Current mood:

optimistic

Today is free comic book day!
How did I turn from Frustrated to Optimistic in 15 minutes?



Well, changing subjects, today (Saturday) is Free Comic Book Day! Yahoo! I typically don't go crazy nuts during this day because it's rare for me to frequent local comic book stores (I know, shame on me), and consequently am discouraged to go through the trouble to find one that has the stuff I want. Nevertheless, I can usually go to the San Diego Comic-Con and get my hands the two issues that really matter to me, the Keenspot and Keenspace Books, a few months later...



The difference this year is that the Keenspacebook is no longer the "Keenspacebook"; it is "Comic Genesis Generations". And I'm not on it. I was on the first three, and for the fourth (they skipped 2005) they finally kicked me out*. Not that I have any ill will for Comic Genesis or Keenspot or anything. I actually am looking forward to see the work of fresh new talent that has begun after me and will see great success before me (no, I'm just naturally this cynical). Also, Gen-Chan is pretty cute. But how does she stack up to my mega-babe Kasie Keen (see above)? Ah, whatever. Kasie has pretty much gone to hell, so why put up a fight that you can't win??

The history of the tragically short-lived Kasie Keen is sort of interesting; as far as I remember, she was the brainchild of this young lady, and when we were working on the 3rd book, I was approached with a request to create my own rendition of Kasie as means for introducing a unifying mascot to grace the front cover (much like her successor, Ms. Gen-Chan); well, people seemed to like the mockup, so I went ahead and took the helm of designing the front cover ( no wait, Dave says he's the designer, I'm merely the artist), and what you see above is the long lost and forgotten cover that we created. With much credit to Dave however, he did come up with the idea, and did a smashing job editing the book. The production of Keenspacebook 3 in fact went with such little hitch that by the end, people in the mailing group were scratching their heads wondering why the past few months so lacked the arguments and fights legendary in the first two.

Anyway, the book looked great, and we were very proud of it, but I have some odd feeling that it did not really see the light of day. So here's why; as in the first two, we were charged $50 dollars for each page we submitted (unlike Keenspot Book, Keenspace artists have to pay to play). You would expect, then, that we would be able to print reasonably the same number of books in all three years. But it seems that the first two books were distributed a lot more widely than the third. That's what it seemed to me at least, because Keenspacebook 2 and 3 were both FCBD books, but we had tons left of Keenspacebook 2 to give away at Comic-Con. Now, after that incident, some important fellow at the Comic-Con had told us (now this is what I've heard from others) that we weren't allowed to distribute free books as liberally as we had done for 2, because people were leaving them in the trash and on the floor, so "basically stop inundating the janitors with your crap!" Therefore, the distribution of Keenspacebook 3 was a lot tighter.

So tight in fact, that I only have one single copy of Keenspacebook 3 -- the issue I consider most special because of all the work I did for it. So, one cover image, a lot of administration and editing, design, and 5 paid pages later (that's $250 folks), I'm left with but one copy of the fabled Keenspacebook 3, one that I felt guilty having scrubbo filch for me from under the table in the 2004 Con. I mean, at least Dave didn't have to pay for his pages! (oops, should I have divulged that? I really can't piss off my tenant, now).

My question is now, what happened to the rest of the books? Are they just sitting in a bunch of boxes somewhere, or were they really all distributed out?! I can imagine like 5000 Keenspacebook 3's just lying around somewhere. Either way, I'd like to get a couple more copies! I drew the freaking cover, after all! I'll trade whoever can get me some for a couple copies of LNSD - I have tons of them sitting in a bunch of boxes in my closet.

So anyway, I had bitched about this before, when I had left Keenspace to go to my own service; and I still like bitching about it, though I don't really hold any hard feelings towards anybody. Most likely, it's just some misunderstanding on my part. And the real reason I left was because of the flakiness of the servers back in early 2005.

Whatever! Bitching is fun! I wonder if this post can generate mad controversy? Probably not, because no matter how hard I try to be an attention whore (and in webcomics, the saying goes that "any publicity is good publicity"), nobody gives a fack about me. No webcomic conglomerate, no industry professional, no hordes of fans...not even T. Campbell. *sniff* I think I'll go hide in the same hole Kasie is hiding right now and cry my eyes out**.

No, totally seriously: congrats Keenspot and Comic Genesis for publishing free comic books! All the best to my fellow artists!!!

* Just kidding, nobody kicked me out; I left.
** I'm totally feigning my sadness here, you know, although there's a little bit of truth in every lie.



EDIT: For those of you who just came from T.'s Blog and want to kill me for my stupidity, please read this appeal first...then, you can kill me for my stupidity.