Time to kick some ass and show who’s boss.

Cintiq review will be posted later in the week.

Issue 229 will be up later in the day (when I finish classes). I’m still tired from Anime USA.

This will be a con report of few words and many pictures.

First, a HUGE thank you to the staff of Anime USA. You guys are some of the nicest and most helpful con staff we’ve ever dealt with at a convention, and we REALLY appreciated the great lengths to which you guys went to accommodate us.

Katy couldn’t make it with us this time - her work had her swamped. We missed her!

Also, a quick shout-out to Justin and Katie - these are two kids we’ve seen at the past few cons, and they’ve always made an extra effort to come out to see us and to attend our panels. Much love!

A lot of people took pictures with/of us … if you have a moment and wouldn’t mind e-mailing us the photo, that would be fantastic.

This was the sign at our table! We didn’t bring any merch to Anime USA, so our table was pretty empty. And sadly, all the defacement on that sign is our own handiwork. Idle hands, idle hands …

All of our panels went really, really well. Our crowds asked some good questions, and we were really grateful that the panels turned out to be so engaging. And of course, there were shenanigans …

We met a lot of awesome people at the convention, who I’ll be talking about in the next few days - their business cards are in my bag, and I don’t want to mention them without being able to link to their respective endeavours - but I did want to show you this … Vic is the voice of Ed in the english version of Full Metal Alchemist:

we are such nerds and you love it

We found Dave Lister! This is the two of us sitting down to dinner on Friday night.

Random candid shot … I ended up in more photos than usual at this convention.

THIS SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

this too

Shannon made this weekend totally sweet. ^__^ She kept Hawk and I in good spirits with her wacky hijinx. She also took most of the pictures at this convention!

That’s all for now … there will be linkage later in the week, when I’m unpacked and have everything sorted out. But I’m out for now … I’m totally beat.

Ananth and I will be at Anime USA this weekend. I believe on Saturday I have a Photoshop Panel. I will give a step by step on how I would color Issue 228.

Speaking of Issue 228, the whole thing was inked with a pen and a bottle of india ink. Good practice.

EDIT: A reader named Bretto e-mailed me a coupon code for $2 off of Threadless merch, so that’s $8 a shirt! Not bad. :) The coupon code is: DL923835 It was found at this website.

So, if you guys have been watching the site for the past few days, you’ll have seen my post and Hawk’s post in regards to how a reader used Lulu to publish his own TPB of #1-141 of the comics.

A blog called Plagiarism Today has an interesting write-up on the whole story. Check it out!

I want to close the book on this, because it’s over and done with, but a few things need clarification.

1. Lulu is actually a very cool idea for a service. With it, literally anyone can make their own small runs of publications for a fraction of the cost that a larger printing press would ask. We don’t really bear them any ill will, although I’ll be honest: I’m a little skeptical of how easy it is to slip copyrighted material under their radar, and there ought to be someone checking on all the orders that come through. (I know they receive a large volume of orders, but that doesn’t make a big difference to me.) The truth of the matter as it stands, however, is that the responsibility for that is in the hands of the user - and the user should realize that if they abuse the service, then it will cause problems for everyone.

2. Some readers were angry or surprised that we reacted the way we did. Our anger on a professional level was minimal. No one really made a huge profit off of our work, and honestly, it was just one copy of the book. The whole legal end of it was not of huge concern to us. On a personal level, however, we were pretty upset. From our point of view, we’re working hard, staying up late nights and losing sleep so you we can put these comics and content out onto the internet for free. In my opinion, that is already a lot to give. People in the past have e-mailed us and asked us (for example) if they can print out comics and put them up in the office, and we don’t have a problem with that (in fact, we think it’s damn cool) - and we appreciate that they asked. This situation is a whole different story, though - the scale of it, in particular. We weren’t asked, and we found ourselves in a situation where we had to say something in order to stop this sort of thing from happening in the future.

3. In the past few months, we’ve had a lot of these issues crop up. The worst of these was the Skag story (summary: a company in Greece plagiarized our wallpapers for notebooks they sell in European countries). So it’s quickly becoming our policy to nip these things in the bud before they balloon into larger problems, because it’s … just honestly a pain in the ass.

4. Just to re-iterate - we fully plan on releasing a book. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that Applegeeks doesn’t provide us with a livelihood, so it has to become a secondary to work and school. Just remember, the day that we see that baby in print, no one will be happier than Hawk and myself. Trust me on that one.

As far as this past little fiasco, I consider it over and done with. The book is closed (I hope), and we can all happily move on. Anime USA is this weekend, and I have plans - plans to rock out. You should perhaps join me, and we can rock out together. I will be hanging with Shannon and Hawk, and we’ll be floating around the convention when we’re not at panels. Keep an eye out, we’re always happy to meet you guys!

Peace!

Hawk dropped me a link to this article, which talks about Aquaman getting his own show on the WB.

Oh god.

OH. GOD.

Come on guys! AQUAMAN?!

It’s AQUAMAN. They couldn’t have picked a dumber character.

“Next time … on a very special Aquaman … Aquaman loses his best friend Gills to the Fish & Fry up the street.”

My brain …

EDIT: Hawk was awesome and whipped up this little illustration. I’m sure it’ll be a big hit with the WB!