Saturday, January 07, 2012

Input needed

Hey there kiddies, I have a favor to ask you. As most of you know I am working on the Dead White & Blue Comics. The first part is nearing completion. Yeah, yeah, I k now it was supposed to have been here before now but I picked up some really cool commissions in the last couple months of 2011 that had some really tight deadlines so here we are. Money talks, right? Anywhooo...

The comic is going to be an homage to the comics I grew up with in the 70s, mainly Marvel and DC with some Charlton thrown in for good measure. It is going to be the entire package with simulated shitty printing and  all. Here's where you guys come in; I'm adding what Marvel called the Bullpen Bulletins. If you're not familiar this is how the page is described on Wikipedia:

"Bullpen Bulletins"  was the news and information page... it included items such as previews of upcoming Marvel publications (the "Mighty Marvel Checklist"), news about and profiles of Marvel staff members, occasional references to real-world trends and events, and perhaps most famously, "Stan's Soapbox" (alternately known as "Stan Lee's Soapbox"), a monthly column written by Stan Lee.
With "Bullpen Bulletins," Lee created the friendly, chatty editorial voice of Marvel Comics — "a style that could be characterized as High Hipster — two parts Lord Buckley, one part Austin Powers,"[1] putting "himself on a first-name basis with the readership at a time when the rival DC editors generally came across... as... stodgy adults."[2]
The "Bullpen Bulletins" page was where Lee rhapsodized about the Marvel "bullpen," the stable of in-house creators who produced the company's comics. He often bestowed colorful sobriquets on Marvel staffers and creators; nicknames such as Stan "The Man" Lee and Jack "King" Kirby permeated into mass culture. The fictional Marvel staffer Irving Forbush also appeared regularly — as the butt of Lee's humor. Similarly, phrases like "Excelsior!", "'Nuff said," "True Believer," and "Make Mine Marvel," as well as other company mainstays like the No-Prize, were popularized there as well." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullpen_Bulletins

I'm gong to emulate this as well as adding a small 'letters to the editor' section. And that is you come in my friends. I need questions! Since this is the first issue there won't be and comic related questions of course so just ask me something. Serious, not-so-serious, it doesn't matter. I'll pick a couple three or four and answer them in the column. So feel free to leave them here or on my Facebook page or email billy@billytackett.com Thanks!
If you want to get an idea about the comic I have 14 pages online to sample. These are pages I pulled that makes a single narrative kinda giving some back story. It's a little wordy but rest assured there's plenty of brain-eatin', Nazi-stompin' action! http://comics.billytackett.com/dwbsample1.html

If you need a visual as to what the Bullpen Bulletins looked like here is a good example: