The Land of 10,000 Things

One of the things about the hype cycle leading up to a new book coming out is that you have to find new bits and pieces of news from time to time in order to keep people chomping at the bit during the last few months before the book hits the shelves.  This is that.

With no further ado, it gives me extraordinary pleasure to be able to announce the final, formal title of the sequel to Strongman, last year’s biggest aged-masked-wrestler success story:

STRONGMAN VOL. 2: OAXACA TAPOUT

And here’s the cover, nice and big, by the always phenom Paul Adam:

The Cover for Strongman Vol. 2!

You may be thinking… “Oaxaca Tapout”?  Uh, yeah…. awesome?  Let me assure you, YES IT IS.  Here’s the deal.  SM2 is influenced in small part by the films of Andy Sidaris.  You may be thinking… “Andy Sidaris”?  Uh, yeah… awesome?  Let me assure you, YES HE WAS.  SORT OF.  Andy Sidaris made incredibly cheesy action films in the 80s, filled with bangs (all kinds), boobs and bullets.  They were mildly amazing to 11-12 year old me, when I could catch the uncut versions on Cinemax or whatever, but they’re really sort of terrible.  Bad acting, no plot, no budget – but the female leads were usually Penthouse Pets or Playboy Bunnies, and sometimes you don’t need much more.  Really, all you need to know about his stuff can be found at his official site.  Anyway, while those weren’t the best movies of all time, they did have a sort of hard-driving chutzpa to them, and they all boasted kickass titles.  Kickass titles that were essentially nonsense.  Check them out:

HARD TICKET TO HAWAII

MALIBU EXPRESS

ENEMY GOLD

GUNS (that’s it, just “Guns”)

and my personal favorite, PICASSO TRIGGER

So, that’s where I got the title, basically.  It’s set in Mexico, hence Oaxaca (even though the book probably doesn’t take place in that wonderful state), and Tapout because Tigre is, of course, a wrestler.  I hope you guys like it – not long now until you’ll get to see it for yourselves.

(Other news… just got back from a wonderful weekend at Baltimore Comicon.  Plenty of stories to share, which I will try to type up as soon as I can.  I’d also like to possibly do a little series on advice for indie creators – not that I’m so awesome, but I do think it might be nice for me to organize my thoughts on that subject a little.  And of course, more about 27 and Strongman Vol 2: Oaxaca Tapout!)

Conventional wisdom/practice in the comics world seems to be to keep art on new projects hidden away until the very last possible minute, so people don’t get sick of hearing about your new title and figure they don’t want it ages before it’s even out.

Well, I guess I’m a Pee-Wee Herman (that is, “a rebel, Dottie!”) because I’ve decided to post up the very first imagery I’ve received for what I hope will be the next big thing I do post-27 (and presumably in between Strongman 2 and 3).  I’ve mentioned it here before – it’s a post-apocalyptic naval warfare story called “The Thousand Ships.”

I’ve posted a series of layouts below for an introductory sequence in the book.  I’m not going to give it any other context beyond that, except to say that if this is a LAYOUT, holy crow, is this book going to look amazing!

The VERY FIRST images from The Thousand Ships!

Cool. Click to bigsize.

(and by the way, the art is provided by the extraordinarily capable Dave Kang, a guy I think I’m going to have a lot of fun working with.)