The jist of it is, he’s tired of being a middleman, it’s grown to be too much effort and work for one guy to handle. BUT, the good part is, he didn’t just fold up and walk away, he used his PROBLEM and made it into an opportunity, and it very well could be something that could help many cartoonists already online, finally become WEBcartoonists. Living in a Web Comics Nation.
Anyway, go read for yourself. I have furniture and crap to move. CLICKY.
LINK! - Not sure if people will get the reference or not. But I don’t care, because it makes me laugh dammit! If you don’t know, maybe someone else can tell you.
I had one written out and everything, and must have forgot to hit PUBLISH. I suck.
I’m in the middle of a bunch of home improvement type stuff and house work in general. I’m like Mr. Mom… ON CRACK.
I added the google search feature, let me know how it works or looks for you guys, now the site SHOULD be searchable. My blog search thing has been broke, and I didn’t know it. So google search replaces it— which is MUCH better in my opinion. Let me know if it looks like crap.
In other news, I e-mailed Tycho last night and he had this little bit to say in his e-mail:
“(I read your comic and blog. Also, my friend Jim stocks your print
comic in his shop, so you mailing me feels very much as though I am
interacting with a genuine celebrity! Please describe, in detail,
your gilded halls and exotic meals.)”
Now, I find that hilarious, because in webcomic land, I guess the Penny Arcade fellas are considered the celebrities, and I wasn’t even expecting an email reply, figuring they’d be too busy smoking money or something. So, that made me feel a little better about myself.
Maybe I’m just “notorious” ? I don’t feel accomplished at all. I feel like a giant failure day in and day out. Sigh. Sure it’s probably not so, but I can’t help think that, I’m only human– out here in the void all alone with my thoughts.
Big thanks to Rebel"i wanna see more boobies in webcomics"Suns for posting on my forum to alert me of Penny Arcade’s latest…. Here’s his post-
Anyway, the jist of it is mocking this ADVENTURES INTO DIGITAL COMICS documentary thing, and how stupid it is. And for a good while, I’ve felt like a LONE voice of dissent when I see stories about this…. or I hear complete bullshit like this. Sure, a fun documentary about people making webcomics or something, fine.. but all this talk of REVOLUTION! and being closed off by “THE MAN” - Blah blah blah. Penny Arcade fucking NAILED this one to the wall.
I want to go one step further and fire a shot across the bow again at that retarded HISTORY OF WEBCOMICS book being written by TCampbell.
HISTORY?
Dude, we’re drawing comics here, not creating a curriculum. Do we NEED a HISTORY OF WEBCOMICS BOOK? And for who? A target audience of people who want to see their names in the book, or OTHER webcomic artists. BAH! That’s gay. I’m sooooo sick of the faux pioneers. People only looking to put notches in their belt and give themselves some sort of “resume” in retardedness. And yet… people are apparently lining up to give this guy free art for his book. That is awesome in it’s badness.
So what the fuck is my problem? Where do I get off talking about any of this? I don’t know, because it bugs me. It doesn’t NAG me, or really EFFECT me. Well, it annoys me. I don’t like BULLSHIT. Am I jealous? HECK NO! Am I bitter?? HELL YEAH! I’m bitter like the back of a newborn possum’s hide, ninjas! But it’s got nothing to do with these pansy fruit cupcake, faux pioneers.
I was discussing this with another distinguished comic creator who told me I was really humble and courteous about something pertaining to this subject—- he told me that I myself had a nationally syndicated comic strip and have done more than ANY of these idiots. But I don’t gloat about it. Maybe I should?? Maybe I should have some lame brain resume of great things I’ve done or tried. I just don’t think that way.
Another great writer I know, James Patrick, gave me the advice once, well not really advice to ME but it was even if he doesnt know it, he said : “if you can DO, then DO. never DO ABOUT.” and I’ve tried to remember that when I get the urge to run off and do something about what it is I do.
I think that’s who I get along best with. The DOERS. Not the do about’ers. Err… When it boils down to basics, they’re just looking to USE the doers for their own benefit or gay legacy.
And listen… you’re not a DOER just because you went ahead and DID some things. You dig me?
Oh well, it’s late… BIG DIGITAL HIGH FIVES to Penny Arcade, for letting me know I’m not alone in my thoughts.
LINK! - You knew Bob wasn’t going to go down without a fight, right??? No fast food icon is a match for him. Well except maybe WENDY, who can totally beat Bob’s azz.
HEY! Don’t forget to help out and vote for fellow Yirm reader, Don the Idea Guy’s Manifesto at http://www.changethis.com/proposals/450 - Let’s help get him to the top of that list if we can. YOU CAN DO IT!
Hey folks– go vote for this manifesto to be written– it’s by Don the Idea Guy, a fellow Yirmumah reader, – about revolutionizing radio- http://www.changethis.com/proposals/450 - I guess if he gets enough votes, he can write this and have it listed. I think it will be an interesting read.
Sticker orders keep rolling in. I’m amazed. I think we’ve moved over 4000 stickers now, according to today’s tally. Crazy. I’m kinda glad it died down a bit, because I think the post office was getting sick of me coming up to the window and saying I needed them to stamp 30-50 envelopes for me. —
Crazy Star Wars fans…. I only have about 80 sets left now. I wonder if regular old Yirmumah like stickers would sell? Like something with the Burger King on them or something strip related? I doubt they’d sell as well as the Star Wars stuff, but I’m tempted to try it out. Hmm….
I gotta watch my time though, I’m really cramping on time as it is. I’d love to have some shirts made up, but yeah, the time thing. Im gonna hunker down and work on actual comics for a spell I think, get back to a buffer of some sort so I can enjoy a little bit of the summer.
I did find it ironic, a comment there about how ironic it was that a group of “independents” formed a collective. hah!
I’m happy they’re getting the slashdot traffic, but I feel sorry for the people who just bought ads and now all thier impressions will be most likely eaten up by Slashdot morons coming in. There are a TON of rude, bitter retards there who can’t see the positive in anything. WOW.
I got what I was craving… a great post by Eric Burns at Websnark. Clicky.
He mentions the passing of a friend, actually, several, among his fun sounding journey to SanFran. It’s odd how you can be going about your life, doing the things you do, and then you gaze off into nothing and suddenly realize Dave isn’t on this earth anymore. Or that you have friends dodging suicide bombs in some god forsaken desert.
But here I sit in enjoying technology and good coffee. I’m a lucky bastard.
Ok. So, not that anyone has been paying any attention, but Yirmumah had been updating at PV Comics on Sundays and Mondays. Well, we’re not doing that anymore. I can’t figure out any real reason TO do that anymore, or what purpose I’m serving there.
PV was a GREAT idea. A Great vision.. .. 12 creators, banding together, one KICK ASS web designer, a solid plan… but pretty much, it’s been a ghost ship with a skeleton crew for awhile now. Many of the original “12″ left long ago, for various reasons. Then, one day on the phone with Logan DeAngelis, I put a bug in his ear about print on demand from home…… so he looked into it and COMIXPRESS was born. The Yirmumah mini was the first book printed through the system to test it out and get it ready for a more “public beta” version of the print service. – Needless to say, Comixpress exploded and our fearless leader and doer, Logan, was swallowed up by the DEMAND monster, never to be heard from again….. well, on occassion. So… I’ll take a little of the blame and say my encouragement shot PV right in the foot. But hell! You HAVE to go with what works. And PV wasn’t working, ESPECIALLY moneywise. — I have to say, there couldn’t be a better bunch of guys there though. Everyone has/had the BEST intentions.
I’m left with a feeling of failure/frustration kind of. To once be called “The Image COmics of Webcomics” to…. well, nothing. Not a whimper or a whisper… POOF!!! FRRT!!! An idea I thought would REALLY work. And it didn’t. Well, at least Comixpress is working. I of course can’t take full credit for that, but it was one of those floating dream ideas I shouted about, and at least IT worked. But the “12 creators, one vision” thing… nah, that went bust a goo while ago. — I’m a little frustrated/sad about it. I’m frustrated that I still get e-mails from people who subscribed who after the thing went free, they were never contacted, and they were really unsatisfied with something they paid for being opened up I guess. It was managed… poorly. I wish i had more control over all of that.
Maybe one day, if a plan comes along they can get ahold of me and I’d help in anyway I could.
So with that, I guess any new books won’t be under the PV label. So we might be looking for a publisher… any takers out there??? heh…
to be honest, I’m missing homemade mini-comics more and more each day.
Took a break from blogging over the weekend…. or DID I??? Don’t ask.. it will make sense soon.
Yeah though, I have a bunch of things going on at the house, home repair type crap coming this week. Some of the paint and plaster around the old windows in our bedroom is cracking, and we’re finally getting rid of the old bedroom suite for this “spectra” type (link) - We’re gonna do our bedroom all retro 50s looking crap. Because we can. – So ANYWAY, yeah.. that’s a lot of work we have going on. I won’t go into the BORING details, just that it’s keeping me busy moving things around and up and down from my basement.
LINK! TRUE STORY. I was sitting up late last night, sort of unhappy with what I had going on for script ideas, etc. I turned on the TV to relax a bit, and behold— BRITNEY AND KEVIN: Chaotic. – I had heard the whisperings of it’s awfulness, and all those whisperings were true.
I stood with my mouth gaped open in awe at just HOW BAD television has become… “it’s worse than we thought, Jim….”
I immediately thought to myself.. WWDPD? — (what would Drew Price do?) and so there you go.
It goes without saying, the whole MTV thing… you know what I’m talking about… Where are the damn music videos? No… where the hell are the GOOD music videos??? I should stick to just listening to music on the Digital Choice Music channel. THAT is Music Television, even though there’s no pretty moving pictures….. at least it doesn’t make me want to throw the TV.
What’s going on? Everyone’s sleeping on the east coast I bet… not us cartoonists…… slaving away here to give everyone in the world their damn FREE entertainment.
LINK! - Poor Bo Bice, at least he got the parting gifts…. filled with sweet…..
I’ve gotten three e-mails and one comment on the blog asking if I watched American Idol over Lost. I want to confirm that this is not so. I was HOOKED on Lost last night, and couldnt change the station. What a great show. I turned at the very end after lost was over to see the glitter fest of and the American Idol singing.
Congratulations, America! Mediocrity wins the day again!
Lookie there! Another wise person who bought a sponsorship spot before we raise the price to… ONE MILLION BILLION DOLLARS!!
So a big thank you to TIKI COLADAS by Jonathan Caustrita. I found this strip right after the CAPE show, someone had posted a picture of the tables there and i noticed the word TIKI because I’m a huge tiki freak…. so I checked it out immediately.
Great looking comic strip there, and by the looks of how they had their table setup at CAPE (photos) , Jonathan is pretty serious about this effort. Very slick! I wish I could find MORE webcomics with this much style and flavor, not just some sloppy mess of a website with stick figures!
Thanks again for the sponsorship, Tiki Coladas! Everybody here, GO check out his site.
While you’re at it, check out ALL of our sponsors up there in the sponsor bar– If you’re interested in sponsoring us, check out the SPONSOR PAGE. Remember… soon… it will cost…. A MILLION BILLION DOLLARS!!!!
LINK! 2 today’s comic - Never did an American Idol strip before. Hmm…. it was about time. Probably one of the rudest strips I’ve done in awhile, so pardon my behavior.
I must admit… I do watch the show as background noise. And I must also admit, that I want Bo Bice to win. Just because everyone else seems so.. uhm.. plastic and fake. He stood out in this season from day one.
GAWDDDD— I can’t believe I’m talking about American Idol, or even admitting I watch it. I feel so…. dirty and ashamed.
ARRRRGGG!!! I missed the SHIELD last night! DAMMIT!!! This just now occured to me. The one show I really do watch regular like, and I totally blew it and went to bed at 10:30. I SUCK! It was a 90 minute episode too. DAMMIT. I wonder if they’ll replay it this weekend? Hmm….
Big thanks to the comic, WitchTHorn for becoming a Yirmumah sponsor. I’ve checked this comic out before by way of the blambot forums, and it’s a good read. The world of webcomics needs more adventure style story strips like this. I dig it.
Be sure to check out ALL of our sponsors who help us to pay the bills a little bit here, so I can keep bringing you strips day in and day out. If you’d like to be a sponsor, check out http://yirmumah.net/sponsor.php – Only $10 bucks a month!!! best deal on advo-tizing around. For your information we get like 17,000-20,000 page views a day currently, and that’s about 3000-4000 unique folks passing through here each and every day and growing!
I had all intentions of coloring Today’s Strip , which features the prince of darkness and his blog, but allergies or whatever the hell hit me, HIT ME. HARD. – Seriously, I’ve never had a runny nose and sneezing like this EVER before. I feel, for lack of better words, retarded. This is a LONG post so hit the more button if you want to read more– (more…)
LINK to comic! - Ok, today’s strip is up and running. People were asking for a Drew vs Bob lightsaber battle, so there you go! NOW, I’m off to write my blog about my Star Wars midnight showing experience– HOO BOY.
LINK to today’s comic! : – Yeah, I’ll be in line tonight to see the new Star Wars. Haven’t been as lucky as some OTHER PEOPLE AROUND HERE who gloat about seeing it already.
I’m crossing my fingers than my other batch of stickers comes today… damn! Always with the bad timing!!! If you haven’t gotten your stickers yet, they should be to you soon. I ran out of the first batch, so there are a few folks who will have to wait probably another week to get them. Orders keep rolling in for those from our store page. Thanks everyone!
Zach Miller from Joe and Monkey and I were just complaining about how there was nothing going on in Webcomic news lately, and suddenly, Keenspot has quite a few people leaving there. It’s interesting. I’ve heard some really efhed up things about the situation. Best of luck to everyone in that– those coming AND going, and who are there already. Our good friend Dave Wright recently joined up— Todd and Penguin is his strip, if you don’t recall.
“I’m CRAZY, bitch!” - According to Entertainment Weekly, Dave Chappelle has checked himself into a South African Psych Ward— and season three of his AWESOME show will NOT happen —
This is terrible news! I hope he’s able to get with it. I had heard rumors that he decided to go all Cat Stevens and got into some radical form of Islam and was going to renounce all of his possessions– including his show!– That would be half sad for us fans, and half awesome too going out on top like that.
Either way, I hope the guy is ok. He’s a talented mofo, and inspiring to watch.
Busy Saturday here… I updated the club section with Monday’s strip. Also the winner of the WIN CLUB YIRMUMAH MEMBERSHIP has been announced. And the winner is….. (more…)
View commentary on the strip by clicking on it, or voting here.
I’m trying to figure out a decent way to setup the blog so I can have more entries on the page to more link type things and articles I’ll write. I may have to use the MORE tag. So if you see, MORE, click it and there’s more to the story. And that way I can be longer in my rantings, etc. (more…)
One of my favorite Star Wars characters of all time is featured in today’s strip -
Also, today only, you can see the strip in full Lando color by clicking on it and casting a vote for us in the top100 thingy. Or click here.
No real news other than to note for some odd reason, we get a lot of people coming to the site searching the Pat Obrien or Pat O’brien strip. And the word “comic porn” - Sorry, there’s no comic porn here. But we get a>
Just got done polishing up some article ideas we put together for a new humor magazine that’s launching later this year or early next. Well, it’s not REALLY a new magazine… but…. yeah, that’s all I’m saying. The e-mail is sent, and the rest is up to fate. Or the "God of paychecks." Pick one.
I’ll of course say more later on this when we’re actually hired and I know some other hungry soul won’t swoop in and steal our meat.
Wow, the response to the Star Wars strips has been great. I’m glad we accomplished at least putting a new spin on some of that stuff so it’s not the same old cliche Star Wars gags we’ve seen done to death. MUCH more to come. Thanks for reading.
Happy TaunTaun Tuesday everyone! We hope you enjoy today’s TaunTaun Strip. - You can read some of our commentary on it by, yes, you guessed it, clicking the COMMENTARY LINK right here.
Big thanks to everyone who visited SAVE GREEDO.COM on it’s first day! Continue to spread the TRUTH of what really happened. Do it for his family. (more…)
It occured to me that I should just fill in one post for the day, and people can just check back if they want through the day for things I found. Check it out for the news round up (more…)
This weekend is the Pittsburgh comicon. Heck, I forgot all about it until James Patrick let me know he went there and some folks were asking about me. Bottom line, I’m really glad I didn’t go this year. While I do have things to pimp out like the Enter Yirmumah book, strip, etc… I just feel worn out on shows.
I use to LOVE this show. It’s in my backyard. In fact, I have some really great experiences in past years doing it. Now, it just feels too pricey. Don’t get me wrong, the prices they charge for tables isn’t bad— but I’m really down on the idea of the Pittsburgh Comicon costing 17 bucks to get into for people. More after this quick ad break….
I think if I’m correct, the first comicon there was 10 bucks. Then it went to 12 for a few years, then to 15, and now it’s 17 a day. It’s just too much for me to ask people to come out and see us. If that makes any sense at all. I’d rather people pay a measily 15 bucks and enjoy our club for the year. – Promoting myself online seems to work out better for me. For now.
My plans do include hitting comic shows again though, and I will most definitly do the Pitt show again, just not this year. It’s likely that Mid-Ohio will be my next show, or SPX. Not sure. I’m trying to build this up slowly this time, and really for me, it’s about the strips. And the readers. Not about me plunking down some cash to go out and feel semi-important by being on one side of a table and trying to squeeze people for their money. It can be fun, but it gets old after a few years. For me, there has to be a reason for doing it beyond ego and business.
Not that other people who are doing the shows are there for that reason. This is how *I* feel. I don’t like sitting on the other side of a table. I’ve often told people I’d like to just do away with the table and just stand around and talk. Or bring a couch in there or nice sitting area to read your comics. Heck, a 10x10 booth would be better served in this way in my eyes. Inviting. I feel so uninviting at a table with a “pitch” ready to go. A pitch that usually falls on BROKE ears. I’d rather have a place for people to come up and hang out. Talk comics. Heck, maybe even MY comics. Maybe not print comics at all.. maybe talk webcomics.
The whole deal just feels like people are stuck in a routine. And tired and boring one to me. I won’t even mention the fakeass hobnobbing that goes on. UGH. It hurts my brain. I try to be polite and ignore the people with the glowing neon signs over their heads. The funny thing is, those types actually hobknob their way to the top of things. Hah! I don’t know why I can’t act like that. I’m just not built for it, and it gives me an uneasy feeling. The old saying is, “you can’t BS a BS’er” and it’s true. And being in the room with a bunch of BS’ers…. Meh.
I woke up this morning to my kid saying he cut his mohawk off with scissors. And he was acting REALLY guilty about something. A couple hours later, we noticed that my antique wooden chair that I sit in here at the computer, had tape on it. Covering a GOUGE. Then on the other side, like 3 or 4 more gouges. WTF!?! He lied and said he didn’t do it, but you could see it ALL over his face. — My wife suggested we lie and tell him we have hidden cameras and we’ll have to turn them over to the police to see who the culprit was. I asked him if he wanted me to do that and he broke down and cried and said no. Then I asked if he was sorry for what he did and he said yes. He’s now back taking a guilt nap. When he wakes up, he’s going to be grounded for a LONG TIME. At least he has a conscience about it. (more…)
So… What’s happening out there? What’s happening here? Let’s give a run down of things.
Tonight, I’m up working on strips to TRY to get back ahead of myself. Nothing like being able to breathe. Also, Bob and I are in touch with a pretty big humor magazine about doing some writing for them. Maybe SOME comics, but more like “humor articles” and the like….. Read More> (more…)
I don’t know if I like that or not. Have to see it in motion I guess. The belt buckle with the “S” logo on it looks kinda stupid to me. At least the colors are right on this one. You go, Superman!
link 2 comic - Week one of our Star Wars theme is in the can with today’s update. We couldn’t get through the week without a good old fashion “force choke” joke. – We have more commentary on this strip, see it here.
Operation: FIND A NEW COUCH is complete. We have been looking for a new couch for weeks now. After testing out a bunch, I REALLY liked leather.. but my wife thought they were cheesey. So we looked and we looked. I was even berated for not settling on this green one my wife liked– but it felt like you were sitting on curtains or something. UGH!
Long story short, yesterday we went to a place, and the vulturous sales lady took us to the back where they had this clearance section. Lo and behold, a badass leather couch. Originally a thousand bucks, marked all the way down to four hundred fifty! My wife was torn, but found it comfy. I caught her all relaxing on it. On top of all that, my wife found out the prices are marked down every Friday, so she asked the sales vulture what the price would be tomorrow. We were fed a line of bull that it might not get marked down anymore. Efhing sales people! BUT she told us we could get it today for 400 bucks. So there’s our new couch.
Sidenote: My wife is sleeping on it behind me right now. The clacking of the keyboard is probably annoying her.
Sidenote: Don’t buy reclining couches. They’re junk, AND heavy! The one we had for almost 6 years, fell apart when we were moving it out of here.
Woo! Hot damn. Eric wrote a BUNCH today. Go see… websnark.com – Now, we’re not taking credit here… but we DID kinda complain and Eric chimed in. Poor guy has been running on 3 hours a night. Efh that shart, Eric! Get some SLEEP!!!! – We have to wonder though– just WHAT is he doing that he’s only getting 3 hours of sleep? Is Eric REALLY a pimp?? It could be. We reckon he’s been out collecting his dime from his hos.
And since I’m on the topic of Webcomics media and lovers of webcomics… I have to mention Digital Strips Podcast. Zampzon and Daku continue to pump out these great shows every week. Check em out. Their blog is informative as well– right now there’s a great write up about how young folks consider the internet over newspapers.
So there you have it. Two of the BEST places to go to read about webcomics. I don’t want to neglect Comixpedia either. It’s also a daily stop for me.
What a busy busy week it’s been here on the home front. I won’t bore you all with the details, but we’re looking for a new couch, and we can’t find one we agree on. Nor do we feel like spending a thousand bucks on one. Dang it all to heck though, I tried out some nice leather ones and MAN! They were comfortable, i tells yah.
I haven’t been reading as many webcomics out there lately. Just lacking the time. By the way, as an extra bonus to Club members, Zach Miller has been posting his future comics for Joe and Monkey in the club forum section. Now, this isn’t an official added feature, but DAMN, that’s some value right there. Got me thinking maybe I should let other comic strips out there in to use my system—- it’s not for everyone though. You gotta be ahead for it to work out right.
I think I linked this wrong before– but check out the Drink at Work Blog. Funny stuff about writing for comic strips, wanting to be syndicated, etc. Love his writing there.
-I wish Websnark was Websnark again. It seems….. quiet there.
- Anyone shooting for newspaper syndication– it’s a lost cause. That system is failing and failing FAST. Don’t be foolish. Pioneer your own way.
- I don’t have an alcohol problem. But I do want to say, when you have two rum and cokes, it makes your cheeks feel numb. Yeah Yeah, I’m a lightweight, I know it. (well, two guinnesses and two rum and cokes— Believe me, after a week like I’ve had, you’d need it too.)
- The whole POPE thing had me thinking. #1 the media showed me how much of a fairy tale organized religion is. It’s a friggin farce. No offense to the religious among you. Seriously, I believe in God, but I think he’s not down with alot of what’s going on.
- I’ve come to the conclusion that I cannot ignore ghosts. I should just accept them, and know that I am not crazy. Perhaps they are guiding you in some way. Or just saying hello. Don’t ask.
- Bob gets on my nerves sometimes. But that’s ok. It’s healthy.
- I think I may be allergic to grass. My wife mowed the front lawn, making me feel like a woman– but I immediately had an allergy attack. Now, I have two ways to face this. Either I can bail and use it as an excuse to escape manual labor— Or I can face allergies dead on in a juggernaut way and totally SUCK IT UP. EFH U Allergies!!! I’m sick of missing the outside weather.
- When you’re kicked in the nuts, and punched in the face emotionally.. take it… suck it up. You’ll live to fight another day. Take your thumps. It makes you stronger.
Dang!– Who said Robert Blake wouldn’t get any roles after his trial. He’s the fragging pope now!
Wow– this pope isn’t even an hour or so old and he’s already chalk full of humor! I wonder if he’ll come out with a bird on his shoulder? Or I wonder if the doves will be jealous??
link to comic - One month to go until Star Wars Episode 3. So, as stated before, we’re doing a nice run of Star Wars themed strips. You can read commentary on this strip by clicking here.
I’ve been a bit brief in my blog postings and forum posting because it’s been really busy around here. In fact, I’m going to go kick start the day and get drawing so I can pull ahead a little.
Tomorrow’s comic is up in the club. A little later than I wanted to get it up there, but I got swamped today with my wife’s grandma being in the hospital, etc.
FEEDBACK– Do you guys like the commentary thing? Or should I nix that out? I was digging doing the sketches, but I really need to focus on getting ahead on the strips and my other freelance work too first. And things have been pretty busy. Toss me your thoughts if you’re reading. Who knows, maybe I’ll just ditch that vote list thing all together, It’s a little tiring. I’d much rather have people visit other stuff on the page. I don’t know. BLAH! Me tired.
Star Wars Strips Begin - We’ve already Spoiled Star Wars Episode 3 for you, but it’s coming anyway in a month and all the Star Wars buffs are on a rampage, including US. That’s right, we’re coming out of our geek closet and letting our freak flag shine. For SIX WEEKS we’re doing nothing but Star Wars themed strips. Here’s how it will work– each week, we’ll tackle humor from one of the different movies– Week One: A New Hope, Week Two: Empire Strikes Back , Week Three: Jedi , Week 4-5: the Prequels, and Week Six will be a wind down week with miscellaneous thoughts on whole thing. – Whether you’re a Star Wars nut or not, we’re adding our OWN special twist to this stuff, so if you’re a fan of good old fashion Yirmumah goodness, you’re going to dig what we have going on, so stay tuned. May the farce be with you.
Starting today, you can view behind the scenes commentary on each strip when you vote. So vote and check it out.
Ok. Starting tomorrow, I’m stealing back the idea I gave to Joe and Monkey and you’ll be able to view “Strip Commentary” by voting. And the link will be at the left there. It’s worked out great for him, and the people that want to read behind the scenes stuff on each strip can do so by clicking that link. It’s there now but won’t work until tomorrow.
Also, I’ve went ahead and added the GoogleAds back. I never really tried them out before, but they’re working out great for some other folks I know. So what the heck. I’ll test em for a few weeks. As per their terms of service, I can’t tell you things like click on our sponsor links, etc… so don’t click the ads if it’s not something you’re interested in reading or checking out. Get me? I mean it, whatever you do DONT CLICK THOSE ADS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. dont CLICK THEM! –
Any revenue generated from those ads that you shouldn’t click unless you REALLY want to, would go to actually supporting Yirmumah and it’s future endeavors and continuity. Get me? Keep that in mind.
Haven’t been blogging as much as I’d like to. Been real busy on the homefront, lots of running around– the weather is nice, etc.
Bob is over today to hang out and we’re gonna write up some killer strips with tons of ha-ha– you just watch.
Man– I discovered by way of NewsAskew, that Kevin Smith has a little blog thread. Wow, he’s pretty detailed, even telling when his wife gave him a blowjob to relieve tension. I wish I could blog about everything in my life. Check it out.
LINK! to comic - It’s more Bigfoot and Tiki Show! – Sort of a continuation of Monday’s Strip. I get more e-mails about B&T than I do anything else. Which is weird, because i didn’t expect that.
Remember, Vote daily if you’re so inclined. We don’t care about the list or # we get to, but it’s an easy way to get the strip to new people who might discover it. And a free way for readers out there to support our effort.
Things were hectic today for me. So there won’t be a special sketch thing tomorrow to vote for. But vote anyway, because you love me.
Nope. We didn’t get nominated for an Eisner. Nor do we deserve one. But we’d like one!– So I ponder on to work harder and look to the future. Oh, and things may be SUPER heating up with Club Yirmumah soon. WOW. Some fun things are cooking up out of the blue, which will make it totally badass.
BONUS!
This was a crappy day. One of those days where nothing went right. — OH– and I forgot to mention that yesterday evening was spent in the ER when my son, the older one with the mohawk fell off his tree swing and cut the back of his head. 5 stitches. OUCH.
Yeah, so I’m a bit stressed right now. Someday good things will happen. Today was a BAD day though. Fuck days like today. Who needs em?
LINK to comic - Yes yes… more muppets on meds. Pay attention, I hope you’re learning something, as I actually drew the REAL pills for each character. ENjoy. (more…)
Goddamn it. Our friend Tim Boots was driving a humvee when it was hit with a car bomb of some sort. I feel this angry fire in my belly right now– one I tried to extinguish by just not thinking about the war that’s going on. Jack, if you’re reading this, we need to get some sort of care package out to him. Goddamn it. I hope he’s ok. It sounds fucking terrible.
I just want to put my head in the sand and go back to the coffee shop days. That or I want to punch something really hard and curse something.
HANG IN THERE BOOTS!!!______________________
full story from the dailycourier.com —-
“He’s alive, that’s the most important thing,” said Sheila Boots, of Connellsville, whose son, Spc. Tim Boots, 23, was critically injured in Iraq last Thursday.
Tim Boots is currently being treated in Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.
He and three other members of the Army National Guard Task Force 1st Battalion, 103rd Armor Bravo Company, out of Connellsville, were injured when their Humvee was hit by a car bomb outside of Mosul.
Fayette County resident Kevin Claycomb was also injured. He is being treated at Walter Reed, too. Attempts to reach Claycomb’s family were unsuccessful. The names of the other two soldiers were not immediately available.
Tim Boots’ lower right leg was amputated, his left foot is broken, and his liver lacerated, said his mother. Doctors also had to remove his spleen. He was taken from the scene of the explosion to Baghdad. From there, he was taken to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and then to Walter Reed Army Hospital.
Sheila Boots said the Army permitted his friend, Josh Garlick, to leave his base in Germany to be with her son until he was flown to Walter Reed.
“It was a very gracious thing for them to do,” she said.
Sheila Boots said her son currently drifts in and out of consciousness because of heavy pain medication. Doctors have told her that he will be at Walter Reed for “a very long time. They have told us that he won’t go home until he can walk.”
Tim Boots was driving the Humvee when it was hit.
Sheila Boots calls her son, “A hero, but the guys who pulled him out of the burning vehicle are the true heroes. Scot Sage was one of them. I will be forever in their debt. My first concern was for my son, but my immediate second thought was, were the other guys all right? I know that will be Tim’s primary concern. Thanks to those heroes, they are.”
Lt. Col. Philip J. Logan, who commands the unit, said in a written statement that the Humvee was part of a convoy of five armored vehicles returning to base at the conclusion of a mission.
“The armored Humvee protected the crew exactly as designed; however, four soldiers from the patrol were wounded during the attack. Other soldiers from the patrol, at great personal risk, immediately extracted the wounded personnel from the burning vehicle, saving their lives,” wrote Logan. “The skill, bravery and dedication of every soldier involved in this attack and recovery was awe-inspiring and certainly saved the lives of the wounded crewmen. The soldiers of Bravo, 1-103rd Armor truly care for each other, risking their lives without hesitation to save their fellow soldiers. These soldiers represent what is great about our nation. I would ask everyone to pray for our wounded soldiers, and their comrades who continue the fight here in Iraq.”
Sheila Boots said her son is on prayer lists of churches around the world.
She also said she and his father, Wesley Boots, of Uniontown, are receiving tremendous support from the Southmoreland School District.
“Our friends at Southmoreland have done so much,” Sheila Boots said.
“We are very concerned about Tim and pray for him,” said John Lee, principal of Scottdale Elementary School, where Sheila Boots is a teacher.
A 2000 graduate of Connellsville Area High School, Boots joined the National Guard after he graduated. When deployed, Boots was studying history at California University of Pennsylvania.
“He’s a member of the Delta Chi fraternity, and the international organization is also praying for him,” Sheila Boots said.
Cards and letters can be sent to Spc. Tim Boots, c/o Sheila Boots, Bologne House, 6900 Georgia Ave. NW, Bldg. 20, Washington, D.C. 20307-5001.
Alrighty. New day here. I just did up a sketch I’m calling “Space Bitch” – you can see it by
Clicking our vote button and confirming. Enjoy that.
Also, i put yet another strip up in the club section. You know, that thing called Club Yirmumah? Yeah. Check it out.
Oh oh! I finally got around to seeing “Super Size Me”- great documentary about a guy, Morgan Spurlock, who eats nothing but McDonalds for a month, and all the effects it has on his body. It’s really funny and informative. Definitly worth a rental– I may put up the “experiment” with the McDonalds fries here just for fun. WOW.. you would not believe that…. yikes. Look for that in the Extras section. – Also, Morgan will have a new show coming up on FX called “30 days"– wherein he does different things for 30 days– like go to jail, etc… looks to be a fun time.
LINK to comic - The return of everyone’s favorite Bigfoot and Tiki! Sorry this one wasn’t in color. All the painting and mumbo jumbo I had to do bogged me down. So it will be black and white strips until I can pull ahead. Or until I have like 1000 club members. Join already!
Speaking of which, I have two new strips going up in there today. So those that are in, keep tabs. Those who aren’t GET IN!
New vote sketch today. Probably summing up how I feel after physical labor.
And here is the pic of my kids with their freshly made mohawks. Dillon’s was really spiked up for school today– it looks very cool.
The Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge is now allowing other webcomics out there to post ads weekly on the main page. It’s a total deal and it will really boost traffic to your own comic strip if you have one. Check out all the details HERE. - Don’t hesitate, because those ad spots are going to fill up FAST. Get em while they’t hot and cheap.
Whew. Drank a little too much last night. My wife wanted to try this orange Smirnoff stuff, and we did, and it was terrible. But I spent 15 bucks on it, so gosh darnit we were drinking that crap! After awhile, it all felt ok.
Head over to Joe and Monkey the comic, by Zach Miller, – he’s put up his first big full color strip. I’m really digging his work. It may be my favorite comic on the web.
Vote incentive sketches start again tomorrow. Vote to check em out. I’m liking the “commentary” idea I gave Zach Miller, it’s working out great for his comic. I may steal it back and do it for the daily strips, so people can see little special notes on each strip.
I’ll most likely take photos of the kids with their mohawks today. Stay tuned.
Ok. So my son Dillon, age 7 this summer, has a mohawk. His younger brother Dakota, 3, decided he too wanted a mohawk. So both my younger sons have hawks now.
We went out for ice cream. The 3 year old was proudly telling everyone “Hey, check out my mohawk, lady!”
I can’t look at them without smiling. They look so cute. My little rockers.
The room is all done and painted up white. And most of the stuff is back up on the wall. WHEW! I’m running on only a couple hours sleep too.
Now it’s time to take a break and watch Empire Strikes Back. Just because. If you haven’t voted yet today, DO IT to see a cool Star Wars related bonus art thing.
LINK to comic - YES! The return of the yomma joke. Only this time, it’s YIRMUMAH. Go ahead and post your favorite “yirmumah is like” jokes in the forum. Who knows, maybe we’ll use them in the future or something.
Vote for us today to see another Star Wars themed bonus sketch thingy. It’s awesome.
I’ll be painting my living room today, so I might not be available as often as I usually am. But still, send e-mail in if you need anything, or post in the forum.
Cartoonist Robin Bougie, who I named in my top13 in the Daily Grind last weekend, is now under attack by Catholic folk who are upset at his pope jokes. You can see it all here on his livejournal.
What I dig is reading Robin’s pretty level headed responses to the idiots there. So he gets a giant thumbs up for me. I’m going to remember some of the arguments he’s made the next time people come around trying to attack something I did.
I posted something awful in that thread too. Go check it out.
Hey, if you click the Vote Banners now, you’ll be treated to a new little piece of art that’s star wars themed– confirm your vote if you want to check it out… http://www.buzzcomix.net/in.php?ID=yirmumah
Personal crap: We’re planning on painting the old “Yir-Tiki Bar” this weekend. That’s the whole room actually, not the bar itself. Just a nice white coat of paint is all. We have a ton of stuff to take down and move around, but it’ll be fun.
Bad Ass Air Freshners!: I finally went and bought those Glade Wisps. the ones you see on TV that like, uh, poof every so often?? Yeah, those. THEY ARE GREAT. I bought one for the bathroom and one for the main room here. Best air freshners ever. I won 2 more on ebay for like 2.99. Right on! My house is gonna keep staying fresh and smelling clean thanks to the bad assedness of those freshners. When you’re on the toilet, you just reach back and set that baby on the HIGH setting. It poofs every 9 seconds. Doesnt really make a sound, but you can hear it if you’re quiet enough.
CLEAN WATER: in an effort to stop drinking Coke like it’s water, my wife was going to buy bottled water, which I think is lame. But she’s been going on and on about how great water is to drink, and I’m like, IF IT’S NOT COFFEE, FUCK IT! — but she keeps insisting that water is great for you. I think drinking water is overrated. Anyway, long story short, i say, you know, im gonna buy one of those damn filter pitcher things and save money on this stupid bottled water idea. So we did that. I bought a Brita brand one, it sits in the fridge and has a spout on it. Clean water anytime you want to drink it. Mmmmm. A rarity here in Fayette-Nam, where some days the water can get, uh, bad. So, I’ve been drinking clean water all day. I’m jonesing for a Coke right now. DAMN. ——– WATER GOOD. DELICIOUS…
Alright, fuck it. Water is stupid. But if I keep drinking Coke like it IS water, I’m going to be in trouble in a GIANT FAT WAY.
other stuff: Because some of you might be amazed that I went a whole post without talking about COMICS…. I just wanted to say, be sure to vote tomorrow because I did up some cool new sketches that are star wars related. Well, these are actually more than sketches. But check it out in the A.M.
LINK to comic - Today we invite you to see the Dysfunctional Family Circus. Yes, yes, I know there was a “disfunctional family circus” which was supposedly sued… but what they did was retarded and they were breaking the law. We’re of course satirizing all things in this. Enjoy!
Wanna see a new Yirmumah Sketch?? VOTE TODAY! - the sketch will show up after you confirm your vote. Enjoy!
PS. I’ll try to do this every day if I can. Check it every day. Archived sketches will be put in the Club section… so you may only have one day to vote and see the latest sketch.
We’ve added more “Bobicons” to the Yirmumah forums. Just post or reply and you’ll see them all in the smiley list.
Thanks to Brandon, once again!
Also of note. I’m kinda done talking about the Iron Man Challenge thing. It’s not so “Iron Man” like after all. People squeeking by on the rules, or still in the contest on technicalities or whatever. I’m still in it, but I’m done worrying about it. It’s clear it’s going to be a bullshit race at this point.
Maybe Scott Kurtz and myself will put out a REAL challenge for people. We’re both swamped and I know he wouldnt want to judge such a thing– but maybe we could organize something that would be not only worth a challenge, but we could get sponsors and more prizes– of course, I reckon under any contest we’d set up, you’d REALLY have to be an Iron Man of some sort. Or Crazy. I’ll toss him an e-mail. Maybe not NOW, but maybe later when things cool off.
LINK to the madness - Today’s comic is kind of a continuation of stuff that happened last week. Because I felt like doing this joke. Enjoy it! And comment in the forums if’n you like.
It’s a new month– Vote for us daily!
I’m working on an incentive idea. The #1 comic there can’t even SPELL right. UGH. They spelled “here” as “hear” – UGH. So, I’d like to learn to move up those ranks. So help us get there!
And thanks to everyone who’s signed up so far. — And don’t sweat it if you haven’t— the club will be here for you when you want it or can afford to swing it. Thanks to everyone for reading!
LINK to Strip: The last “24″ strip. Boy, that was a fun little theme week. I know we havent done one. For fans of randomness, sit tight, it’s coming this week!
Go and Vote for us- Im gonna start doing sketches or something that will only appear after you’ve confirmed your vote. Not there now, but VOTE anyway.
DAILY GRIND IRON MAN CHALLENGE UPDATE- It’s starting to be some bullshit there. Rules were broken and people were let slide. For a kinda detailed rundown of what happened SEE HERE.
Not much happened here. I probably should have drawn or something today, but it was pretty much just a lounge around day doing nothing. We watched “The Grudge” and “Ray"on DvD, and pretty much just vegged out here. BLAH!
I think it might have been the time change.
I did write up my “Top 13″ in the Daily Grind. Check it out HERE.
Ok, I’m not catholic, but I don’t think you have to be to know this guy went out with his boots on.
My grandmother recently passed back on December 20th, and it was kind of a happy experience that she went on to the thing she believed in. She lived practically her whole life to “go to god"–and brother, she meant it! You know, something about the power of faith out there– it’s mind boggling to me, probably because I have very little faith in anything except my family and friends.
I’m not a religious person at all. However I REALLY like hearing the great stories about this guy. He really lived a long life and did so much, overcame so much. So that is totally groovy. There was someone on the tube saying that his total message to the world, no matter what you believed in, was “WHO ARE YOU?” – And to put all you had into what you were doing and just be that thing to the fullest. That’s a powerful message to send out.
Ok, enough of me waxing half intellectually— sorry. Back to dick and fart jokes.
Ok, so let me go over the jist of this thing. No, it’s not a subscription service. No, it’s not a secret club, CLUB YIRMUMAH IS the official Yirmumah fanclub. Bottom line, if you’re a big fan of our work, join up and you get all the goodness listed in there. The comic STILL REMAINS FREE every day here at the site, and the archives are super open and free. I think locking up the archive is a retarded idea. –
THE really big deal in this…. club members can choose to see comics from us the minute they’re done and uploaded. Now, this means that what we’d usually call a “buffer", the active members have first access to. If we’re working a week or two ahead, the members are reading right along as we go. Got that? I think that sums it up fairly well.
The Goodies. There is a good amount of unseen material I’d like to put up in the club area. It’s really not for public consumption, because only fans would understand most of it anyway. – Also, we want to communicate with the fans more. The club is a great way to do that, we’ll have a full on monthly giveaway, with everything from original art and stuff from us, to COOL things we might come across like a PSP or Xbox all customized in a yirmumah fashion. This of course depends on the amount of members. We can’t afford to go throwing money around. – Plus, any kind of wacked out idea that Bob may have like his DEATH POOL, etc… it will all be a club member only thing he can run.
Are we selling out? Hell no! It’s still just little ol’ us here running this thing like the millenium falcon! And check this.. it boils down to about 3 pennies a day! 3 pennies! – Right now we have it set up so that it’s 12 bucks a year, or 2.50 a month to join up. All types of payment are accepted. – And to boot, we’re giving back to the readers. If you want to refer or pimp our club out, and someone signs up through your site or blog, whatever, we’re going to give a generous cut of the cash. It might not be enough for new rims or whatever– but hell, it’s something! Nobody is getting rich from this.
That’s the bottom line. No one is getting rich from Webcomics. And this is our way to generate just a wee bit of money from this thing we do, without disrupting our readers or process now. The strip and archives are still 100% free – I don’t believe in locking up your work in some other subscription style like “The Norm” etc… I just can’t do it. … -people that REALLY love our stuff and can afford to support us can do so and get access to some cool extra stuff. And we’re not going to skimp on that side… I just uploaded the first 16 page Yirmumah comic from 1998– over 237 panels of bonus content! It’s raw and rough– and I have 2 other issues I unearthed to put up in the coming months. I know there have been other little clubs out there, but I’m confident in saying that there’s never been anything like CLUB YIRMUMAH. It might sound bold to say I’d like to stake a claim in a working “Fan Club Model” for webcomics. But that’s all up to you people out there. – Even if only 10 people sign up– we’re going to rock those 10 people’s world!
Are you flat broke like us? Don’t worry. We’re going to give away random club memberships every month or so. But you HAVE to be a registered forum user to be in the running for that– e-mail us and let us know your user name on the forum– all active registered non-member forum users will be in the running IF they want to be.
I’m sure I’m forgeting to mention something. But feel free to e-mail me if or post in the forum or here if you have any problems.
You’ll notice that something came early. Official word coming tomorrow from the old blog here, and I’ll talk about the details more— BUT if you want to catch the press release, you can check it out HERE.
Damn, you know, it makes me happy to hear from friends who got a good thing going and I know they totally deserve it. There is no greater feeling than that for me.
It makes up for those times you see people who totally don’t appreciate things they get or don’t deserve them.
What a tragic story. I feel bad for this family that’s been torn apart. But just a little reminder as I lash out in some angst here…
This stuff happens EVERYDAY. And in more tragic ways and stories we’ll never hear, or those that the media doesn’t consider worth telling. The truth is, there are too many stories like this to tell. They could have a whole 24hour cable channel about media like this, and it would never end. —- I’m sick of hearing the people like a priest tell you on TV what she expressed, or how evil the husband is… Im sick of hearing politicians go back and forth on this– hell, the family is pretty bitter, lashing out at people who did what they could to help. Lashing out at judges they BEGGED to take the case. Geez! And you damn well know when that clown Jessie Jackson shows up, it’s a bonafide CIRCUS. – don’t worry though, my TV is off. But you won’t be able to escape a media hot potato like this. So it’s just something to think about. Especially now that the talking heads will REALLY be on about this subject. Don’t forget all those other souls out there in limbo.
LINK! - 24 Week continues. Never forget what happened to Steve. REMEMBER STEVE!
Wow, it’s the last day of March already! Time is flying! And wow, taking a look back at everything we’ve done on this daily schedule since January– its mind boggling. If i had drawn my comic with premade templates, I wouldnt be as impressed, mind you.
Ok, for those who didn’t see the previous blog which was only up for like 20 minutes– no big deal. All that DID see it, you can totally go do that thing I said.
I defeated the evil trackback spam from flooding my blog. Here’s how– If you’re running the wordpress blog– simply go to where you have your blog installed, and delete the php file called “wp-trackback.php” —- go ahead and saveyourself a copy of it incase you ever want to put it back. But no one seems to use that…. soooooo carry on.
LINKY! - 24 week continues.. for, uh, better or worse…… some people aren’t getting the strips. I guess you wouldn’t if you don’t watch 24 like we do. It’s one of our favorite shows on the idiot box.
Although, I think we’re in the free in clear here. All you need to know is, that buggy eyed guy is how I draw Kiefer Sutherland. And Kiefer Sutherland was in Lost Boys and Young Guns 2.
My wife points out that this might not be Arnold Schwarzenegger– because she thinks he’d have a scar on his chest from his heart surgery– however, I think it very well could be him. Ah, what being a politician can do to you.
LINK to comic - 24 panels week continues. Wee! YES. I know I draw Kiefer Sutherland wacky– i’m doing it on purpose.
Vote for us.
OH! And here’s a couple photos of that Tiki Cabinet I put up over the weekend. The guy who carved him calls him Teco. Look closely and you’ll see the leapord print that lines the inside backing. SWAG!
For anyone paying attention– Something is coming on friday to Yirmumah.
If you want to know what’s going on, I MIGHT give you a summary if you e-mail me and I know you can keep a secret. e-mail me at: idrawcomics@hotmail.com and ask. I just MIGHT tell you if I’m around the inbox at the time.
OK! The moment 5 of you have been waiting for - The “Digital Strips Podcast” interview of ME is up at THIS LINK! - Listen, a podcast is just a fancy word for an MP3 audio file. So you can totally download it and play it in your audio players, just like the music you steal from the internet! AWESOME!
I just listened to the interview, and it came out way better than I expected. I don’t sound like half the ass I thought I did. I was frustrated with microphone problems before I got on with them, and I downed 2 Guinnesses to take the nervous edge off. ARRRGG!!! It’s not just for breakfast anymore.
Anyway, be sure to give it a listen. We talk about a good amount of things, some including: the beginnings of Yirmumah and where some of the strips came from, webcomics subscription models, how to build an audience for your work, hate mail, independent comic publishing, Macgyver having a mullet— all sorts of stuff…. once again, here’s the link- DIGITAL STRIPS PODCAST
A reminder– something special is coming to Yirmumah this coming friday, April 1st. Stay tuned– it rocks.
Things I learned over the weekend.
#1- Bob likes attention. ANd you people are feeding him and creating a monster!!! I kid, I kid. Bob needs love too. But Bob probably just needs his own computer and blog of his own. Then the internet can sleep safe at night.
#2 - Hanging a 68lb tiki cabinet from plaster walls is hard. But I did it.
Come to think of it– my “alpha male” in me has been shining through the past week. Wednesday night I fixed a problem with our van— (well admitedly by checking the internet) so that’s sort of like, my alpha nerd.– But whatever, it works. –
Then to hang this cabinet, I needed to like, drill out these holes in these heavy duty brackets– Bob said I needed a vice. I’m a cartoonist! I don’t have a vice! I don’t even own a drill so I had to borrow one from the inlaws. HURM. (note to self: buy drill) – I had to use toggle bolts which go into plaster or drywall and create an anchor. It hold up to 70lbs— everyone was doubting this thing would stay up on the wall— but a Saturday morning and afternoon later– and that thing was completely solid. Maybe I’ll take pics tomorrow. I even kinda hung from it a little to test it all out. So it is DEFINITLY secure if my fat butt can swing from it.
OK! Bob has pretty much takend over the blog as he squats here this weekend. – So I didn’t feel compelled to blog anything. Just a quick note to say HAPPY EASTER!
I noticed like, uh, 4 or 5 people ditched our strip from their LJ friends feed this weekend. Probably couldn’t handle the Jesus joke or something. Or maybe it was the line about coke and a dead hooker??? I don’t know. Sorry, this strip isn’t for the easily offended. But C’MON!!!
For those that DO want to hook it up on their livejournal friends pages, the new feed is up– http://www.livejournal.com/users/yirfeed – add that up in your LJ accounts.. and it’s really easy to comment there. You can also click the link over to the right to hook it up. So far, the subscribers to the feed are 17. Let’s kick that number UP. Do it for Jesus AND the easter bunny.
In other news. I wanted to put out a public shout out to my wife. She’s a home health nurse, and had to work overnight for a guy who’s well, without getting into specifics, pretty much stuck in a bed. Before she went to work, she made the guy up an easter basket with jello cups and ho-ho’s, and a plush duckie. – My wife rocks. I bet this is the first easter basket this fellow has seen in years. – NOW, I want my wife back dammit.
Stop calling her in to cover for other slack ass nurses! She’s MINE!
Hey everybody! Head over to JourneyIntoHistory to see the new review, all about us - CLICK HERE!
Quotes from the review:
“Yirmumah by D.J. Coffman and Bob McDeavit is an excellent example of why the syndicates should give up now. “
“The result is art that’s a little less crisp than PVP or Penny Arcade, but with much more energy to every character and line.”
HAH! Take that PVP and PEnny Arcade!!! Our lines got more energy than your lines!
I only have a couple minor corrections. One, our newest book is 2.99. So probably no more cheap books until we do mini comics again. – Two, I don’t think I submitted the strip to be reviewed, I think he e-mailed me about doing it. Who knows. I’ll take the attention anyway we can get it. We’re cheap like that.
I’ll tell you what’s up! I’ve got something up my sleeve. Something, kinda, BIG. Something that will launch let’s say… next Friday publicly. That’s April Fools day, but this ain’t no joke. Uh uh. No ways.
So what is it? Well… I want to say bad. But I’m still tooling with some things. I spent the day today working on it, when I could have been getting a week ahead on strips. But it’s ok.
I just hope some of you out there use it. That’s all I ask. Maybe it can work for more people than just ME…. this …. Yirmumah machine. Perhaps it can help you in some way? I don’t know. We’ll see.
See? This is why I shouldn’t blog. I know i’ve gotten some of you in a tizzy and now you’ll be e-mailing me to ask what’s up. Nothing is up. We’re upsidedownwards.
Sorry… that last part shouldnt make sense to anyone. I’m just still geeking.
OH HELL YES!– It’s no surprise to long time readers that I’m probably the biggest Pearl Jam fan on the planet. And Rolling Stone reports:
Pearl Jam are almost finished with their follow-up to 2002’s Riot Act. The band plans to spend the next three weeks in the studio recording vocals and mixing. If all goes according to plan, the yet-to-be-titled disc could be released as early as May.
“There’s a lot more up-tempo stuff,” says drummer Matt Cameron. “It’s a lot more rockin’ than our last one.” Song titles like “Severed Hand,” “Worldwide Suicide” and “2x4″ seem to reflect that harder edge. Though the track listing has not been finalized, other candidates include “Marker” and “Cold Concession.”
Cameron, who teamed with guitarist Mike McCready on the track “Unemployable,” characterizes the sessions as more collaborative. “We reworked everything together in the studio,” he says. “It’s a really healthy environment – everyone really just wants to dig in and make the songs as good as they can be.”
Pearl Jam hope to support the new record with a summer tour.
So– I missed out on that big Reading show last year– but we will DEFINITLY be front rowish this year. Pearl Jam is just the best rock band on the planet. I’m sorry.
I just caught a link to the Pat Obrien voice mail things. WOW. This guy is NUTZOID. I’m going to post the link to the audio, but it’s NOT work safe. Hear it here.
He must say “You are so fucking hot” like– 50 millions times on that. He’s coked out of his mind and calling someone over and over telling them all the stuff he wants to do to her. Whoever he’s talking to.
You know– the only thing I can think of when I see him, is Jimmy Falon doing that impersonation of him. Curse you, Jimmy Falon!
You know– sometimes it feels like I’m living in some fantasy land.. there’s such a smorgasbord of good stuff online to check out. Mostly for free too.
Of course, there is also a smorgasbord of crap out there, but you seem to find the good and bookmark your way through the crap.
But wow. You know, if you really break down what the web can do for comics… it’s just amazing. There’s already SO much going on… and no one even seems to be aware.
It’s magical as a creator. To almost instantly have something up to your audience if you want to. That’s the ONE thing I find lacking. More work ethic and more SUPER topical strips. I mean, imagine some comics that could write about what happened TODAY or last night and have a strip about it in the morning. In that regard, the net isn’t being utilized to it’s full extent. I’d like to see way more fresh comics on stuff thats going on in the world– not necessarily politics– but a mix of everything– pop-culture, whatever. Imagine if those South Park guys could have a whole show up in a day?? they’d do it.
So, my buddy Nate’s book is out for sale too, ATLAND, - Beautiful work. Probably one of if not THE BEST looking webcomics out there today. He collected the first strips with some bonuse material and PV Comics sent it to Diamond.
Diamond turned it down. Did they even look at that!? Dear god, why wouldn’t they carry that!- 32 pages in full color for 2.99 from an INDEPENDENT!? that’s a friggin DEAL!– But no– Diamond passed. Or most likely, the crappy brand manager who has his head in his ass, passed. Yeah, Steve Leaf, I’m talking about YOU. I can’t wait to hear the reason. What the hell!?– To pass on a book like Atland is just insane. I could totally see why they might not carry something black and white and by ME, but to pass this GEM up— They’re retarded.—It really just hammers home the point to me that the Diamond system is a JOKE. a broken system.
Face it people. Even when you DO get in their catalog, and pay for advertising, whatever, you’re lucky to get 500-800 sales IF YOU’RE LUCKY. REAL LUCKY. Barely anyone breaks over a 1000 book mark on the self publishing side. I can’t say Diamond’s not doing it’s job, because frankly, I haven’t been giving a fugg about that whole system in a long time. But if Diamond can’t get behind a high quality book like Atland AND get that thing into shops by the truckload– then something is wrong.
ME? I chose NOT to use Diamond at all. It wasn’t even an afterthought. My book is full color, packed with goodness, $2.99 direct from the site where my readers roam. You won’t get a better deal on that. If I really wanted to, I could easily build up my own group of shops to carry my stuff direct. But it’s till not really worth it. – I WAS really looking forward to Atland being carried though. And I know there was some waiting around on Diamond to hear back on this. And you get word like that?? Blah….
This frustrates me, because I’ve seen people spend THOUSANDS of dollars on the self publshing game and lose their shirts over it… and they get nothing from Diamond but a bit of false hope and a tiny listing. —- The other part that angers me, the indys are the backbone of their damn catalog! They pay the bills. And it’s the truth. I’ve asked them! They need to fill those spaces with indy books. But they pass on something like Atland??? Give me a break. Like I said, that thing should have been looked at and praised. Brand managers should have been on the phone with retailer buddies and telling them how great the book is. But nope…. Wait until they find out Atland sold a few thousand copies on it’s own, and will NEVER go out of print!? They probably still won’t care.
I just want to shout– WAKE UP INDY PEOPLE! You don’t need them. You can still use em if you want.. but don’t waste months of your time. If you can do it.. sell direct. Use somethng like Comixpress.com (even though they are backed up at the moment) – but don’t keep feeding the broken machine.
That’s it. Im not going to mention it again. The only way COMICS will change in that regard, is if more people start doing some impressive things themselves. There are a few people at Diamond who have a good intention– but damn– some people just don’t have a clue. If Steve Leaf turned down a book like that, he should be canned. Let someone else that has a clue and can muster excitement for comics in that post. Not some washed up retailer. And I know, people on the other side of Pro-Diamond– will be like, “1. why do you even mention us?” “2.Go do it yourself then toughguy!” To which I would answer– 1. Because it’s dicky and someone is an asshat. and 2. I AM, thank you very much!
The Interview with the Digital Strips guys is done and done. I hope I didnt sound like an ass. I had some minor problems here with my microphone settings that delayed the thing, so I was just happy it went off at all. DAMN my luck! —- At one point I think I said it’s kinda easy to do a 5 day a week update. That must have sounded egotistical– but damn, it kinda is easy for me, but only because I’ve been wasting my life drawing comics for so long.
I feel like a know it all sometimes and it bugs me. Once again, this is really the only thing I have some expertise in— which could be sad to some. But I’m proud of it. – Maybe I’m jaded? Because when people ask me questions about making money, or the comic book industry, immediately I the thing that comes to mind are all those guys who are barely hanging in there, or who have lost their shirts. THIS PAGE comes to mind. - Yeah, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, kids!… . But us underbelly folks are JUST FINE!. Werther’s for everyone!
Booyahkasha! - The new Yirmumah Strips #1 is now up and available to the public at THIS LINK. If you didn’t get one, buy this one up! Only 2.99 for this full color bad boy, packed with all those strips from July-December 2004, plus much more!
LINK! - I drew this comic last night, and I had mixed feelings about doing it. I wanted to do a comic about how I felt about that poor woman in Florida, and what a circus all that has become. The talking feeding tube was actually my wife’s idea and I took it from there. – Everytime I’ve seen the story of the Schiavos play out on TV, there always seemed to be something disingenius about him in interviews, especially when put side by side with the situation at hand.
Anyways.. this is how I looked at this issue through the Yirmumah glasses. Like it or hate it, I just want to see someone choke that guy. What person person than Feedy the Angry Feeding Tube?
Vote for us.
ITEM I just realized again that I should probably stay away from the internet too early in the morning when I’m in a groggy mood and have had little coffee. It makes me REALLY mess around and people seem to get all upset and angry with me. In their defense, I DO act like a turd. It’s just funny to hear someone say they have no respect for me, then I go to their site and their strip consists of a taking Assface with a hoonanny for a mouth. Brilliant! – It actually makes my happy the tap dancing Ass character look cute. I want a Happy the Ass plush doll. Some day!
Be sure to send in any questions you want the Digital Strips guys to ask me - I do the interview at 10pm tomorrow and it will air in the following Sunday show.. You need to be sure you questions are sent to digital.strips@gmail.com before the end of today, or at least sometime tomorrow morning. Ask anything! Let’s keep it semi clean though.
Those of you with LiveJournal accounts, do add this feed to your friends list: http://www.livejournal.com/users/yirfeed/ - It will allow you to feed the strip right into your friends pages and read from there. Woo! Plus, it’s pretty nifty and easy to comment on the strips there too.
Also, anyone using RSS, make not of our glorious new feed for your feed readers: http://www.yirmumah.net/rss/rss.xml
People with MY YAHOO accounts can also add that feed to their MY YAHOO page, and have the new strips fed in. I don’t know anyone who uses a my yahoo page, but if you’re out there, add our link! - http://www.yirmumah.net/rss/rss.xml
ITEM- Went to my first auction today. Blah, that sucked. This guy had a bunch of cool stuff in his yard, railroad signs, etc.. he died and now all his stuff and his property is up for auction. I cringed when the weird auctioneer said something like “I promise you, this property will look a lot better when he haul all this junk away” —– I cringed. Here was this guys collection of signs and stuff…. wow. And this guy auctioning it off is pretty much crapping on a part of who this guy was.
My wife wanted me to go to look at a couch there. But it was fugly. I’ll try never to go to an auction again. It just felt creepy.
Let’s run down some newsy news items. I’ll add things to this one post as things come in. Check back for additions I may add.
ITEM- Eric from ComicStrip fan writes some good things about me in his blog. Someone wrote good things about me? Yeah. Shocker, eh?? [LINK]
ITEM- Eric from ComicStrip fan uploaded all the art I sent him, along with the envelopes and letter I sent. You can see his complete Yirmumah collection on THIS PAGE!
ITEM- The Yirmumah Strips #1 (Enter Yirmumah), will be on sale soon at Comixpress. Like ANY MINUTE it could go up. So check their site out frequently, OR just wait for me to post the link when I know it’s up. [LINK]
ITEM- I just got off the phone and my wife want so drag me to one of those auctions. Some cool couch there or something. Gotta go!
I just caught Nightline tonight, all about a Muslim Comedian named Azhar Usman. (Link to his site) Very funny guy. And he really gets the message across.
It’s a damn shame what Muslim Americans are going through in this country. It really is. And the media is to blame– it really is. They put this GIANT FEAR in everyone… People think Muslim here, they think Terrorist.
NOW– this might not be the case EVERYWHERE with EVERYONE…. but here in Fayette-Nam if I brought up anything about “Muslim” – people would immediately jump to that spot in their brain – the GIANT FEAR!
Now– Here at Yirmumah, we’ve been slightly criticized for joking around about terrorists. I was recently told “JIHAD!” isnt a battle cry, its means “struggle". I knew that already. But seriously, isn’t it funny for someone to just yell, JIHAD! Especially a talking bear? If anything, we try to mock the stereotype of the terrorist. I don’t ever want people to think we’re down on our Muslim brothers.
In fact, Yirmumah is an equal opportunity offender. We make fun of EVERYTHING. Even ourselves.
And I promised that if a Muslim comedian caught my eye in some way, I’d link it up and post about it- This isn’t something I’d feel comfortable doing regularly, but given the way Muslim Americans ARE being treated in the US, (under a constant eye of suspicion) I think this well worth mentioning and bringing to light– and this definitly caught my eye. I sure hope folks like Azhar can get a fair shake… I see he’ll be in Pittsburgh on the 22nd of April. Maybe I’ll try to catch that show– In fact, it would be fun to hang out with more Standup comedians.
Mental note: I need to remind Bob to pursue a standup comedy career.
Ok. Last week when I was packing up books I spoke of the liberating thing I did. Well, the books were late, and I wanted to do something special for the people who took me up on the offer and who were now waiting patiently. – I decided I’d give away original art from the strip itself to the people who bought the book. – Why??? For one, when my originals are done here, they go to a box. I have boxes and boxes of originals here from various projects. They do nothing but take up space. I know that people who actually follow my work, or this strip, would appreciate the original art a lot more than I do when it’s sitting in a box in my basement. I can’t do this ALL the time, and it may be the only time I do it. WHo knows. But it felt great.
Now, there are SOME originals I keep just for me. Ones that I’m fond of. But for the most part, I just went through my stack of envelopes, looked at the name, and if I semi-knew you, I paged through and found a comic I thought you might like. Now– since I wanted to keep the shipping down, I folded them! I hear collectors or speculators cursing me… CURSE YOU!— But you know what… “I” put that crease there. It was liberating to treat these things like something I was sending to someone as a thank you note. The first few I folded were painful…. but the more I did it– the more I realized, it’s just paper! These ARE just material things I created. SURE i drew on them.. but do they need to be some sort of sealed up in pristine condition?? Nah! Screw that. If your comic came folded, with a note written ON the strip or on the back of the strip– “I” put it there. And I did each one FOR YOU.
One person in particular, I ended up sending multiple things to. For one, he’s bought a bunch of my original strips in the past. Two, he’s become a really good friend– and three, he’s sent me some cool packages from the island. It’s almost like my own Pen Pal!—-
And what a cool thing? What an AWESOME exchange between the reader and the creator. I’ve told Bob this, and he thinks I’m crazy, but I’d like every reader to be like a friend. Different levels of friends, sure…. I won’t claim to KNOW many of you out there. But I’ll tell you, there is NO greater feeling than getting an e-mail, or note in the snail mail, or helping hand from someone out there. It makes you go… WOW. — And it really shows me that these things.. these little drawings and sometimes crude and twisted humor…. they CAN do something. If it’s just “entertaiment” , fine. That’s enough for me. But I’ve made a good many actual friends doing this, who support my work. People who were only readers first, and I just flat out can call them friends.
Here are some photos from the night I liberated some of my original strips to the readers:
The loot! The booty! And my humble ordering filling station at the tiki bar where many of those strips were made.
A closer look.
A note I scrawled on the back of one of the original strips.
Bob punching at the camera and trying to look tough. This was the night we signed the books.
CONGRATS TO KEP! One of my old compadres from the Digital Webbing boards has been doing quite well for himself in the comic writing field. I just found out today he’s the writer on the new Shadowhawk series. Kep is the nicest mofo on the planet, and he can pull a MEAN rabbit out of a hat too.
LINK! - You can’t go wrong with Kill Crazy Clowns. Screw everyone’s Pirates and Monkeys and Zombies and Robots… OBEY the CLOWN!!!!
Other news: The full color book will be going onsale to the mass public at Comixpress today sometime. I’ll link it up when I have the address.
Item: The strip isn’t in color today, because, well.. somedays I dont feel like coloring it. When I get the feeling to color, I will. – Once I start making more money with this, via donations, sales, whatever, I promise to have MORE full color strips… because I’ll have more time where I don’t have to stop and do other freelance jobs, caricatures, etc. —
LINK! - Our apologies to gay Leprechauns everywhere. We really DO know how hard it is for you to get action. And we care.
ITEM For everyone who wanted an RSS feed of JUST the strip itself– The mysterious Brendan has swooped in and hooked us up. So…. add these to your RSS readers:
RSS FEED of Strip only: http://www.yirmumah.net/rss/rss.xml
And WOW– We broke 40,000 page views yesterday! FRAGGIN awesome!. Thanks to all the folks from NothingNice who swung in and e-mailed to say Hi. Stick around.
Also, it looks like a good many of you are spreading the word around in forums and linking to us. Keep doing it! Don’t ever be afraid to share the love you have for Yirmumah.
NOW, ye wee lads and lasses– Be sure to enjoy your day to the fullest! And why not embibe a dark Guinness in honor of Yirmumah. NEVER forget Yirmumah on the day o’ the irish!
Cast a wee vote for us in the old voting thinger m’jigger
My son Dillon, the 1st grader, brought me his first comic he made, stapled and everything. It’s a Batman story. Batman fights the joker, beats up thugs– AND meets girls.
After I told him how much I liked it, he happily dashed to his book bag and popped it in there, saying he was going to show his friend at school tomorrow. –
Ah… the magic of comics. It’s just automatic. I don’t even encourage him at all…. it’s like it’s built in. Kinda scary… but totally magical.
I added a link to the right in the link bar, Joe and Monkey. A fantastic comic I found by way of the nothing nice to say site. What an awesome find for me this past week! Super thanks to Mitch CLem for e-mailing me about the guest strip. People seem to be digging it a lot.
ALSO– Anyone who still wants a book and poster, I have some left over. NOT MANY– So e-mail me for details on that. Hopefully packages are still arriving where they need to be this week. One package I sent saturday got all the way to Washington state by Tuesday– thats awesome!
Today’s comic Link ! - Today’s comic I did for Mitch Clem over at www.nothingnice.com - He has a great strip and great readers over there. In fact, I’m loving the whole spectrum of comics I’ve discovered by way of his site. So big thanks to Mitch for giving me a holler. It was a lot of fun. – Im running the strip here, because I kinda put more time into it than I thought I would, so it took up my scheduled time to draw Yirmumah. Hey, squint your eyes, and it easily be Bob and Drew….
The joke– of course, was a Yirmumah joke I’ve wanted to do for a long time. A loooooong time ago in the early 90s, I use to say this all the time. Until one time we were all throwing the goat and all the lights went out in Connellsville. (in Fayette-Nam) – I STILL of course throw the goat. Good times!
Today’s comic - Was something I just came up with while I was inking other comics. People seemed to love the Deacon character a lot, so I wanted to show what he looks like now.
More on the Deacon. - Yes. Deacon is based on my dad. But my dad isn’t like that at all. YES he is an ex-biker from the late 60s. Yes, he probably had many adventures involving ’shrooms. But the real Deacon is more like a wandering wise old monk now, than a womanizing superstar. But Deacon is my dad’s own Drew Price.
My dad shielded me from ANY info on him being a biker, or dealing with drugs– I never could have imagined it. I didn’t find out lurid details until I was 18 or 19. He tells my younger brother more than me. Probably because my brother is a weed head, and not a straight clean cut guy like myself. Sometimes I wonder if my dad raised me convinced I was an undercover narc. —– Seriously though, and there are a couple others here who could agree…. The Deacon is the man. Also, my dad was probably the only real family member to encourage my pursuing of any kind of cartooning career. Probably not the wisest choice I ever made, but I thank him for it constantly. —- I gotta get that guy a hobby!
Dateline: March 14th- 2005 - Fayette-Nam - (Dickerson Run Hill) -
A thought occured to me while finishing my second rum and coke of the night. What if I made a promise to just do this strip until I die? Like some people marry their wives, and make that pledge, what if I just said that this work is my baby and I’m going to raise it just like a I raise my kids. A commitment to just KEEP GOING.
No. Not in newpapers. Been there, done that. And, maybe occassionally a self published comic book of some sort wouldnt be bad……. but primarily, right here on the web for all to see. And, well, according to my schedule, a very open relationship with the readers and fans. I’ve made it a point to reply to just about every e-mail I’ve gotten, even the bad ones. And, as I get busier, I can’t always promise that– but I can promise to be as transparent as possible.
The bottom line…. I’ve seen it all when it comes to comics. No, I’ve never seen one of those fancy hollywood paydays, but I’ve seen all my dreams wished for when I was kid. Seen the newspaper business suck a big one. I’ve seen my friends in the independent comic business lose their asses as the market for comic books just fades away (especially indy comics) – I’ve grown tired of freelancing for other people, building and building for others, while my own things sit in the closet and curse me. And now, here I am. With my comic on the web. No real purpose besides just to keep going.
So what do I promise? What’s my oath?? Well.. I promise to do my best to make sure there’s a comic here every mon-friday. Sometimes every damn day maybe– Probably in full color. It might not always be funny, or tasteful. But it will be here for you and me and everyone else. Sometimes maybe it will take on a different format, or minicomics,– perhaps characters might die, and more introduced. Just evolve and keep going…. … I have nothing better to do with my work now.
While other people stop, quit, move on… I’ll just keep moving with this and leave something…something…. well,… absurdly epic behind for everyone to see.
I wonder who will still be here or there in 50 years? – Shit, 50 years from now, I’ll be 79! Can you imagine how much work that would be? And what a strange, long trip that would be? Will there be an internet? Or will you all be tuning in via some weird holo-projector right into my tiki bar/ comic drawing studio? A round of virtual drinks for everyone!
I don’t have the comforts of a syndicate contract. But I have the foolish obsession to just do it until I die out. Why not? Who knows… maybe there will be times when I just can’t support myself at all. Maybe I’ll be forced to be a Wal-Mart greeter or something on the side.
I can only promise that Yirmumah will be here for a Loooooooooong time. Let’s build some awesome army together or something. Hang around, won’t you?
LINK- Big ups to that guy with the dumb Irish name for single handidly writing all of the “Drew history” week.
Yeah, so you get a big full color comic on Monday. Surprise! We’ll keep it mixed up and do more big full color comics as we have time. We have some things in the works behind the scenes, where I HAVE to get more ahead than I am now for it to work right. So, stay tuned. 2005 is shaping up to be one of the best years for Yirmumah and it’s 16 loyal fans, i guess. Right?
Here’s a funny thing… the guy admitted to not having much artistic skill. But when he was finally voted out by the judges, he complained they should have warned him because he spent 20 bucks on art supplies, and he could have bought food with that 20 dollars. So the question needs to be asked, why spend 20 bucks on art supplies when you can’t draw in the first place?! —- Should’ve bought the groceries dude. And if you’re worried about groceries, why spend 20 dollars to enter a fugging contest of this nature anyway? BLAH– I smell…….. EXCUSES!
I make this promise. When I win the Grind challenge, in oh, who knows.. YEARS from now– I’ll buy the guy 20 dollars in Top Ramen and send it to him.
He seems a little down and threatening not to update his comic ever again (big loss there) – but seriously, all ribbing aside, we’d hope he’d continue to produce art and practice practice practice. Doing a daily comic of any kind is not an easy thing— nor is cartooning in general. Let contests like this beef yourself up. And even in losing, he’ll have the attention. Do you want people coming to your site and seeing you lost after two weeks of updates and now you’re whining about not continuing with your strip??? You should do the comic because YOU WANT TO DO IT. Not because you want attention or people to read it. —- You’re doomed if you do it for any other reason than for the sheer joy, sickness, obsession forming habit of it.
So there… Im HALF being nice to the guy. He should turn the fact he’s the first loser into MANY MANY more fans of his work.. by simply not being a quitter. Take a break or something– but never let them see you sweat.
Just a quick note to relay that all the orders have been filled and shipped this morning! WooHoo! – Can’t wait for everyone to get their packages.
SUPER THANKS to everyone for their patience on this and supporting our work. It means a lot.
The mail lady treated me like a celebrity or something, and was falling all over herself that I was there mailing out so much stuff. She kept saying “I should have gotten you a chair!” – and she was impressed that a package was going to Belgium and Hawaii. Not many people ship things to exotic locales here in Fayette-Nam. So I guess maybe I do look important when I’m sending crap to some remote island or China. —- I’m not important though. I’m just a sasquatch who has to come into town now and then to mail things out. It actually makes me uncomfortable when I’m treated special in anyway…. probably some deep rooted pychological problem. Yeah.
I added all of our completed Space Ape strips to the extras page here at the site. - It’s not Yirmumah related if only the fact that it’s by this historic comic creating team of “COffman and McDeavitt”
Ol’ Jimbo the Space Ape was around in the days of the old Gravity comic strip we did. We wanted to do him daily at PV or another web publisher, but had no real takers. We ran some on PV. But never continued with it. So for now, Space Ape is here in our extras section for you to enjoy. Maybe he’ll see the light of day again sometime.
Ok. The plan is to get the books signed tomorrow by Bob and ship those bastiches out on Saturday morning. Hmm…. I could do it tonight if Bob could get over here. Maybe – JUST maybe.
I’ve gotten about 30 bucks in tips from the tip button this week. Goddamn, thats pretty awesome! We’re no Randy Milholland here, wherein we can just do this full time because of our generous fans… but I’m ALMOST at the point where I can buy a case of Guinness! SUCCESS!!!!
No, I friggin PROMISE I won’t spend donations on beer. It will all go to science, and bettering Yirmumah in some way. Whether that’s helping with ads run on other people’s sites, printing, bills, etc…. It totally rules to have any kind of support like that. So I just want to shout a GIANT THANKS to everyone who’s tossed some cash at us. You all rock.
__________________________
So efh talking about myself and my comic and everything ME you should be worshipping. What else have I been doing? Well, I joined that online Blockbuster thing, so now it’s one less reason to leave my house. The selection isn’t as good at Netflix, but it’s a few bucks cheaper. Late last night I watched Collateral, with Tom Cruise and Jamie Fox–which I thought would just be a giant ball of turd— but it was actually a pretty good movie. Tonight, we have Harold and Kumar I guess. So far, this service rocks– and just about any movie I pop in there, they have it, so I can’t complain.
I’m thinking about taking the evening off from working on crap and just vegging out here. Oh, and I hate goddamn laundry. Folding laundry sucks…and I totally feel like Mr. Mom. And I’m tired of my non-immediate family calling me that on the phone. UGH!!!
Drew’s first few days of life continues…. 1976 never looked so good. I struggle on whether to put in the term “sweet tits” on this one. I don’t know if the Deacon would really say that. – but it’s probably just the ’shrooms talking.
We’ve been down the voting path before with our strip…. I’ve had people asking why we don’t have the vote buttons anymore…. well, we thought they were kinda silly. But now, it’s back. If you done dig our strip, try to vote everytime we update. Also, there is some feature that allows me to pop up bonus art– so when I have time to figure that out– maybe you’ll get a surprise after you vote.. Yes??? The button will be in these posts, AND over there on the left ad column.
Let’s rise up those ranks. Hurray for popularity contests! Nah, screw that– but it DOES bring in new readers, and that’s what it’s ALL about.
Wow. I just did something that made me feel really good. I can’t say because it’s a surprise for the folks who ordered the preorder special. — But I feel super happy right now. Thats all I’ll say.
OK! So all the envelopes are all ready to roll, and books and posters are ready to be signed by both Bob and I. I have to round up a Bob to do that though. So hopefully tomorrow he can come over in the evening, sign these, and I can mail these bad boys out on friday. I’ll keep the blog posted.
~comic link~ Our trip down memory lane continues. Meet Drew’s dad. Also known as “The Deacon” – An ex- Heck’s Angel. And you know, there’s only two ways out of the Heck’s Angels.
OK– thanks to Ed for hooking this up for us. http://www.livejournal.com/users/yirmumah/ If you use LiveJournal, or know anyone that does, be sure to let them know to pop that on their friend’s list. I’m going to get the RSS feed thing setup as well there. Will blog that later.
Hell, I might as well hit all the blog communities with a feed. It’s a great way to get the strip out there to human beings.
I know there must be. I have a request…. Can somebody set up some sort of LJ feed of the strip here? It seems a good amount of people read strips right in LiveJournal, and I’ve had some people ask about it.
I’d do it myself, but I’m extremely busy at the moment. I think I have an LJ account from ages ago… but still.. UGH– I’d like to setup something like like :Nothing Nice to Say: is doing. Check it out here- http://www.livejournal.com/users/nothing_nice/
Alrighty. Couple of updates here. #1, I should have the books and posters here on Wednesday, and I should get them in the mail by Friday to everyone– I gotta get them to Bob so he can sign them. –Once again, sorry for the stinking delay, it’ll never happen again. Maybe I’ll never do a book again. Who knows.
Second: There’s a tip jar button on the main page under the strip now. To my surprise, I’ve had several people ask for one, so there you go. There was one on the Store page for a few days, so thanks to all those who tipped us! RIGHT ON! And we owe you a drink of some sort if we ever cross paths. The well wishes and support we’ve been receiving the past few weeks has been great, and really pushes me to do more. So stay tuned.
Ok– Hmm.. Going to start drawing some new comics today– but wanted to unwind my mind a bit here.
First up.. the link list on the right of the blog. I’m going to start using the Image option, so if you see your link on there, and have a 88x31 banner let me know. Little by little I’ll be popping them in there. It just looks better. I may even do some random blurbs here on the blog to tell you to check out a link or two over there and why I visit those sites. Some are just there because, well, they linked me. And some will be getting kicked off as I see fit too.
The Daily Grind challenge goes on, but I’m kinda sick of talking about it. I gave it enough attention by talking it up all over, getting Kurtz involved.. and probably blessed some unworthy souls a TON of attention. Seems there are some people out to just bend the rules, or squeek by with stick figures or MSpaint comics. Blahk! I have to decide if I’m going to go full blown and thrash people, or if I’ll just shut up and move along and focus on MY WORK. Or a little of both. The fans seem to want to see me thrash people from the feedback I get. People love a good trash talk, unless you’re the person involved. …. But I have no regrets. If I don’t mention it again for awhile you know why. I’m not even linking it in this post. So there.
,b>Book Orders Update Ok. It’s friday. I don’t have the books or the posters from the printer. Frankly, I’m a little peeved because I havent heard anything since Sunday. And they were suppossed to be sent on mon or tues. –UGH. A mini nightmare. I’m sorry for the wait people. BUT, I’ll tell you this, I’ve upped the friggin ante, and anyone that ordered a book or a poster is getting something extra special in their order. YOU JUST WAIT…. and keep reading here for an update. I’ll most likely blog the minute I get those books at our doorstep—
First week down in the Iron Man Challenge. Piece of cake. — I want everyone to know, I’ve decided not to do a Saturday strip this week. I may just do the mon-fri for a while, but fear not, because we actually have some BIG strips written up that we’ll just toss in randomly I think. So you might be surprised to find a bigger strip on like a tuesday or a wednesday , at least while the contest is running.
I got three e-mails today alone about doing guest strips for other people. This gave me an idea– If anyone out there want’s to do “fan art” or a guest strip for Yirmumah– perhaps I’ll run those on the weekends. I’ll also include your work in future print books with credit and a link to your site. If anyone out there wants to do something up, just toss me an e-mail. It could be fun to see what other people would do with our train wreck we have here.
Actually– there are two things going on right now in the planning stage. One is a new minicomic series, or just a regular sized comic– and the other is a fanclub section. I can’t talk about either in detail right now, but just know we’re talking about them, and they both are sounding fun. Most likely the fanclub would come first. Club Yirmumah.
I was just cruisin technorati and saw a mention of Yirmumah and thought I would check it out. http://tallghost.blog-city.com/read/1109539.htm - Much to my surprise, it was someone who remembered me from the old minicomic days — I wish said person would e-mail me and remind me about our conversation and who the heck you are! I’m sure I would remember it. Here’s a highlight from his article there:
By far the best part was meeting new people. This event came in only slightly above making fun of Tom Savini, for one reason and one reason alone. DJ Coffman and his friends at Yirmumah. This was a great little ashcan comic that we all simply fell in love with. It had a semi-autobiographical feel to it, and the animation was light and fun. Unfortunately, I don’t always make it out to the local con anymore. I miss finding Mr. Coffman and trying to remind him that we actually chatted a bit for a weekend about five years ago.
Flash forward to today, and my web-comic reading lifestyle. Imagine my surprise and shame to find that Yirmumah has been turned into a web-comic!! Surprise at getting the chance to read fresh stuff from one of my favorite small publishers, and shame for not having thought to look for this kind of thing sooner! I urge you all to go and take a look at the site, go back to the first strip and read through them. If you don’t, I’ll have to kill a puppy.
Watch this guy and make sure he doesn’t start killing puppies. PLEASE. — For the record, we’re not doing any conventions this year unless we start making money from the site in some manner. Comic conventions are BLAH to me now. MAYBE– MAYBE I’ll do SPX and Mid-Ohio… but I’ll have to see. – Southwest is now going to start flying out of Pittsburgh, which could mean, sometime down the road, I would have access to numerous cities at a reasonable cost. Look out world!
FIRST a book update, then the news. My books were suppossed to have shipped Tuesday, but i haven’t heard a peep back now. So I’m getting a little impatient now. Next time, I’ll be sure to wait until books are in my hand before I sell, but I was afraid I might run out. So to everyone that ordered, thanks for your patience. I’ll post here as soon as they arrive. I hope they come by tomorrow. I’m sick of asking about it because I feel like a pest. – I’ll make it worth everyone’s wait. I promise! I’ll update here as soon as I hear something.
As you may or may not have noticed, I did a little cleaning up on the home page. I ditched the picture calendar and dropped in a Calendar Menu dropdown. Just want the site to be as easy to navigate as possible, so I’m streamlining some things on the main page and through the archives.
Also, I’ve FINALLY got around to tweeking the caricature page around. See here. Yes. As promised a long time ago, prices have finally gone up a bit. Supply and demand. But still, really reasonable. AND I’m going to get into the custom icons for people too. I saw a few places online who tried and got crushed with business, but i think I can manage that. And that is SUPER cheap. Check it out.
I maximized my space for ads to run. Primarily I’ll run ads for stuff I’m selling or promoting , like the caricatures, books, whatever is new— but also, if anyone out there is interested in popping an ad on they can e-mail me for ad info. Hey, we got mouths to feed.
Thanks to microsoft blogger extradoinaire, Robert Scoble for the plug on his blog. Not only did he link up the Iron Man Challenge, but also made my name a link to here.
So welcome to all my fellow bloggers out there! Grab our RSS up and keep an eye on us.
You can also find Scoble’s link in my link list to the right. It’s under blog: Scoble, Bitches! I love that guy.
You know– the other day, I’m watching TV and I swear to god I see Hootie (Darius Rucker) from Hootie and the Blowfish in a goddamn burger king commercial. Sho’ nuff– IT IS him.
Look ma, I sold out! To the right you’ll see an ad for a game called Storm Riders. I was approached by a game advertiser after hearing my name on Scott’s main page and following the links through the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge. So it’s official, I’m one of those strips with ads for video games now. We’ve made it! We’ve finally made it! — Seriously though, the game looks pretty cool, and it’s based on an old comic book too. Check it out. - (I know, I gotta somehow fix up the link so it loads in another window, will be done today sometime) – I’m really appreciative because even ONE ad pays for a whole bunch of online expenditures and helps keep the strip going strong. Strong like bull!
Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge The final tally on contestants, 56. The pot is at $1,120. There’s no more time for trashtalk. Seriously. There are just too many people for me to keep track of and mock. If we’re going to win this thing right, we have to really knuckle down and keep to our promises we had anyways before this contest started. What’s this mean for Yirmumah fans? You can be assured that there will definitly be a mon-fri comic as long as this contest goes on. The big saturday strips may be gone for a spell, while I build up a buffer akin to the one I had when we did that whole newspaper thing. No sweat at all. Actually, we may surprise you with BIGGER comics on a day you didn’t expect it at all. So this is just flat out going to be great for the regular readers. And to all the new people…. goddamn! Thank you so much for reading, and don’t believe all the ugly rumors about me. I blame Bob, you should too.
Books and posters The books are supposedly on their way here for all of those folks who ordered. Keep an eye on the blog this week for an announcement on when they arrive, and I’ll also post when I’ve sent em out. Goddamn again, super thanks to everyone who ordered the special deal. We love you. Anyone else who missed it, the stuff will be available here online from another store real soon. I’ll post a link for you.
Well, now that there is some REAL talent involved in the competition over at the Daily Grind Iron Man Challenge, I’m going to knuckle down more and get ahead.
I spoke with Bob on the phone tonight… he mentioned that I’m crazy, and I could literally go for 10 years. He may be right.
I see I’ve entered the psyche of my fellow competitors, to the point where one decided to put someone he thinks looks like me in his first days strip. See here. I love it. That is fantastic. I’m flattered. I shouldnt even link him and send him any traffic, but honestly, I think it’s awesome. Touche’!
NOTE: The book and poster special ends today. You have until the end of the day to order. There may never be another one like it. Order Here.
~Comic Link~ It’s on! The Iron Man Challenge begins today. There are now 32 competitors, and a pot of 640 bucks. There may be a few more entrants by the end of the day.
I e-mailed Scott Kurtz yesterday and asked him to join up. I figured I needed some real competition over there. He made it in. Now, the amatuer hour smack talkers are shaking in their boots, but I know as well as any other well educated webcomics fan, that sometimes Scott is late. So this keeps him on his toes too.
Beyond taking all their money, that’s REALLY why I’m in this too. It keeps me on my toes and is something to look forward to. Nothing brings out the best in you like a good old fashioned competition. And this is the first time in a long time I’ve been excited about something that was going on in webcomics online. Seriously, there are a lot of talented people on there. And even for the guys who are complaining about “semi-pros” joining, this is the BEST thing for them. Hell, even in the LAST competition there were some published guys, etc…. Anyway, I plan on mocking people as they lose. But I’m only doing it for fun. And maybe it will inspire them to keep working so they don’t get mocked so bad. You know?
My prediction of course is, that I will win. No one has witnessed my obsession before so closely. Now it will be under a microscope.
Comic update. This is the very last chance for people to get the special deal. Click the banner while you can see it above the strip on the main page.
Book update for those who ordered. The books and posters are being shipped Monday. I won’t ever do a presale special again unless I have the books in my hands already. I hate making people wait, but I promise those who did order, I’m going to spend a whole day doing nothing but kick but art fot their orders. So there!
Lettering some comics and getting ready for the big contest starting tomorrow. The pot has grown to $580 bucks. Not too shabby. I haven’t decided how I want to spend that yet. Hopefully one more person will enter and make it a nice round 600 bucks. If not, Ithink it would be cool if everyone just tossed a buck in and made it a nice round number.
600 bucks could probably buy my dad a hell of a hooker.
This is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile. Just for my own enjoyment, but if you enjoy it too, even better. A quick story on this. I don’t get to get out much here, and I like it. I generally get annoyed by the locals in my area. Sometimes, I feel like a bigfoot here, and it occured to me, perhaps bigfoot just likes his privacy. — One day, I thought to myself, what would be the most absurd idea for a comic or sitcom…. a Bigfoot and a Tiki and they’re roommates. I remember Bob sitting here staring at me like I was stupid, and telling me it was one of the dumbest ideas he’d ever heard. At least he said that until I started spouting situations to him. What the characters might be like and the type of laid back humor I had in mind.
So BIGFOOT & tiki has sat on the shelf for awhile, and I thought I’d bring it out. This is especially cool to me, because I dig all things tiki. It’s not as in your face as regular Yirmumah strips, but I thought I’d bring these two to the Yirmumah fold in some way, so here they are. Love em or hate em, they’re BIGFOOT & tiki!
There are rumors floating around that he wrote his wife and on a secret message and said it was only for them. A final farewell and telling them how to go on. In some ways, I think suicide is just bad… it’s most definitly a lousy thing to leave your loved ones with. And, a most selfish act. But in Hunter’s case, damn, it seemed like he was happy and did it just to go the way he wanted to. You can read his wife’s complete run down of the day, it’s a good article. LINK
Only that guy could pull that off. And now they’re seriously going to blast his ashes into a canyon. Damn…
Suicide is never on my mind. I want to live to be a happy old, old man. I want all my friends to be around too. Hell, even the ones I’ve lost… it still sure feels like they are around me.
So, Monday the Iron Man Challenge begins. Who will be the first to fall?! Sure, we’re acting all cocky like and stutting our stuff… but seriously, there ARE a good many talented people involved, (and a few terribly bad ones) so be sure to check it out and judge for yourself. It’ll be fun.
I’ll probably forget all about it as time goes by, and then one day 480 something dollars is plopped in my lap along with hate letters from everyone.
I’m excited about tomorrow’s strip. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time now. Even if people don’t get it, I don’t care. I did it because I wanted to.
We’re in. All paid up and sent all the requested info in. And there’s a nifty link to the official page right here on the blog to the upper right. Click it to follow all the losers. Of course, we will be winning this thing. Link to official site.
We’ve already made some enemies in the forum there. Geez… I can’t call them ALL Kolchaka wannabes… but there are a lot of what I would consider art school dropout comics. LINK: The official shit talking forums. And yeah, we’ll probably talk some smack. Hopefully everyone has a thick skin. So far, people are resorting to boring comebacks. It’s apparant that most of these fools think they’re too hip for the room. We were even called Penny Arcade clones AND PvP clones in the same thread… HUH?? Wha?? I don’t get that. I bet they thought it would affect me like it affects other people who are truly clones of something else— I think my Kolchaka wannabes remark touched a few nerves… hehehehe.. GOOD. May they crumble beneath our mighty Iron Hands!
Anyway, I love a good clean competition. They can say what they want about our strips. Our readership doesn’t lie! And we’ll keep working hard to feed the strips out. I have some big plans I can’t talk about right now until things are set.
Oh– only a few days left in the BOOK DEAL. So hit that link while its up above the strip to take advantage of the offer. Thanks.
A bunch of web cartoonists doing a Daily Grind Challenge. Everyone puts in 20 bucks, and who can go the longest without missing a mon-friday update.
It starts on Feb 28th. I’ve sent my e-mail in demanding to enter. You know I’d win… right? I can outdraw any man, for any amount of time. Mon-Fri updates are a BREEZE. So this would be fun, and money in the bank for me.
Hopefully they accept my challenge, it this is truly an IRON MAN challenge and not an IRON PUSSY challenge.
I did almost accuse the real Bob of downloading porn on my computer. I saw “Digital Strip” in the download clean up screen in firefox.. then I realized it was for the Digital Strips podcast. D’oh! — But I couldn’t explain the MILF thing over the weekend.
These guys are doing this stuff all on their own, free and for the fun of it. So if you like reading webcomics, give a listen to this. It’s good insight from a readers point a view. – My only critique is, all the noises and zings and stuff, they could chill on that. Heh.. Reminds me of the SNL skit with the radio DJ… Still, it’s good solid talk on webcomics.
Hey, why not e-mail em and tell em to review Yirmumah??? Here’s their e-mail– digital.strips@gmail.com
Im just posting this in from my old blog. This blog is much easier to find things on. Enjoy. Someone should STILL do this shit…
COMICS NOW!
Another Innovative thought for the comics industry. Vending machines. That’s right. Vending machines. Picture it. You walk into Walmart and along the Coke and Pepsi, and those stupid crane machines, there’s a big glowing display that says – HEY KIDS! COMICS! – and it would stock all the best selling comics, as well as rotatint series.— These comics would be about a buck to two bucks a pop. Pretty much as low as it could go. Even if comics had to go back to newsprint, WHO CARES!!!–
There are plenty of ways that idea is impractical to the way a system is setup now. BUT– imagine if one of these hotshots who love comics so much, if they put some of their money into funding such an effort. Imagine selling vending routes out to already exisiting vending companies. Returns? Imagine a reship center or a free comics to schools program. – I mean, imagine this— Little tommy gets a couple free comics from the local library or school incentive program. Sure, it’s a back issue, but it’s an awesome story– boom, he loves it. The next time he’s at Walmart where these machines are, he notices that his favorite series is carried right there in that machine! Boom. Hooked.
And what of comic stores? Well hell, why wouldnt a local comic shop actually sponsor the machines in his area, on each book that came out of the machine, it could have his business card attached for his shop– This would solve so many problems. All you would need to implement this idea is a test area. A contract with some big companies to carry a couple flagship titles, AND perhaps some independents like Devils Due,– GI JOE would be a great comic for a machine like this. Wow.. I could see the kids flocking to a big glowing GI JOE comics machine…. imagine the front of that machine rotating the images. Now imagine BIG companies paying for those eyeballs. Heck that would be totally worth buying stock outright and non returnable. COmpanies make a crazy bare bones profit when the COMICS NOW! machines buy a subscription to their title.
Imagine those high traffic areas actually having COMICS. Thats how kids found comics back in the day. On the local dime mag racks. And those kids helped to fund an entire specialty industry. That industry is slowly crumbling… and the greedy speculators dont want it to change. They have a strangle hold on. It’s time to kick them in the nuts with a big concrete sack full of INNOVATION.
Let’s do an imaginary setup of one these machines. Minus the machine cost— say you already owned one. You were able to stock it like this:
50 copies of GI JOE @ 50cents a piece from the company. $25
150 copies of MARVEL - 3 different titles at 60cents a copy from Marvel. $75
150 copies of DC- 3 titles @.50 - $75
150 copies of IMAGE 3 titles @ .50 - $75
$250 bucks for stock, gets you 10 titles to stock in your machine. Maybe add two more indy type titles, maybe an IDW book like CSI or something… but lets stick to the 10 title machines for now.
So all together, with those bare minimum prices, you have 500 books. If you sold them all for 2.50 (way less than a pack of YuGioh cards!) – you’d make $1250, – for a 1000 dollar profit on your order.
Now that’s just ONE machine. And one machine that could be checked weekly and restocked. Imagine if you owned 5 machines, at a chain of big stores. Or imagine if you leased those machines out to the shops themselves. OR other sites. I also imagine, with only 10 titles in a machine, it would be easy to make the buttons pretty big and colorful the actual covers of that months comics themselves. Or a digest size cover for the button. Oh, those kids would just EAT that up. Forget the ride on horse.. they want the big colorful spiderman comic, they want to push the button and have it shoot out in a sleeve and backboard. heh.
Ok, go forth and steal my idea and make a zillion bucks! Or you can HIRE me to help you envision a plan and solutions for such a model. I have more ideas than I can write here.
We’re proudly hosting this complete spoiler of Star Wars 3- Includes tediously collected photos from the film that have leaked, animated gifs, and a run down of the plot. Feel free to link this around. I’ll host it as long as I can– or until I’m officially asked to take it down or something. Wee!
An update for those who ordered already. First off, THANKS you amazing humans! Second, our orders were suppossed to be here last week, but will get here this week I guess. The printer had the flu I guess. Ahem, LOGAN DeANGELIS had the flu. – It’s ok, we love him. I’ll be sure to make it worth everyone’s wild who orders. – Since everyone who’s ordered is in the US, you should have your books days after I get them, and I’ll report here on the blog when they arrive.
~Comic Link~ Yeah, that’s right. We went there. And we’re proud. Deal with it. – Sure he’s an old man, but time can’t let you escape the truth. Sooner or later, you will face the truth.
~Comic Link~ So there’s your comic for Monday. Enjoy. I made it with love and care just for you awesome people out there.
Late last night we got the word that Hunter S. Thompson shot himself to death at his compound in Colorado. Wow, like no one saw that one coming a mile away. Still, suicide is LAME. The dude was only in his 60s, he could have done so much more. Sad. I’m betting it’s how he planned his end anyway, so there’s little anyone could have done about it. – Ironically, or maybe not so ironically if you know his work, his last column on ESPN is “SHOTGUN GOLF WITH BILL MURRAY”
Book update. My books aren’t here yet. But as soon as they do arrive, they are getting sent out to ALL who ordered. Only a week left in the SPECIAL. Go now!
Before his mailbox was full, we were lucky enough to crank call Pauly Shore. He sounded dumbfounded. We’ll post a transcript of our call later. You KNOW how it ended….
Before his mailbox was full, we were lucky enough to crank call Pauly Shore. He sounded dumbfounded. We’ll post a transcript of our call later. You KNOW how it ended….
~Strip Link~ Ah, the question is as old as man…. and we cover it today as well, solidifying our place in theological history…. or not. Who cares. We’re all worm food, right? Right….
Ok. It’s official. I’m sick of JLo— not that I was ever fond of her in the first place, but her videos and music are just annoying the hell out of me this morning, as my wife zones out on the morning videos. UGH. Do pianos fall from skies? If they do, please send one to JLo. What a hooker.
Presale update: You only have 11 more days to get the special offer. Click here. Remember, you CAN order by mail. Just e-mail me for the mailing address. — And big thanks to everyone that ordered. I’ll be sending out your books as soon as they get here. Hopefully today– but if not, I guess sometime next week. I’ll be sure to hook everyone up, since only a couple handfuls of people have ordered—— no, I didn’t mean that as a guilt trip to folks who didn’t or can’t order the special— I’m seriously hooking everyone up who orders. Because I’m just that way.
Still haven’t decided on the Pittsburgh show. Hurm…. They’re not down for the 24 hour comic day, or they say they don’t have time or room to do it. I look at a show like that, which charges 17 bucks to get in. Then I look up at a show like Mocca in the summer, which charges 7 bucks a day to get in. And it’s got what could be a more popular lineup of creators… and the Harvey Awards. — Anyway, this has nothing to do with anything. If I were a rich man, I SWEAR I’d offer 10 bucks to anyone who came to my table, just so their entry fee would be 7 bucks instead of 17. – HOw can we get these conventions cheaper again? – Is it just greed? Or is there a reason it’s so high? I don’t know….. it bugs me, but it’s probably no ones fault. This year, I blame Ernie Hudson and Margo Kidder.
Traffic has been crazy to the site recently. We jumped from a regular average of about 4000 page views a day, to a whopping 28783 yesterday! Yowzas!!! —
Yesterday alone, we had 2,432 new unique readers pop in, so I just wanted to say HELLO! And thanks for checking us out. Bookmark us, we’re here everyday putting up our basterific work for free, and we’re not slowing down.
Oh, and big thanks to all those who have ordered the special book deal. I can’t wait to get these out to you all.
I’m on the fence about doing the Pittsburgh show. Someone should persuade me. I just e-mailed them about space there. Maybe I could organize some 24 hour comic day event or something, and pimp PV comics and my yirm stuff. I don’t know.
Linky - Based on a true story, kinda. I was recently approached to write an encouraging letter to a 12 year old kid. I didn’t know what to say.
Seriously, I honestly believe there has to be some sickness involved in wanting to do anything like this. It’s an insane amount of work and time. But those who have it, know that once it’s gone, there’s a huge void that can’t be filled with anything but doing it again. I need to name that disease. Sequentialuenza. Sequentialpychosis?
I guess no matter what, the truth CAN set you free.
Now, naturally, we just hate child molestors here. —- We have a semi funny story about this creep that’s Yirmumah related. Way back in 1996 or so, when Bob and I were roommates we actually planned to go to Mexico and kidnap him and bring his ass back here, or hold him for ransom to his rich ass family. — Ah, criminal thoughts. I told Bob it would never work, because I most likely would have beat him to death on the ride back from Mexico.
It bothers me that this guy got away with his crimes. Died a free man in Mexico, and no one bothered to go get him. It’s like a plot to some old movie… fleeing to Mexico to escape the law. Anyways, I’m glad this guy is finally dead. He didn’t deserve to live this long. If there’s a hell, I hope he’s buring in it.
~Today’s Comic Link~ : For real. The real life Dave asked me to do a caricature for him a few weeks back, and I haven’t gotten around to it. So I was behind on strips, and behind on caricatures and sick as a dog, and I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone. So that third panel is what Dave asked for. – Maybe by the time he gets married, I’ll have a super fancy one done up and framed. – I don’t even think he reads this. Well, I’m sure he does so in chunks now to see if he’s mentioned. This one is for you, Dave!
So many years ago, Dave had asked me to do a drawing for a back tattoo for him. The classic whale vs giant squid battle in the ocean. I’ve never gotten around to it, although I think of it often. There seems something so epic about it, I don’t know if I could do it justice.
Alright- I’m hunkering down for a few days and getting some serious work done. I’ve goofed off enough here. We redid the little shelf in our tiki room yesterday. It turned out pretty nifty, and we can actually display some of our mugs now. I’ll maybe take some photos sometime for the old blog. But for now— I need to go hunker down and keep my head in the game.
~Today’s comic link. ~ - A little Valentine’s day shuffle for you. I hope everyone is enjoying the made up corporate holiday.
And a little reminder about the book pre-sale. (yeah, I may remind people everyday) It’s only running for two weeks from today direct from the old blog here. If you want to order through snail mail, please e-mail me for an address to send to. Otherwise, here are the paypal links again. Big thanks to all those who ordered over the weekend! You guys rock.
As you can see here, today we debut the art that will be the cover to the new book, as well as an 11x17 mini poster. –
A quick note about it. Back in 1998 when I was doing the original minicomics, something like this was going to be the cover to the issue 4 that never came out– and Yirmumah went to sleep for a spell while I worked my butt off doing freelance work. So now we finally had a chance to use it and it seemed right. For people who don’t get it, it’s a homage of the Enter the Dragon movie poster, one of my favorite kungfu flicks of all time. – And now, because I REALLY want to get this in readers hands I offer you an early Valentine’s Day Gift….
LIMITED TIME PRE-SALE! : Here’s the skinny. We gots the full color collected book AND a miniposter. – For two weeks only, any orders that come in will be signed and numbered by both Bob and myself , and I’ll doodle a little sketch somewhere on your book or poster. – After that period, we’ll still have books for sale elsewhere, but they won’t be all signed and special like that.
Finally, if you’re a Yirmumah fan, reviewer, blogger help us get the word out about the offer, and link up this entry. Thanks to everyone for their support!
It’s been up for awhile– but Don Simpson has a blog. One of my favorite cartoonists, and a kinda local – Here’s the link to it.
Much has been said good and bad about Don… but from what I know he’s just a kick ass mothercrunker who tells it like it is. Back when I was an absolute nobody, as oppossed to the semi-nobody I am now, he was very encouraging of my own cartoon work and minicomics, etc. I got to sit beside him at Mid Ohio a couple years ago as well. He seemed interested in how my career was going and how I was doing it. It almost sounded like he was asking ME for advice— which couldnt be possible. Maybe he thought I was just a hack and couldnt believe I had any work at all. His skills far far outweigh and outclass my own–
Anyway, Don Simpson is amazing. And by the looks of it, his blog is DEEP talking about the comics in a deeper way. Don Simpson is deep. Deal with it. LINK!
~LINK to strip~ - Bob was inspired by the “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” strips. Of course, our comic is ALL true though, while that Ripley’s comic is just a bunch of hogwash nonsense!—
Maybe Bob could run his own museum one day of “It’s Da’ Truth!” Memorabilia? That would be swell.
He keeps reminding me to blog about fighting Tito Ortiz— but I don’t know what to say. I guess I’m suppossed to act like some wrestler and call him a little bitch or taunt him— and this will somehow bring more joy to our readers??? Fine. Tito Ortiz is a little bitch. Bob informs me that he’s primarily a grappler/submission type fighter. That stuff wouldn’t work on me… I don’t want to brag about my own skills, but that guy would be in for a major surprise if he latched onto me as I simply tap three of his pressure points and he goes down like sack of bricks. — I really don’t like hurting people physically though, so I’ll have to train Bob to fight him when he shows up at my door. We’ll be sure to get it all on tape.
Oh– some official Yirmumah items will be for sale REAL soon. Like REAL soon. Check the blog here tomorrow for details.
Go and celebrate by watching and of the number of great films he’s been in over the years.
Have we convinced you that we’re Burt Reynolds fans here at Yirmumah? Good. Then we’ve done our job. Now go forth and bust out your ’staches and celebrate!!!
In other news, a pretty decent podcast about webcomics is available at Digital Strips Blog. These guys aren’t professional broadcast quality by any standard, but they have some solid things to say about the artform beyond webcomics. So I give it the big Yirmumah thumbs up for today. I wonder what they’d have to say about our strip? I probably don’t want to hear it.
Blach! I have I have a cold. Sneezing, post nasal drip thingy, bLah! It suuuuckkks….
Luckily, I’m ahead on my strips. I’m a little behind on caricatures, but I’ll be on track. I’m not sick enough not to work, so all the due caricatures will get there this week as promised.
Two things I’d like to get accomplished this week. #1, I’d like to find out when I can start selling you fine people the print book. Soon, soon…. #2, I’d like to get some work done on the secret Yirm project I’m planning and get that launched by the end of the month. It will be very keen, I promise you that.
Also– at one point, I was thinking about moving the Yirmumah strip to a hub like keenspot or some other place, but my traffic has grown by leaps and bounds here on my own, so at this point I don’t think it’s necessary. By golly, I think I can actually do all this on my own and remain independent. Some places make me so excited though, and I just want to be a part of things…. but it’s probably better that I’m on my own out here on the webernet. – -Thanks to everyone who’ve linked us up. You rock.
14,000 page views yesterday!!! And most of them without referrers, which means they’re most likely coming from bookmarks or personal link lists or blogrolls or something. I really appreciate it– the more people who read, the harder I’m going to efhing work to make Yirmumah totally KICK YOUR BUTT—-
Wow, I just refrained from using two bad words. It’s the cold.
Here’s a link to a REALLY long interview with Alan Moore about various things on writing and doing your craft. Brilliant guy. Someday I’d like to play chess with him, or throw rocks at cars with him or something.
IN said interview, he had the following to say about Jack Kirby and Stan Lee:
But, the Marvel-style approach, this started with Smilin’ Stan Lee, Stan ‘The man’ Lee, and I’ve gotta say, and this is only my opinion having seen Jack Kirby’s pencils, I think that the process went something like this:
Stan Lee comes up with an idea: “Right, next issue of The Fantastic Four , like, what if there’s some really big powerful threat from space, sort of – or according to some people, what if in the next issue, the FF – the Fantastic Four – fight Godâ€. And Jack Kirby goes away, and he thinks: “Galactus…Galactus eats planets…and he’s got this herald…and it’s this silver guy on a surfboard and he goes before him…and this guy’s so frightening that solar systems will switch off their suns so that he doesn’t notice them, they’ll black out their entire galaxies so that he’ll pass them by, and yeah, The Watcher, he intervenes and fills the Earth’s sky with illusions to keep this creature away, but it doesn’t work…â€. And you’ve got Kirby, he’d pencil five pages a day…he just wasn’t human. He’d just sit there pencilling five pages a day, six pages a day, nine pages a day, and in every panel – so he’d be breaking it down into stories, he’d be breaking it down into a continuity of images, he’d be inventing the characters, he’d be writing the dialogue suggestions – very crude, very quick, but sometimes quite detailed. Then this would go to Stan Lee, who would look at the story that Jack Kirby had written , would dialogue it in his own unique way – he would put in a lot of ‘thees’, ‘thous’, ‘face front true believers’, footnotes, and then it would go out as ‘ Fantastic Four created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’, but it was only one of them who had a share of the action on the characters, and that was…the smiling one. And that’s probably why he was smiling, come to think about it.
Apparantley, we’ve challenged UFC champion, Tito Ortiz to a fight of some sort. Bob says I can take him, but upon further inspection, he looks a little frightening to me. I bet he’s never taken on an angry cartoonist before, so who knows???
Strips are coming along fine. Ok, I’m lying. I’m a little behind on where I like to be, but still, no delays forseen– Yirmumah goodness everyday for you all.
I’ve also just been informed that our cover to the forthcoming book and miniposter has been spotted at the Emerald City convention in Seattle this weekend. So, I’ll be posting it sometime this week, hopefully with some news on the on-sale date for the book, etc. SOON…SOON… as soon as I know, you’ll know! I can’t wait for people to get their hands on em.
Back to the drawing board for me. Watch your back, Tito!!!
So, today’s super big color comic, can also double as a nifty calendar for you! Or a jazzy background wallpaper for your computer.
I wanted to do something different this week. And I’ve had the calendar idea for awhile, and figured now was as good a time as ever. If enough people dig this, we may do one every month– I was actually going to draw everyone in it, but I came down with the flu this week and it put me back a couple days…. but it’s like one of those accidents that turned out pretty nice, the mixture of cartoons and collage action.
Enemy? Or Reverse Secret Admirer? - Ok, I’ve seen a pretty major explosion of viruses and worms, and things of that nature, being sent to my e-mail addy. I would have figured it to be a random spammer type thing, but they’re getting pretty specific about subject lines having to do with actual things in my strip. — Dummies.. I’m not going to open attachments. Please stop bothering me. – I must have a second super power to really get under the skin of some people or something. As Triumph would say—"I keed! I keed! It’s a joke you see!” – So take it easy out there. I seriously don’t want to have to track you down. But in all honesty, you’re hatred fuels me, whomever you are. Thank you.
Somewhere in my mind I picture some Z-List celebrity I offended gettinger his/her little cousin or nephew to send me viruses or worms. Or Michael Jackson.
Sitting around one day, I said it would be funny to just have a giant venom spitting cobra attack Star Jones. And so it was that this strip was born. Enjoy.
Yeah. I’m still sore. Sorry. I woke up this morning and thought to myself– damn, just because he signed a contract with Marvel saying he can get 10% of money derived from other people’s creations doesnt mean he deserves them at all. – It should definitly be divied up between the people who were the CORE creators behind these things that Marvel has made so much money on.
What could I expect though? Who am I fooling? Marvel is a corporation. Not a comic book company. They are ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. Have been for quite awhile. Ask Avi. –
But they are a corporation without any ethical standards. I wish they would change that. Stand up and change that. What an AWESOME thing that would be for them to do something to honor the people who BUILT that fucking place.
These guys are just great. Funny gag too. I may have to steal it. That’ll teach them!!! – Check out all their fine comics going on at DigitalPimpOnline - Now, GO!!!
Man, every month, Dreamhost , seems to get better and better! They added this one-click install of the Wordpress blog– but I just go their new newsletter and they now have one-click install for phpBB bulletin Message boards, and a few other things, including an open source merchant type store setup. DAMN!!! I already have a forum setup at PV already– but dang… they make it super simple to set this stuff up now.
Seriously, this is the tightest hosting on the planet here. Check it out if you’re in need of hosting or need a new hosting service that kicks total ass.
I got lucky on this one, because I drew it in advance, guessing he’d see his dumb old shadow anyway.
Yesterday I was also stricken with a flu bug. Man, it killed me. I woke up feeling a little iffy, but then it progressed into legs of jello and a feeling like i was going to hurl at any minute. Then it went to my head and I got a bad fever and headache. So yesterday was filled with a ton of laying on the couch holding my face because I had no medicine here and couldnt escape to get any. It sucked. I got NOTHING done. Just a ton of me sitting there in sickly pain thinking about all the comics I could have drawn. UGH.
I’m starving now. All I ate yesterday was a donut and a rasberry cookie which I forced myself to eat. I now need to go fill up and get some energy back in my gas tank, and hope that whatever it was is completely gone.
My good friend Jim Rugg, co-creator and artist on Street Angel is holding as contest through comicbookgalaxy.
Each winner will receive Street Angel #1-5 and the original mini-comic signed by creators Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca, and an identical, signed set will go to the store where the winner buys their comics! And, one Grand Prize Winner will also receive a one-of-a-kind piece of Street Angel Original Art!, and so will their comics shop! It’s super easy to sign up via e-mail. Do it!
This message is for Stan Lee. Please go ahead and pass it along to him or link this message up. I’d like everyone to read the NY times article where Kirby’s family states:
“Lisa Kirby, Mr. Kirby’s daughter, agreed. “I don’t know
how they live with themselves,” she said. “The estate
gets no compensation from Marvel at all."”
Dear Mr. Lieber,
Now that you’ve won the settlement with Marvel Comics, please do the right thing and give a percentage if not half of that money to the Kirby family and estate. No one needs to ask why– you know why. God knows why.
Years ago, it was Jack Kirby himself that wanted to have a contract like you obtained. And you told him your hands were tied. Now they are not. You’re free of Marvel, Sir. And they’re free of you. Jack is waiting for you to do the right thing. The noble thing. And in a very personal and public way.
You spoke about being a hero on your 60minutes interview. And doing what was right. Jack worked very hard for his family, and he too deserves some of what your contract claims credit to. Even if you feel that every penny is rightfully yours… please, do the right thing Stan. Do it for Jack. Do it for his family. Do it for comics, before it’s too late.
Now is the time for you to make things right… if you don’t–who will?
Okie dokie! So I’m a little behind here. Some of the lame computer problems I had ate into my schedule. But I’m hard at work on new comics here, and there’s no need to fear a delay of any kind.
It’s all good in the hood. I was reading the latest from Penny Arcade— funny thing about moving to Spokane to support yourself on the feeble money made from webcomics. He brings up some great points about rent, etc…. It reminds me of why I came back to Fayette-Nam in 1994.
Things are pretty darn reasonably priced around here. I keep telling friend on the internets they should move here and start a business. The only web design business is run by my wife’s cousins, and it’s laughable. WAY laughable. They’ll probably track this link about to give out and hate my guys— but whoa.. come on, I’m not even a web designer and I can do 5000times better than this stuff. – I’ve always said Fayette-Nam is like 10-15 years behind the times. And this web design service is proof positive of that. UGH!!! – They should have hired me to help out ages ago. I’m afraid it’s too late for them now. Here’s the link for you.
That’s probably rude mocking them like that… but hey, it’s DAH truth. They’d better hope I never get sick of my cushy cartooning gig here. Or that I dont talk my friend Chad into taking over the web design in this entire tri-county area!!! –
LINK – Weird. Bob and I were just talking about her this morning. I said that if John McCain ran with a Dem as his VP in 2008, he could best her. And Bob thinks no one could beat the evil that is Hillary Clinton.
Well, even though I’m not a fan of the finangling Clintons, I hope she’ll be ok and its nothing serious.
See?? How’s that for some fair and balanced cartoon blogging?
Yes. The bitter liberal in me has awoken!!! - Nah, I’m not a liberal.. but I love making fun of political things. I maybe missed my calling as an editorial cartoonist, but I never thought they’d let me near a newspaper ever again. God bless you, internet.
Annoyed: I’m annoyed this morning. Not by anything in particular. My body didn’t want to get out of bed— and nothing seems to be where it should be. The dog’s water pitcher which I use to go out and water him… NOT THERE. The new Yirmumah running on the PV homepage, NOT THERE. The clothes I laid out, NOT THERE. A pack of important papers including tax crap, NOT THERE. –
It’s going to be one of those mondays. No one should test me today, or they might get a big old dose of grumpy and inconsiderate me.
Dave and Bob are busy beating the holy beejeezus out of each other in Xbox Boxing… well, EA Fight Night 2004. I’m totally no good at that game. It appears as though Bob has found a game he can actually win.
Dave hasn’t seen today’s strip yet…. we thought for sure he was coming over with a gun when he called up to come and visit.
Today’s Strip was inspired by those old Hostess Cake ads. Only this of course was done in the Yirmumah way. It pretty much speaks for itself. And no, Dave isn’t gay. But his eyes MAY be bleeding right now.
Well, techincally, I’ve never seen Dave angry and he usually is happy all the time, sooo….
So, no sooner did the NEW STRIP post, featuring Matthew Lesko… I was informed by a reader on my forum this morning that Scott Kurtz beat us to this joke by a week and a half. Goddamn! — Here’s a link to his version…
Unbelievable. We do our strip weeks, sometimes months ahead, especially the writing. And I really don’t follow any other webcomics for this very reason. When Bob showed me the script for the Lesko gag, I thought– WOW, that is totally obscure!!! No one will have a Lesko gag!!!– Bob wrote it because he actually bought the stupid book after many late nights seeing that damn commercial. By the way, Bob says most of the book is completely useless.
So, Scott Kurtz has bested us and stolen his Ubergeek back. Actually, I find it fascinating, the creative process…. like is there some level of consciousness cartoonists can reach where they tap into this highway of obscure ideas. — I sent an e-mail to Scott this morning to let him know we’re not apeing his stuff.
I have a way to dodge these things in the future though. It’s always the readers that catch these things first.
Ok. I finished up all the pre-press work for the Yirmumah book today. Let me tell you– it’s a doozy of a package. It’s wild going back and seeing all the cartooning I’ve done– and all in full color! Wow!
The book will be available for sale online soon, like soon as in as soon as the printer has our files and we get a batch printed up. The hard work is done though. I’m still waiting for a special moment to release the cover to the public. It’s a good one!
Traffic– Wow, there are a good many people cruising through these parts now. Welcome to all the new folks. And I appreciate the e-mails I’ve received. I think I’ve caught up on emailing now, so if you sent me an e-mail, most likely I answered yah back.
I’ve received a bunch of emails from readers who want me to submit Yirmumah for a Harvey. I already completed my form, and sent it in, nominating some folks I know and like— I didn’t realize I was eligible for any categories. I have been informed that I indeed am. So.. here’s the deal. If you’re a comic creator of any kind on a pro level, self publisher, etc…. AND you enjoy our work here, YOU CAN nominate us. And you can also e-mail in your completed entry form via e-mail— Pretty easy. The suggested categories would be Best New Series, Best Cartoonist, Best New Talent –
Details: You can copy the ballot HERE in my forum. Fill it out with all it asks for and e-mail it to them at pjcjmc2@comcast.net by February 13th.
This is a long shot from hell here. But hey, why not? For even more on the great history of the Harvey Awards, AND it’s great new location, check out – http://www.moccany.org/harvey.html
Chris does the live show, The Chris Pirillo show using this thing. hmm.. It’s cool because it allows people to listen LIVE to your broadcast from your computer. I think you can even get on some local FM and AM waves…. Chris’s show is Thursday’s at 7, I do believe. And then there is this “podcasting” thing, where you can listen to interviews, shows, etc… Check that out.
This is fascinating, why? Well, we’ve thought it would be cool to have some sort of podcasting from Yirmumah central. Things you could listen to. Maybe brainstorming sessions or interviews with othe comic creators, etc….. no, not a radio show or anything– just some cool content to listen to and dig. Maybe even some Ukulele music! Heh…
More webcomic folk need to start researching these things more. Here’s a list of things you should keep up on or you’re going to be wayyy behind…….
XFN, Rubhub, TAGS, (technorati.com/tags) . Delicious,Podcasting—– All words I bring up and people around comics cyber stare at me like I’m high. I admit openly, hell, I just figured out my XFN thing today. It’s really groovy. The easiest way I can explain it is— its like giving a relationship category to your hyperlinks– if someone is a friend, a colleague—
Why does any of that matter??? Well, the more people who list you as a friend, colleague or COMIC THEY READ—- this will all be pretty important in the coming years.
Busy as ever here.I have some freelance work going on, logos, some caricatures, etc….
I spent all day today working on Saturday’s strip. It was originally suppossed to be a “book only” exclusive, but screw it…. I’d get behind doing exclusive stuff for the book. There will be SOMETHING in there, but not this strip. I’m super tempted to show off the cover for the new book right now… but I think I may wait until the book is actually available to order to show it off. It’s beautiful. I want posters of it too!
Traffic to the site here has been great. 3500 people or so a day on average. Some days it spikes way higher than that. I don’t know if that’s GOOD or not enough or what…. But people are reading and enjoying themselves and that’s all I really care about. It’s almost February, and I’ve decided that besides smaller jobs, I’m focusing all my efforts into this madness. #1, it makes me happy. #2 it quenches the desire I have to work, especially on a daily of some sort. I’ve never described it as such before, but producing on a daily schedule is like a drug. You get very addicted to it…. very fast. I guess there will be a burn out factor at some point. This week I havent felt like writing at all, but I’m lucky I have Bob on my side who’s written just TONS of great stuff for me to go with.
Fan Club - We have some fun ideas for a fan club. Man oh man, I can’t wait until I get a little more ahead on my work so I can unleash this out as well. Fun stuff.
Here’s dah link to today’s strip!! — Of course many of you read the blog on the main page. So I know this is redundant, but there are several hundred people using the RSS feed, so this is for them. I know it’s confusing. Hurm… I’ll figure it out.—
Wow. The Tonight Show tribute to Johnny Carson was sad….. But the best tribute I saw was on Adult Swim last night. Very nice.–
It’s great watching some of that great classic comedy again.
That is SWEET. And it has WonderWoman on it which my wife is keen on too. Damn….. I need to be rich or get some ‘"fun” bank to buy stuff like this. I hate it when all our money goes to bills and the goverment.
A lot of people my age, just aren’t familiar enough with Jonny’s humor. It’s a shame to me. The best in the history of late night— he went out on top. May 22nd 1992….
:(
I look forward to all the lame editorial cartoons of Peter announcing to Heaven …. “Herrrrrrre’s Jonny!”
Here’s the link– Yes, it’s true. We’re routing for the Steelers here this weekend. The funny thing is…. We don’t really care that much about football as a whole. All other teams are just considered enemies — We only follow our Steelers…. like any good Southwestern Pennsylvanian.
I’ll be honest. It’s a curse. It happens year after year. The Steelers do something GREAT– get a lot of buzz— then throw it all away at the last minute. Or the “Star” quarterbacks always flub up and bend under pressure. We in Fayette-Nam, neigh, all over Southwest PA are just use to the down in the dumps feeling of “The Steelers are going to fudge this up somehow.” – We’re almost expecting it. We really really thought last weekend was the terrible end. But it turned out being the “terrible win.” ————– Maybe that’s why they call it the terrible towel??
This time feels different. It ALWAYS feels different of course… But you gotta keep the faith.
For the record… My favorite player is Troy Polamalu #43 . Anytime someone on the other team catches the ball, his fro just comes flowing in and he nails them. Or he intercepts, or nearly intercepts it. And he does it all with NO gloating. Of course we love that crazy #86 – Psycho Ward is what we call him.
Now we wait patiently to be dissappointed, or pleasantly surprised.
Ok. We’ve heard over and over about getting some products for Yirmumah. We’re listening, and here’s what we have planned and what we’ve done.
Yirmumah Collected - All the strips from July to December. Full color. Book coming soon to the site. Stay tuned.
Poster Print - A really cool print is coming your way soon too. Look for a preview of it REAL soon on this site. All Yirmumah fans will want this one.
Updated Store Section, Affiliates, etc - Check out our STORE page, we’ve added two affiliates we’re endorsing here. It’s stuff we actually use, and you can too. In full disclosure, we’ve listed what we make on a sale there, so check it out.
We want to get some custom shirts made soon, but these are REAL YIRMUMAH friendly wares there. Drew Price is totally wearing this stuff, and you should too. Who doesn’t want a Can of Whoopass t-shirt??? – you that.
Main Page and Archive fixer upper: I spent some time yesterday trying to make the archives more easy to navigate. There were some issues with the Archive button, where you had to click twice on it, etc…. now everything should load up right on the main page. And the calendar for the strip archives is up to the right. Wow– I did away with the calendar thingy and 10 people e-mailed to say they wanted it back. At least I know people are paying attention. — Special thanks to Dan Johnson, who reads everyday, for his input and suggestions. He thinks he was being a pain…. but HEY, i want to hear from you readers out there. If something isn’t working for you, drop me a line. I can’t please everyone, of course, but I want the site to be tip-top and smooth for your viewing pleasure.
Ok.. I want to just rave about something here. I’ve been using Dreamhost for a few years, and it’s been, well, a DREAM. No problems. Zilch. Now it’s only 7.95 a month!!! Its amazing. I have more space than I’ll ever need for my files. Also– this very blog, Wordpress, is built in, ONE CLICK SETUP!!! ONE CLICK….. Plus other badass goodies in there too.
Anyway– some people e-mail me and ask how I do this or that or think Im some powerhouse of knowledge on web stuff— I am not. I just have Dreamhost on my side.
Even if you already have a service– Go check it out. It’s worth it. Here’s what you get for just 7.95 a month…..
Jesus– I can remember when I was getting 20mb storage space— 2400!? Thats unheard of. Oh, and plenty of gigs in transfer too. I’ll never have to worry about site outtages– and if I do happen to go over with some big link from the media— they cover my butt. This should never be a problem for cartoonists who use this service.
Anyway– check it out. Anyone interested in webhosting for their comics, tell em to e-mail me about any questions they have. Hey, use me as a referrer too! Yirmumah will actually make a little money then too– Use this link– http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?djc
Sometimes when I casually observe referrers on my visitor log, I find people saying nice things. So I link them back– And what a cool list and review that guy has going– I’m bookmarking it— NOW… Number 12’s Web Comics Picks
Now here’s the dirty lowdown Yirmumah editorial on this. — It makes me sick when I hear about millions of dollars being owed to Stan Lee. And that his lawyer touts him as the creator of all the characters, blah blah blah—– So… let me get this straight. When Stan Lee was head of Marvel and Jack Kirby wanted more ownership, Stan said his hands were tied…. but now Stan wants millions from the same sort of deals Kirby once tried to bargain for but was left in the cold. The whole thing was built on Kirby’s back. The WHOLE THING. If you don’t believe that, or think it’s an exageration, so be it. But it’s true. Hell, even when “newblood” came in, Marvel told them to do it the Kirby way.
Fine. Give him millions. Sure, they deserve it… THEY. Not just Stan Lee. Jack Kirby is dead. His family is still alive though. Why not give this money to Kirby’s daughters. The ghost of Jack won’t rest until justice is done. I’ll agree… they did create these things together. But c’mon now.. in life Kirby got the short end—
Anyway– this makes me sick. When will Justice be done?
People don’t realize… The comic industry has been in a gradual decline since 1994. Sure there have been spikes…. but its been bleak. The only thing keeping the big two afloat is Hollywood money at this point. It’s true. 1994…. You know who died in 1994?
LINK:Today’s strip. – See? I told you all it wouldnt be long before we were back to are old ways.
Man, (woman) it is snowing like a mother crunker here. No worries though, I’m trapped inside with a pile of work to do. Coffee is soooooo much better when it’s cold outside. It’s true!
WORK-It’s all work and no play here today. But still, I’m having FUN. For one, I’m inking a batch of new strips. Also, I have the cover for the collected book to ink and color. Also working on some other ideas and more writing.
BUTTONS- I’ve been thinking about getting some buttons made by my friend Jay, but I don’t know what to do with buttons. Would people buy buttons? I don’t know. I’d like them to be cooler than just a character slapped on the button. Something you could actually wear. One idea popped in my head today…. Emotion buttons. Like, you’d get BOB MOODS you could wear or something. The moods are yet to be determined. But you can only guess if you follow our strip and humor.
Also, a batch of caricature orders have come in. There was a small lull there on those– but now I’ll be back busy with that. I have 3 to get done by the weekend.
OTHER- The birthday went well. Thanks for all the e-mails, instant messages, well wishes, etc…. Damn, people actually knew it was my birthday. My wife’s grandparents actually called me to wish me a happy birthday. I thought they hated me. Well, maybe they still do. —– Anyway, I’m sorry if I didnt e-mail you back– I had about 65 happy birthday e-mails scattered throughout my inboxes and I didnt get back with everyone. I want to say publicly a big THANKS!!!!!
Good god. I thought we were going to be had by that damn Steelers curse, where they blow it at the end… But I kept the faith…. Bob had given up– but I was hanging in….
GOOD GOD!! What a fucking game!!! I can’t believe it. That was one of the best games I’ve seen. Those JETS played HARD– but their extra point kicker SUCKS!!!! hahahahah– Bob and I are going to send him a post card or something—-
Great. We (the earth) sent a probe to a giant FART planet. Well, no sulfer there yet– BUT, it has TONS of methane. Which means, if we go there, and someone lights a fart, we could turn the whole thing into a HUGE ball of blue flame.
Look… it’s even called the Titan MOON. It’s a moon, shrouded in Methane gas. —
I’m sorry. My juvenile humor was ignited whenI read all these stories about this great scientific feat. It really is amazing. Now give me a match!
Fun facts. I have the tag thing figured out… it’s built right into wordpress– DUH! Stupid me. So that’s that. Actually, my traffic has gone up quite a bit since getting listed by these blog engines. So WELCOME to all the new readers who are coming from the abyss.
Fun Fayette-Nam fact. Well, not so fun fact… That guy who was just found guilty of prisoner abuse.. .he’s from Uniontown PA… the heart of Fayette-Nam. It freaking figures. Anyway, I just thought I would point that out. I run into morons like that all the time around here when I go out. People are SOOOO bigoted, racist bastards around here. So i hide inside a good bit and stay away from the natives. It would take an efhed up idiot from Fayette Nam to do something like that– wouldn’t it??
A Yirmumah reader, and now friend of mine in Hawaii has a website up, showcasing his collection of original art. His site is coming along great. Here’s a link to his Yirmumah page, showing everything from the art he bought from me, to the sketches I drew on the backs of some of em, and the doodle I did on the mailing box!
A great post from Eric Burns at Websnark. Well written. He kinda takes you with him, no? He saved me a 9 hour drive or something… not that I was going to go or knew anything about this thing, or would have went anyway– BUT still, it sounded like a fun time. Those Dumbrella guys are A-okay. Check the link!
New strip here. Not sure if I have any notes on it at all. Like Drew, I’ll be 29 on Monday as well— No, not a depressing thing. A 3rd of my life is gone though– well, if I live to be 90ish.
The Blog is now featured on the main page under the current comic strip. It’s in an “iframe” which feeds the blog into it. Please let me know if you have any problems viewing the main page, etc…. I’ve been tinkering with this awhile and I think I got all the bugs out.
Now the front page is much more informative. You get the kick ass strips, AND the notes from us right here in the old blog.
Yes. That’s right. Drew’s been married all this time. Can you believe it??? So why haven’t I mentioned Calypso before? Who is she? Etc?
It’s no surprise to people who know me that Calypso is a character loosely based on my wife, just as Bob is loosely based on a guy named Bob. I only included her in one TWO tiny panels in the Yirmumah history. One was a photo on a nightstand, the other she was in bed. Unlike myself, Drew Price doesn’t have kids. Anyway, I’ve thought about doing this for awhile, and it’s a big change to the dynamic of things. I think for the better. I could never have Bob say to drew “I’m going to rip your balls off.” – Well, I could actually…. but, you know what I mean.
My wife’s name is Calista though. So why the name Calypso??? It’s an ode, a tip of the hat to our old friend Dave Laws who passed away last year. When he met my wife, he instantly heard her name and began calling he Calypso. Anytime we saw him, he wished Calypso a great happy day. You’d hear…. “Ahhhh, Calypso!” coming from the back corner of the coffee shop.
What a great way to put in two people in my real life that I love so much.
OH, before I get to work. I checked out ToddandPenguin. A strip approved by the Yirmumah Code. No, you won’t find swearing, crude language, or tawdry toilet jokes like our strip. But damn, Dave Wright has come a long way with his strip. This strip has been running for 5 years! Today is an amazing jumping on point for new readers. Do go and check it out.
I slept in. Well, no, I was up.. but then I just went back to bed. The only time I get to see my wife now is well, before she goes to work, and then at 1am when she comes home. Then I’m up at 7:30am to get the kids off to school. Today was too much. My brain bitch slapped me back to bed. And the internet wasn’t working this morning, so I couldnt sit in my usualy zombie-like stupor and surf the regular blogs I check.
So the strip collection is going to happen. I have a little teeny wee bit of work to do for it before it can be available, but I’m talking with my printer and, well, publisher now, working out details. It’ll be neat to see all the color strips from 2004 packed into a book of some sort. I was surprised how well they read smaller and in print. And they don’t look half bad in grayscale, but I just gotta do this book in color.
That’s all. Now I gots to get me some coffee and get cranking on more dailies. A small confession before I go. I’m not sure if anyone else who draws a regular comic experiences this… but late at night when I finally lay down to rest, my brain is totally plotting more strips, making diabolical plans for comic domination. It use to torture me, but I’ve given into it. And now it’s fun. I’m no longer bored or frustrated with my pencil not moving. My brain keeps going a mile a minute. Maybe it senses that I’m almost fucking 30?
I’m in a mood. Actually several different moods. I went off on a friend who sent out a Press Release saying all profits from his comic would go to Tsunami relief. It seemed disingenius to me, because, well, most indy comics just don’t clear a profit at all. Especially when you pay people to write and draw it, and pay printing, etc.. you never recoup your costs. I shouldnt have busted his balls so hard, and I deleted my posts out. It was late, but I still mean what I said. I wont even say WHO it is now. But he knows. I dont think it was his intention to make PR for his comic off the Tsunami disaster, but I read it that way. And I’m his friend . Well, maybe not anymore since I brought out the ball busting broom.
The system is so broken, that indy creators do things out of desperation to try to boost their Diamond sales numbers just so they can stay “out there.” – They scramble to get bigger names to do their covers… bigger names to put ON a cover. One time, a Big name guy was in a collection, and he was late on his art… he fucking scribbled this mess of an entry… and the publisher was stumped. – Who came to save the day? The real talent. An underground guy, swooped in and made that entry look pretty with grayscales and some nice shading, etc… but everyone who saw the original.. UGH.
Im sick of these sort of things. Its not the creators faults at all. They scramble. They need to make those numbers to stay alive in the game. Hurry, put that hot guys name on the cover and you win!——- But do you? Whoa! Big global disaster, how can this benefit my public image? Quick! Send a press release!– –
Who forces us to play these games? Business is just NOT pretty at all. It’s motherfucking ugly as hell. Ugly and drooling. Right now, I know SEVERAL independent comic folks… there is an air of bullshit about all of it. We all fudge or stretch the truth to make our names look better, our products more buzz, etc. I’m guilty of it too. But I quit that game. It wasn’t until I totally quit it, that I saw it all around me. I saw the public face of things, but then would hear the down story behind the scenes. I know those feelings. No one wants to fail at something they try. But it’s never ever a failure if you keep going– but
There is another way. I can’t wait for the day when people don’t have to play in some structure like this.
So I’m up inking strips. Drinking a Guinness or 3, and eating chex mix.
I’m not just inking any strip. I’m inking something that’s been a long time coming– something that’s been asked for many times, but I just couldnt do it. Now I’m doing it. And while it might not seem like a big deal to other people, it is a huge commitment– and could change the Yirmumah mythos forever.
It’s ok though. It’s a good thing. Tune in…hmm.. lets see, next Thursday to see what it is. No one will probably even remember me mentioning this.
Yirmumah will be a featured comic in the Sonic Slang Comics Section - Sonic Slang is a cool site primarily focused on music reviews, etc. Good stuff there. Check it out!
I must say, I have mixed feelings about that. For one, it’s ONE stinking paper. Garfield isn’t going anywhere. Another side of me is cheering that a large paper actually stood up and removed the crap. One down, like 15 or so more to go–
But the other side of me loves Garfield, somewhere, deep down, the 8 year old in me LOVES GARFIELD. — But look at what it has become?
I wonder though, how Jim Davis feels? Is he bothered at all, or is he out counting money? Or both? Stuart points out that it’s ironic that it happened on a Monday.
Back to drawing my crude, juvenile, online webcomics.
It’s been my experience in life so far, that there is usually someone waiting around to try to rain on your parade, or pee in your cheerios. Those types of things use to really anger me when I saw them happen, but now I pay no real mind to them.
Kinda related, but an off point… there are people who scoff at the idea that anything online is pretty much pointless and just vanity publishing, etc… They believe maybe that only because they are in newspapers, or won some fancy awards, or have a nationwide book distribution, that it validates their work in some way MORE than things that are just put online for anyone to see. — I think it scares them. There is definitly an element of fear. Over on gapingvoid, Hugh McLeod has made a point over and over again that you have a serious problem when markets start getting smarter. You need smarter conversations. Instead, most of the time, you get a bunch of stuffy shirts telling you the world is flat. And they can’t wait for ANY opportunity to arise to bring up their pretty much obsolete points.
I find it amusing now. Watching some people squirm. It has nothing to do with me or my work at all– I just like observing people’s reactions to something they think might threaten them or their livelihoods in some manner.
Oh! Funny example of something similar that just happened TODAY! – So there was that column about Comixpress on Newsarma. Great Print on Demand comic printer and place you can sell your comics. Who should chime in there?? A guy from Cold Cut Distribution– Saying pretty much, POD is great if you’re SMALL, but if you want to be in shops, you have to use a distributor and uhm, well, you have to buy in bigger numbers to accomadate yourself a profit.———— This is a moot point now. I mean, 90% of the independent books in there don’t even sell over a 1000 copies! AHK! – But I can sit on my buttocks have my minicomic available 24/7/365, printed, sold and delivered without me lifting a finger! — And there is no “benchmark” or monthly pre-order form blah blah blah— no complex number to have people memorize— you want it, its sent to you.
With the level of quality I’ve seen, I would question why any independent creator would really want to use the old broken systems at all. Well, most likely because the new ways aren’t proven yet. No one has some set road map on how to do things at all, especially when it comes to new comics over the internet.
It’s true what they say. #1 The best things in life are free. – But then again,#2 there is no such thing as a free lunch. It’s gotta be someone’s dime… right??? —- Maybe the next step is, sure the best thing in life are free, but the even better things are like a buck extra.
What the hell am i talking about anyway? BLAH!, I have no idea. Its way too late, and I have to be backup way too early.
Today begins the first official Yirmumah Daily. The strip will run Mon-Fri in black and white strip style, then on the weekend you get a big color comic like you’ve all been enjoying the past couple months. The weekend edition will also run at www.pvcomics.com as well.
Why the move? Well, because it’s what I want to do. Deal with it, sister!
In the coming weeks, I have another announcement, something cool for regular readers or fans of the strip. I just have to get my ducks in a row on it, then I’ll tell you all about it.
Be sure to tune into http://yirmumah.net for the newest installment of the Yirmumah strip, and a big surprise. Once you know what it is, spread the word and tell your friends.
Back to work for me. Got a lot of work to do here.
Sometimes when I call people names, I don’t mean it. I recently called Joey Manley a Twat. I kinda met it after I read what I read– I was just over reacting. He did have the balls to come to the forums where I called him that, and admit that he was being twatlike though. So I can respect that. Look, I’ll even add his blog to my link list, because I do check it every day in my link list. He’s no Scott McCloud though… thank god.
To be completely honest, I don’t really care what anyone thinks. And everyone is entitled to their opinion. And sometimes I misread things, because I’m human. Some things get under my skin very temporarily, but what I’m really focused on now is my own work. For a minute there I was kinda focused on webcomics as a medium as a whole, blah blah blah blah blah….. but I came to the conclussion that I’m a doer, not a talker. I do much better when I’m simply producing than giving out my ideas for how I think some things should work. Or even yelling about how I feel some creators online aren’t paid fairly. – Hell, the truth is, not many cartoonists are paid at all! But who’s fault is that? Maybe they should hussle a little more… I don’t know, and frankly, I’m not concerned with it.
I’m content on forgetting about other people’s projects and making my own work to the best of my ability. If I do something right along the way, and people want to praise it, link it, admire it, or even hate me…. so be it.
I am a very flawed human being. But I’m trying to live and do the best with what I got. So I’m glad people are enjoying the comics. There’s plenty more a’ comin.
2004 was a mixed bag for me. Good, bad and ugly. I’ll try to do this in categories or something.
MY MUSE- I’m a cursed man. It seems like hundreds of ideas pop into my head daily. Which then tortures me, because there arent enough hours in a day to do everything I’d like to be doing. Then also there are the cravings… almost like an addiction. For instance, I can wake up and REALLY REALLY miss drawing Zombies and then I start thinking about some zombie epic. A few days later, it might be superheroes. – So, I have kinda learned to control my muse and do a good bit of writing. If an idea REALLY catches my mind, I’ll write it down. Sometimes an idea takes over my mind and I HAVE to draw something. So I sketch, design. Things that may never see the light of day. I had a BIG urge to do a SuperHero weekly comic online a couple months back. I spent a day doing THIS. But I put it away. I’ve found ways to channel these things and satisfy some of them. I got rid of the super hero bug temporarily by playing City of Heroes with my kids. ——–
MY COMICS- I’ve been doing the Yirmumah comic all 2004 with PV comics. It’s changed formats and plans twice this year, once going from a 4 page monthly to a 3 time a week strip. I did that because a monthly update online was a complete waste of time. I was never happy with the update schedule of PV Comics in general, but it was all based on what individual creators could put in with their own time, so you couldnt yell at anyone about it. It just didnt work as a subscription model at all. People wanted more content, more often and they kept asking for print. So PV had to change. So Yirmumah went weekly and bigger to accomadate my personal life schedule. I had done a great deal of work blabbing about how great PV was, the content there– but not that much moved. Honestly, I feel like it’s a let down. We all worked so hard, but the plan wasn’t good enough for what the market really wants. — Add to that, Comixpress, which was born out of PV, took off like a rocket…. Logan became swamped with work on that– and pretty much, PV took a backseat for just about everyone originally involved. Things are starting to move again though. PV isnt going anywhere. Things just change is all.
Other than my Yirmumah comics. The other big project we did this year was LIONXOR. An extremely well written, and mediocrely drawn by me, comic book, kinda about 80s toy properties. But not really. Its hard for me to define Lionxor— –Anyways, we had low numbers with Diamond orders, and Geekpunk had to cancel the title. Actually, we all panicked and cancelled it too soon I think– it was the same night the book was cancelled that Logan called me to tell me about Comixpress, which could have probably saved Lionxor then. - Issue 3 was all done and penciled and I think halfway inked when we got the Diamond news. A real bummer— top that off with, our inker for issue 3 was incestently late, or saying he was going on vacation, or had family friends over, or something something. It really started to sound like a load of excuses. The book was suppossed to be done and inked in May. In July, 2 months later and still late, I got an e-mail from the inkers friend tellig me he had a double triple bi-pass on his heart. What is a jaded, cynical guy like me to do? It all sounded like bullshit, but I couldnt call him out on it. I wished him a speedy recovery. — I don’t think we got the last pages back until… October? Yep….. So anyway, Lionxor just felt cursed to me. Other things continued to plague it it seemed, but I’m through talking about it. It’s a GREAT fucking book, and 2 issues are now available HERE FOR SALE! – Issue 3 should be up there soon as well. The whole fiasco with the book just not getting done on many levels after I busted my ass on it, really took the wind out of my sails. But i learned another lesson. I should probably ONLY rely on myself. Especially when it comes to inking. —- And listen, Im not bad mouthing the inker guy. Im just laying out what happened from my viewpoint. It’s the truth. Im not saying he’s lying about having a heart attack. I mean, JESUS!!! A fucking heart attack. Go figure. But when I get e-mails from people asking me as a reference to him on the work, I don’t know what to say!? I don’t say anything. The only thing I could say is – “He didn’t meet deadlines, and he might be prone to going on vacations every two weeks or he might just drop over dead.” —- So, i’d rather not give the reference. You know??? I’m sorry if you’re reading this here, bro. Maybe you should be doing this as just a hobby and not work on deadlines. They CAN and WILL kill you. And it’s not worth it.
FAMILY- It was the best of times…. it was the worst of times. —– My core family has just been great. My boys are healthy, smart, mischievous little guys. Dillon(6) can’t stop drawing, and impresses everyone at his school by saying he’ll be a rockstar. Devin(7) is so sweet and kind… Dakota(3) is just a wild man, terrorizing my house in a Dennis the Menace sort of way. …… And there’s my wife. I’m so proud of her. She did it. She got through her college stuff, and now she’s a full fledged nurse. Im proud because she’s authentically happy. She found a job where she doesnt wake up and feel like she wants to call off. No more telemarketing, or “customer service” jobs…. she’s free. She’s a professional. I can feel her happiness every day now. And there is no better feeling. I wish I could give her so much more. But I want her to know, she has given me so much– and I appreciate it. Her success, and being professional and all that has also really made me question my own worth of what it is I do. Does it contribute or help anyone?? I dont know. Maybe. Maybe I’m giving someone an escape from their crappy problems for a minute. I don’t know.
And hopefully she doesnt kick me out to marry some hot, rich Doctor guy or something. I love you honey!
DEATH RIDES IN…- It’s sad to say, but the highlight of my year has been DEATH. So many deaths in my family. My cousins, Mary Beth, Patrick, Darrin, Uncle Roger and last week, My grandma Coffman. — Even with all the family death, the 2 deaths that effected me the most were of my good friend Dave and his sister Leslie. — It haunts me. July 5th– Maybe because I see my own mortality or something. It can all go away in a flash– and I have so much to do. Dave had so much to do. I had more in common with Dave than anyone I’ve ever known that has passed. So many things about Dave’s death haunt me. The double rainbow that day. Jeff Buckley was his hero, and he died the SAME way, in a river.– Also, it’s most likely my imagination, but I feel like Dave is around, communicating with us somehow. At his funeral, we all had a good laugh because the other friend Dave made a great music CD and “KICK OUT THE JAMS” by MC5 was on there. So its playing all through the funeral home… “KICK OUT THE JAMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!” —- we all thought Dave would get a good laugh about that being played through the funeral home and making the old people cringe. — I’d never heard the song until that day. ————- Then in October, the night Dave’s sister Leslie died, Pearl Jam played Toledo and since it’s my favorite band on earth, I was at SPX on a computer checking the setlist. They played KICK OUT THE JAMS. I mean, its a one in whatever chance they’d choose to cover this as a goof at their show. And when I found out Leslie died that night, it was eery.
A few days ago… I sat with this freebie calendar I get from Elderly music– I was plotting out a new daily comic… I look to the title of the month.. JANUARY, and under it “KICK OUT THE JAMS!” — It made me feel like Dave was watching me and encouraging me to continue doing what Im doing. Period. I’ve made a promise to myself that I tend to keep in 2005.
First up, a shout out to Don the Idea guy for blogging about Yirmumah and the caricatures– read here.
SECOND Drawing all the caricatures has been a lot of fun, and oddly enough, a lot of good practice for myself. No matter what your skill level is as a cartoonist, you still have to practice practice practice. I usually don’t have time to do so, but the caricatures have forced me to approach things differently. I’m really happy with how they’ve all come out.
THIRD- Tune in to the next Yirmumah strip for semi big news. Shhhh… It’s a zecret! But once you find out, tell everyone you know.
FOURTH I’m really thinking hard about the Yirmumah Magazine idea. I was also thinking there’s not a magazine or literature of any kind out there covering any sort of webcomics movement. So that’s interesting as well. I consider webcomics as like the new Small Press. Especially since my roots are in the REAL small press, I know the feeling. That’s probably why I love webcomics so much– its so free and fluid, and creators doing what they want. Say what you will about the quality levels, they do vary, but at least these folks aren’t just sitting around talking…. they’re DOING. — Doers.
I’ve been thinking for some time about starting a magazine type deal, with comics, and articles, interviews— with various creators of course. I have no budget for such a thing. I can put it together though and have it put out quarterly through Comixpress. - I know so many talented people who I’d like to see just let loose with whatever they wanted to do.
I was thinking more of an underground feel. In fact, I was thinking of calling it “Yirmumah: the underground comics magazine” – have it be half useful information, and the other half just hijinks and buffoonery. I think that would be basterific.
Hypothetically speaking, what if such a thing existed? And it also collected most of the Yirmumah web strips inside, just so you could revisit them on the toilet or something. I could maybe call out some favors and get people to do covers for it. Or even featured articles. Damn, i think it would be great to put something really useful in someone’s hands. For both aspiring comic creators AND people who just plain love comic books and comic strips and don’t want to see the mediums die out.
Just a little voice, shouting in the darkness. THoughts? Would anyone buy anything like this? Or better yet, would you tell your friends?
The new strip is HERE. Enjoy it. I busted my butt to get it done yesterday, when I could have just sat around and did a lot of nothing. Alas, I am obsessed with my work.
I have a BIG caricature to get working on and get it hopefully done or near done today. Then I have to get cranking on work for next week. Next week is going to be an awesome week for Yirmumah fans.
I was just checking my links, I see Yirmumah is link of the week at some comic called The Whiteboard
But the guy says “No, I don’t get it either. Good art tho…” — Which kinda bugs me. What isnt there to get? And why is his comic about fury people playing paintball in Alaska? I don’t get that. —Hurm.
Anywho. Not to double back on this stranger, I thank him for linking my site. But as I drink my first cup of coffee and try to ponder Fury Skunks playing paintball…. i can’t grasp it. Why? What? Huh?
But that’s webcomics for you. I love the variety of seeing new things– I really do. It’s probably the strength of the whole thing. The variety and variety of levels of skills. When you come across something GOLD, you immediately know it. And it feels like a present.
Groggy here in Fayette Nam. Woke up with no water. I guess there was a break or something on the highway. (by the way, our highway is more like a back country 2 lane road) –
I have several caricatures to work on. As I speak, Chad Lambert’s is penciled all up and about to be done inked. After that it’s more work for the dirty 30s one, its kinda a little more than a regular caricature. Then I got a last minute, needs done by Xmas one for someone. But im not going to say the name, just in case anyone important is reading.
Oh– I also need to start working on next week’s strip. I have a stack of scripts and need to pick the best one. Hmmm..
Keep an eye on Websnark.com. He’s gonna be doing some end of the year award thing, or shortbread, or maybe he’s baking treats to send out to all the good “webbie” boys and girls.
Ok. I’m gonna lay it all out on the line here and let you all know what I’ve been thinking. So pay attention.
What I REALLY want to do is do a mon-fri black and white strip and a Saturday color strip that will run all weekend, just like the current strip. I have way too many ideas that are going to waste and would fit in between the great weekend editions. However, time is kinda limited, but I think I may just work harder to make this a reality. I REALLY wanted to launch it the first monday of January, because January always feels like a new start for me, either to do something great, or totally fuck up my year!
So what do you folks think? Would you like to see something like that? Is there anyone reading at all? Answer me dammit!
In book news, there’s something that been hanging over my head for a long time and I have to make a slate of time to really put it together right, but it will be really nice if I can get it done. It’s a YIRMUMAH Essential sort of collection. It would include the first 3 minicomics hurridly drawn in 1998 on my lunchbreaks at my crappy day job then, and also just about every Yirmumah short, finished and unfinished that I can muster into it. There are many old fans who ask me to reprint this stuff, and I finally found some decent copyable material. – This is a back burner thing though, because my juices are really flowing to do more NEW Yirmumah stuff. Stay tuned though.
For one. Im testing out my track back thing. Ive been out of the loop on how to use that. Second, Hugh’s blog is one of my favorites and I love his little cartoons on business cards. I’m sure he wouldnt mind me saying so.
Im thinking about running the new blog on this page in 2005. For one, its easier for other bloggers to link up. #2, it’s free and I guess I can control the look and feel more.
Let me know what you think. If enough readers of the old blog actually care, e-mail me.
I know I have 2394 people getting the old blog by e-mail. That would most likely cease. Thats the ONE feature I like about the Xanga blog– people dont really need to check in, they get it by email. But hopefully people will look into RSS and use that, you can actually read the blog remotely. And more people can link it up that way as well.
Darn. Too many decisions. Back to caricatures for me.
It seems….. quiet there.
