Support the economy and give us your money

Hello, internet. This is Justin. It's been a while since we've talked.

So one of my wife's friends made this flyer for a graphic design course she's taking, and she digs the book, so I guess that means we've got the makings of a street team. To that end, I've relisted the promotional book Josh had printed out last year (I like to think of it as "the demo") on Etsy, which is a place you can buy all sorts of rad stuff, and it's where my wife sells her jewelry.

You can buy it with your hard-earned PayPal dollars at gigaduck.etsy.com if you are so inclined. The paper stock is majestic.

There's also a CD for sale by the band my brother and I are in, Morrison Bass, and links to our Myspace page where you can actually hear some songs. If you are into that sort of thing.

Now that I have shilled, here's my current Wyatt-related project: Working on an expanded version of "Reunion on a Strange World", our "pilot" story, with the intention of setting up the series a little better (which was one of the notes we got on our book from a few editor-types).

Thrill as you learn...
-Who's the dude in possession of Doc's head? (His name is Ian. He works for the Pelican Corporation.)
-What's the deal with that Steven guy? (He's a clonedroid.)
-How did Wyatt find Doc, anyway? (It'll be a nifty sequence, just you wait)
...and more!

Hopefully, this version will have you scratching your head less, unless scratching your head is what you do when you think something is really cool and well-explained.

-JPZ

Said the Pilgrim to the Duke...

So this is the first new page in... well... a long time. I drew it over a year ago and just never finished inking it. So now that its done being inked I'll do up the rest of the pages and have them all singing in no time... right? yes. that is how it works. Anyways, this is a page from the story "Said the Pilgrim to the Duke" It takes place in a space-vegas atomsphere. At least that's the back drop. we'll post the whole story once its done. Later.

-J

Fallcon 2008

Alright, if you read the last post then you know I mentioned the fallcon. Its just a small con here in the twin cities where I try to sell some books and do some sketches and stuff. Its cool because all the local artists and people who went to MCAD that I only get to see every once in a while show up. They might as well call it the MCADcon.
Needless to say its a great time. The guys that run it do an amazing job. Tables are free and they give you free food and drinks all day and have activities for the creators and everything. Its pretty rad. Needless to say I had a great time. Met some cool people, saw some great art, got yelled at by crazy comic fans for ruining comics (long story.) I even did some sketches and sold some books. I did my first ever sketch on a baseball. It turned out alright but it was weird drawing on a round surface. And I'm not sure that subject matter matched the surface. You'll have to see the photo. I also met the real Spiderman! Not some lame ass Toby Maguire webhead impersonator. But the real deal.

Its been a while right...

So yeah, its been a while. I know I know. Justin and I have day jobs. He's all Robbie Robertson at a newspaper and I well, I illustrate books and do storyboards and stuff. Plus we got married... not to each other. But we both married our ladies and only a week apart if you'd believe that. But we're back to working on Wyatt Earp. I was at a con recently and kept hearing "I keep checking your site and nothing changes." Well we're going to try to change that. We'll put new pages and doodles and stuff up here and once we finish a whole story we'll upload it to webcomic nation and drunk duck.. etc. We're trying to get it picked up though and we have stacks of scripts and all kinds of drawings and covers and interiors and eventually we'll put it out in a big book. I was surprised to see people even remembered the book since its been over a year since we published our first little mini comic or uploaded it on the interweb. So it'll be a slow process unfortunately but there is more to come. I promise.

Justin is Ed Wright?!

I know its been a while since we've posted anything but I swear we're working on the book. In the meantime check this out......

Ed Wright (left) Justin Zyduck (right?)

Teaser: "Said the Pilgrim to the Duke!"

Here is a teaser for "Said the Pilgrim to the Duke." I'm sorry its taking so long to work on these pages. You know how one needs to make money as opposed to just leaking it from every orifice? Well it turns out that I, like anyone else need money. So we have two options, send me money, or food, or wait longer for the story. I'd prefer the money option, but I suppose that is just an illusion. So anyways, long story short here is a teaser image:

Currently My Favorite Blog....

So recently while posting on our blog here at Wyatt Earp Etc, I came across this blog, http://mustachesofthenineteenthcentury.blogspot.com/, recommended by none other than google. Man do I love google...and mustaches. Its half the reason I started drawing Wyatt Earp. So thank you google. And thank you mustache blog. Thank you.

Justin Talks Wide Format

This is Justin again. I meant to post this circa last week, but I am having eight kinds of computer trouble.

Anywho: The horizontal format.

For obvious reasons, it's one of the first things that people notice looking at the book, and I like to think it helps it stand out from the crowd. The orientation also allows for visually arresting "Sunday comics" style superwidescreen layouts you don't see very often in comic books. We've gotten some very positive feedback from pros about the innovative and stylish way Josh has been putting together these pages. People really seem to dig the possibilities.

The problem, of course, is everyone on the business side of things says horizontal is a no-go. Which we completely understand; I imagine retailers hate having to try and shelve a book that works in the completely opposite direction of everything else on the rack.

We're looking to compromise. So here are the options we're faced with:

1.) Re-edit/redraw our pages so that everything fits as a vertical format, side-stapled, all-around standard comic. Perhaps the least attractive choice, as it loses everything of the widescreen effect, and it would be the most work (or at least it would be work for Josh; I'd really just have to e-mail him and ask "Are the pages done YET?" and then go back to playing Spider Solitaire).

2.) Re-edit/redraw so that the comic is still vertical format and side-stapled, but you have to turn the comic on its side to read it, rather like the way a wall calendar hangs. It would shelve normally but still allow us to lay out individual pages in a vertical format. The comic would lose the ability to do superwidescreen spreads, but it's not too terrible a compromise. People seemed to like when John Byrne did it in that old issue of Fantastic Four...

3.) Make the book a squarebound collection of 100+ pages rather than a 24ish-page "floppy." A wide format book that can be put in a bookshelf instead of on a rack, from what we gather, isn't as much of a hassle for retailers. It's the same format as, say, a Calvin & Hobbes collection, and since our comic is less a single story than a collection of shorter strips, it's somewhat appropriate. On the other hand, it comes with a higher price point.

--Justin