Got More Pages From My Self-Published Comic Book

This week I have been posting page from my self-published comic book Area 13 issue one. Today will be the last post from that book and features pages from a story titled Dreamscape, which was written and illustrated by my friend Troy Gillogly.

Troy is now publishing two of his own comic books. One is Wild Breed and Snuffy The Vampire Rabbit. I did a post about Troy and hisself-published comic book awhile back. Visit Troy’s Myspace page for more information on his comics. Meanwhile checkout Troy’s pages from Area 13 issue one.

Oh and by the way you can purchase this book by clicking the Buy Now button under the cover.

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My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch

Even More Pages From My Self-Published Comic Book

If you missed yesterday’s post this week I am posting pages from my self-published comic book Area 13 issue one. Yesterday I posted pages from the story I did titled The Boogyman’ll Get Cha. Today it’s pages from a story my friend Roy Dornbusch wrote and illustrated titled Forget Me Not.

Once again if you’re interested in getting a copy of Area 13 issue number one just click the Buy Now button under the cover.

If you like this post bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Check out my comic book characters art videos.

My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch

More Pages From My Self-Published Comic Book

I have decide that this week I will feature more pages from my self-published comic book, Area 13. This will be from the first issue (I only published two issues), which was published back in 1997. The pages you will see today are from the story I wrote and illustrated titled The Boogyman’ll Get Cha.

If you’re interested in getting a copy of Area 13 issue number one just click the Buy Now button under the cover.

If you like this post bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Check out my comic book characters art videos.

My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch

Xeric Foundation Comic Book Self-Publishing Grants

Today I want to continue my discussion on self-publishing your own comic book. Publishing a comic book can cost a lot of money whether you decide to do as a hard copy or not. Unless you are going to do everything yourself you may have to hire a writer, a penciler, an inker, a letterer, well you get where I'm going.

Most self-publishers don't have the money to pay for printing let alone pay for talent. They will usually try to get the talent to do the work for recognition or a promise of payment if the book sells well. In a lot of cases these publishers end up getting people of sub-par talent or people that start the project only to disappear in the middle of it leaving the publisher to have to find someone else to finish the project.

If you can pay the talent something they are more likely to stay to finish the project. But how can you pay when you don't have the money? Well that's where the Xeric Foundation comes in. The Xeric Foundation gives comic book self-publishing grants for out standing publications.

Proposals for the grant must be submitted in the form of a written request. Proposals are reviewed on a semiannual basis. For all the information on how to apply for the Xeric Foundation comic book self-publishing grant go to their website.

It's not easy to get a grant from the Xeric Foundation. Your work has to be really good. So if you think you have a really good comic book give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

If you like this post bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Check out my comic book characters art videos.

My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch

My Self Published Comic Book

This week I have been talking about self-publishing your own comic book and exposing your comic book characters to the world. Today I want to talk about my self published comic. The title of the comic is “Area 13”. I only did two issues. The first issue I had printed at a print shop and the second issue I did as a mini comic and copied it at Kinko's.

When I had the first issue printed I knew nothing about what I should do on my end. I didn't know what size images to send. I just sent the size that I thought they could use and if need be they would change the size to what they needed. However that wasn't the case and because I didn't ask for proofs in order to save some money the pages didn't come out like I wanted.

In the future I'm planning to publish my next comic as a PDF. If you're planning to self-publish your comic book in magazine form I suggest you get all the information on what the printer needs.

I have been thinking about putting my two comics in PDF form and offer it as a download for a very low price, but I haven't decided yet. Below are some pages from my comics. Click the images to see a larger version.

Area 13 Issue #1

Area 13 Issue #2






Issue one of Area 13 is a full size comic magazine in black and white. I has three eight page stories by three different creators. I do have some still available. If you are interested in getting one click the Buy It Now button under the cover. The total price for the comic book is $1.65 which includes shipping.

If you like this post bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Check out my comic book characters art videos.

My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch

Self Publishing Your Own Comic Book

Yesterday I talk about getting your comic book characters out in the public eye by self-publishing. Today I going to give you some ideas on how to go about doing that.

Depending on whether you want to go digital or hard copy there may be a printing cost involved. If you go digital there are a couple of ways you can go. You can go the PDF route and publish your comic book as a downloadable PDF document. You publish your comic as an online book by showing the pages of your book as web pages on your website.

If you decide to go hard copy you will be looking at printing cost. There are a copy of ways you can do hard copy publishing. Lets look at the magazine hard copy. With this option you will need to find a print company that can print comic books. There are several online that specialize in it just do a search for comic book printers and you will see them.

Another hard copy option is comics on CD or DVD. This also counts as a digital option. You can do this a couple of ways. You can put your pages on the CD or DVD in a numbered order and the reader can click on the pages to read them in order. Another option is to set your pages as a slide show. Once your comic book CD is set up you can have it printed at a CD printer or you can do it yourself from your own computer and printer.

To sell your self published comics you can do it on your own website or a website that specialize in selling comics like Comic Space. This applies for both digital and hard copies. For hard copies you can also approach comic shops to see if they are willing to sell your comics there. You can offer them 30% to 50% of the sell price.

This should get you started on self-publishing your own comic and getting your comic book characters out in the world. If you have any questions leave a comment and I will try to answer them. Or just leave a comment and let me know what you think of this post or the blog in general.

If you like this post bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Check out my comic book characters art videos.

My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch

Get Your Comic Book Characters Out By Self Publishing

It is hard to break into the comic book industry, especially if you want to do your own comic book characters. You have to make connections, do submissions and of course you have to have good artwork. Even if you are lucky enough to finally get a job at a comic book company you have to do the assignments and characters they give you. If you create your own characters it is at the discretion of the company if they publish it or not.

There is a way you can have your characters publish and you have the control over them and that is self-publishing. Self-publishing is very easy now a days with the Internet, PDFs and even lower printing prices from companies specializing in printing comics.

The image in the upper right is the cover of a comic book I self-published back in 1997 (I’ll tell you more about that sometime this week). Back then there was a self-publishing boon. You could find all kinds of self-published comics and there were loads of comic book shops that sold them. It was a time when the only way to get comics was in magazine form. Nobody was doing them online or as PDFs.

Now you have a choice of doing the magazine form or digital. Either way you can do your own sells online and reach a worldwide audience. So if you’re looking to get your own a comic book characters out to the public without the hassle it takes to go through a company then self-publishing is the way to go.

Tomorrow I’ll go through a bit more detail on what it takes to publish your own comic.

If you like this post bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Check out my comic book characters art videos.

My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch

My Heroes ACEO And Sketch Cards

I love the TV show “Heroes ”, beside “Smallville” it is one of the shows I just can’t miss. Although I don’t think it is as good as it was in the first season I do still think it’s a great show.

Anyway, I have done several sketch cards and one ACEO of some of the Heroes characters and I realized I have never showed them here so here they are.

Peter Petreli


Claire And Hiro


Sylar And The Haitian


Niki And Jessica Sanders And Tracey Strauss


Cards For Sale

Claire And Hiro



These last two cards I still have and are up for sale. If you're interested in anyone or both of these cards leave me a comment with your contact info.

If you like this post bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Check out my comic book characters art videos.

My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch

I Have Done Some Artwork For A Book Cover

I was recently asked to do some artwork to be used for a book cover. Now this book isn't a comic book or about any comic book characters it's more like science fiction book. The story takes place in the future and is about two football leagues. One is human the other is robots.

The robot league has been beating the human league and the word is that human league is obsolete. The fans love the robot league and would rather see them play. There’s a play off and the humans are determined to win to show that they are better than machines.

The cover shows the humans making a touch down over the robots as a ray of hope. Below are the steps I took to create the painting. The image is the original pencil sketch I submitted, but the author wanted more of a retro look. I didn’t take of the pencil on canvas so I don’t have that step.

Pencil sketch.


Flat colors done with acrylic paint. The author wanted me to use an old pulp cover as a reference for the painting.


Here the author wanted me to change the color of the uniforms to more recognizable colors and he also wanted the color of the robots changed. This is my first coat of oils.


This is the finished painting. The title and other lettering will be put in later.


Here is a piece that may be used for the inside of the book.


If you like this post bookmark it at your favorite social bookmarking site.

Check out my comic book characters art videos.

My Hugh Jackman Wolverine Drawing

My Martian Manhunter Painting

My Three Jokers Painting

Painting The Scarlet Witch