WIP BTS Art and More!
/Good morning! Here’s something interesting. These are screen-grabs of Gajowski’s process on one panel––from pencils to the final. When we first started working on this book, we’d show the inked pages to people and they’d say, “That looks amazing. You should just stop there and do a black and white comic." But once you see the colors, it’s hard to go back. Maybe we need to do another book that’s just inks…
Not to bury the lede or anything, but we’ve finally set a date for when we’ll start posting the new issue! Here it is, Wednesday, June 10th we'll put up page 1, and then it’s a page a week moving forward. Thank you all so much for your patience; you won’t be disappointed!
And now for the recommendation of the week. it’s not a comic, but it is free. There’s this old Nintendo Advance game from way back called Advance Wars (not the free thing). It’s this great, turn-based, tactical war game with adorable little pixel tanks, helicopters, and soldiers. Perfect for a hand-held console that you can pass back and forth to a friend or three on the couch. Of course, it’s the Covid-times now and no one is swapping hand sweat these days. But some hardworking geniuses ported Advance Wars into a browser-based game! It’s called Advance Wars by Web. It’s a perfect game to play from a great distance with friends and loved ones who you can’t see in person. It seems Nintendo’s onboard with it too. Which is weird, because it’s free to play and there are no ads or in-game purchases of any kind. Sooooo….sometimes you just don’t ask questions. Go check it out. It’s a lot of fun and the perfect distraction if you work from home…maybe too perfect a distraction. Look, it’s not like issue 5 is taking so long because we’re playing Advance Wars all-day.
Welp, thanks for reading. Mark June 10th on your calendar. Until next week!
Of Letters and More
/One big change, starting on this upcoming book, is that A.P. Weber (that’s me) is taking over all lettering duties from John Gajowski. Gajowski has quite enough on his plate as the penciler, inker, and colorist. Oh yeah, also the character designer and the cover artist.
Here’s the title page for issue #5! Don’t be distracted by the epic space battle Gajowski created. The real focus here is Weber’s first attempt at designing a title! What do you all think? It’s still a work in progress, but we’d love to hear from you about it.
Ion Grip #5 Title Page
As I mentioned before, this new issue is going to be giant-sized (as they used to say when I was a kid). 46 pages! All art is completed for the first half and Weber is currently lettering it. Once we have enough lead time to finish without interrupting a weekly release schedule, we’ll start posting on the website again. I’m thinking early June. You heard it here first! Hold us to it!
This week’s recommendation is Mind Palace by Dave Dwonch and Santi Guillen. It’s a webcomic that imagines all the characters from every Bryan Fuller show (Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me, Hannibal) exist in a shared universe and interact on a day-to-day basis. It’s too smart and well produced to be called fan-fiction. More like Fables or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It captures the voices of familiar characters better than most licensed comic book adaptations of big or small screen properties. And the art is great! Highly recommend you check it out––I mean, it’s free, so what’s the downside?
That’s all for this week! But before we go, if you’re getting this in your email, take note of the social media links. By all means, click on them and reach out! We’d love to hear from you. Until next Wednesday, take care.