leonel, matt pott, and two pictures that made me laugh!

okay...

as we bid goodbye to july (don't go, july, don't go--!), i'm already looking ahead to august and the challenges it poses. i've gotta try to write two issues of super hero squad in a week since i'll be jetting down to florida from the 8th to the 13th to spend a week with my buddy, nick cardy. and, not owning a laptop, i'm planning to have the blog done in advance for those three days, but will need to rely on craig to post them.
my goal at nick's is well, simply, just to see him. when i opted out of doing any of the usual conventions this year, he thought that sounded fine, but we realized we wouldn't get a chance to hang out any. this way we'll get to hang out and watch old movies and look at his artwork and go to dinner at 4:30 together.
another plan is to bring my brand new video camera (well, brand new in that it's a year and a half old, but it's new to me 'cause i still haven't gotten the hang of loading the stuff i shoot onto my computer--what a pain...) and get nick telling his stories about comics, his time in world war two, and just life! he's so funny and such a great story teller as craig and matt and suzanne can attest. and while i'm no cinematographer, i figure that some genius film editor will be able to take the raw footage and work some magic on it to make it watchable.
the film idea came to me years ago when nick would tell mike and i stories and i told mike that we should tape it, these stories are gems. we were talking at the same time and i said people would love to hear more about the early days of the comics industry while mike was meaning the stories of the war. we both laughed and said we oughta do both. so we're gonna do just that.
and just the other day, after chatting with renee witterstaetter--we're going to get to see and have dinner with renee and michael golden while i'm down there--renee says she knows exactly the guy to edit the film and she wants to produce it through her eva ink productions. she did this with michael and his work a couple years ago and if you haven't seen it, do! so this way, rather than me just posting a few raggedy, rough video clips of nick talking on youtube, it will be a smartly cut and polished production to give the man his due tribute. (i hope i don't screw it up...!)

anyway, that's what's shakin'. i'll have more later!

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in the meantime, i have become friends and very chatty with my super hero squad artist, leonel castellani and we got to talking back and forth and he mentioned that he had never seen an issue of our very popular, highly-selling comic as he lives down in argentina. so i packaged up the run so far and sent them off--but not before including some perhapanauts for him to peruse as well.
well...!
he thanked me for the squads--we're having a lot of fun on those!--but he couldn't stop raving about the perhapanauts and offered very quickly to do a short haps story with me, said he LOVED the design of the characters (good job, craig!) and fell in love with them as he read! and so did his wife, the official no.uno choopie fan in argentina!
i'll keep you posted on when and where our story will appear but for right now, here are leo's initial scribbles of some of the gang!




thanks, leo--they're terrific!

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facebook is awesome!
last night i was chatting with tim perkins in england and matt pott in australia all at the same time! crazy fun! tim and i are talking about doing a little something together--or somethingS--a little project of our own and maybe a perhapanaut-y thing and matt, of course, did that gorgeous cover for us for the halloween special last year in his unique and quirky style.
matt told me that he had been digging through some old files of past work and that he just posted a picture of koj that he drew and sent to mike years ago. i snagged it and am posting it here too, but run over and take a look at some of the cool stuff matt's been up to!








you can see some of tim's lovely work at www.wizards-keep.com
and matt's at www.mattpott.com and www.mattpott@blogspot.com

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and here are two pictures that i grabbed offa monday morning randomness on ebaum's world!
they both made me laugh and one made me laugh several times. you can guess which one.








gotta run! terry and i called it's comics day so we're
driving down to new paltz to get comics and have
lunch with our pal, mike giacoia.
have a great weekend!
smell ya later!
todd