretty sick of website stuff for the moment. Back to good ol' pen and ink and paper!

Random Stuff

Here's a new sketch for ya. May it give you strength in the dark times.

Got a three day weekend starting. There's a lot I want to accomplish... continuing to update the website, finish Random Ink #1 for reprinting, drawing the comic strip for the Previews section of the Kansas City Star... Hopefully, this all gets done.

An update on the Moonfall project mentioned earlier... it appears that the book is on hold. The soonest it will be printed will be April. But you will see it... one way or another.

Also, you can now subscribe to the feed for this news page. Just click on the link to the right.

Back to work! Feel free to leave some comments!

Name Change

Well, if you click on our COMICS page you might notice that we've made a slight alteration to one of our main series of stories. What was once Edge City is now Rook City. Why the switch? Well, it turns out there already is an Edge City out there. Oh well. Stay tuned in the next couple of weeks for a big announcement involving Rook City.

In other news... Elton, Dusty, and I spent Sunday meeting with a couple of other up-and-coming comics creators from the area (Nathan and Dwayne). It was a lot of fun just hanging out, showing each other what we were working on, and talking comics. I introduced everyone to the excellent Set to Sea and Pup webcomics by Drew Weing. (Mr. Weing, we bow to your skill...) Anyway, we hope to be able to collaborate with these guys in some way eventually.

It's pretty amazing how many comics guys there are in good ol' Joplin.

This Means War

This should be fun...

Some of you may have heard of 24 Hour Comics. Basically, it's an artistic marathon where one artist tries to complete 24 pages of comics in that many hours. I really want to try that sometime... maybe in summer when sleep is not as precious.

Anyway, the people at 24 HOUR COMICS DAY are organizing another national event. Basically, it is a shorter version of the 24 hour thing... this time the goal is 8 pages in 12 hours. And you can work in teams! It's called COMICS JAM WAR. The trick is that everything has to be done at a comic shop who agrees to host it. The winners get some cash and their story printed in an anthology of the event. I'm really jazzed about this! A chance to get together with other creators, make comix, promote a local store, maybe get new readers...

We've already got the Vintage Stock down here in Joplin to agree to do it. They are pretty excited about it. So you know where we'll be on April 1st.

Anyone else interested?

The Coming of Dusty

Some of you have noticed already that we have added twelve new drawings to our SKETCH page from a new creator, our good buddy Dusty Roberts. Well, he's not really new, just new to the site.

Dusty, Elton, and I all went to high school together back in Montana. We made mini-comics together back then, some of which you may be unfortunate enough to see someday. Dusty and I were both art majors at good ol' Missouri Southern State University here in Joplin. Eventually, Elton came down, too.

So now, we're all making comics together again. Dusty is working on some new stuff... a pin-up for the reprinted Random Ink #1 and hopefully a story for #2. He's got some really cool ideas percolating. Some of these sketches are from back in high school and some are much more recent. The one above shows one of his Pixie Pirates, a great idea that I can't wait to see in story form. I think you'll all agree that this guy has way too much talent and creativity for his own good...

I Won?

I've been checking out some comics-related podcasts for several weeks now, my favorite of which would have to be INDIE SPINNER RACK. It's all about independent comics, and the hosts (Charlito and Mr. Phil) do a nice job of promoting books and creators that deserve more attention. Plus... they're crazy. This show is highly entertaining.

Anyway, they had a contest where listeners could write in about their favorite indie book of 2005. I wrote in to nominate the excellent Kabuki: The Alchemy series by David Mack, and somehow... I won! As a reward, I get to be on one of the upcoming shows, to talk about Kabuki and other stuff. Hopefully, we can use this to promote our books a bit.

I'll let you all know when the show is going to be available for download.

Here are some other cool podcasts:
- Digital Strips (all about webcomics)
- Comic Geek Speak (a very popular podcast about mainstream books mostly)

Moonfall Preview

These are some random panels from the nine-page story that I recently finished for the Moonfall graphic novel. It is being put together by members of the Kansas City Comic Creators Network. It is an anthology, but with one central theme... the end of the world. The moon is crashing to the earth and all life is about to end. What do people do in those final hours? That is what our individual stories explore.

My tale is about a man who is isolated from his family during the crisis and has to deal with his feelings of frustration and fear. It was pretty different from anything I've done before. Pretty serious stuff. The art was fun and challenging. I wanted it to have the look of scratchboard, but I also wanted to experiment with brush pens. So... every white area you see in the story was originally black ink and then inverted to white after I scanned it in. I'm really happy with how the look of it turned out. It was definitely what I was going for, and the feedback I have got from people about it so far has been encouraging.

Anyway, we'll keep you all updated on the status of the graphic novel and how you can get a hold of it when it comes out.