Hello, Internet! Things have been wild and reeling around the old IC offices! Two weekends ago we had a great time selling comics and meeting folks at the Fort Collins Comics Convention! Between running into folks we met in Cheyenne, or meeting new folks from the Front Range Comics scene, to connecting with fans (who might even turn into fans of ours!), it was a good time.

One highlight for me was the chance to meet Dan Conner and Patricia Krmpotich of My Gal the Zombie, a web and print comic I recently discovered and that you all ought to be reading. Dan has a real DIY ethic and a natural sense of comic book history, creating something classic and modern at the same time. Patricia has been writing the last few printed comics, and her instant grasp of the emotional core of the characters has been more than impressive!

We, of course, had copies of our anthology titles for sale, and after a eight years of limbo, it was good to get paper comics into the hands of folks!

Which brings us to the news for the weekend. Barry and I are going to be hosting a booth at our home stomping grounds in Scottsbluff NE. This Saturday, starting at 9:00 AM, The Monument mall is hosing a Coins, Cards, and Collectibles Show; and Ideal Comics will be there with bells on. Strike that–but we will have our booth and banner and a table full of comics. So get ready, Scottsbluff, because it is an Ideal Comics world now! Sorta. Just give me this, folks! (BTW, the illustration above is taken from Zing #2, art by Levi Irwin, with edits by me. Thanks, Levi!)

Also, ICYMI, we have a brand new Encyclopedia entry for you all the check out! More to come, too!

On another track, now that things are wrapped with all the Zing 2 craziness, we are trying to get back into the ‘Forces’ swing, with two updates a week. Rolf has been giving us some great art, and we are very excited to share it with you!

Well that is about all the news. Until next time, Happy Reading!

It was the year 1939, and war had again come to Europe as Germany flexed it’s muscles and Hitler lead his people into his increasingly totalitarian and racist dream. Across the World, much of America stood on the knife’s edge between a fragile recovery and poverty, between law and crime, between peace and violence.

Into such an America came a man from the sky. Out in distant space sat the planet Aquarius, and it’s amphibious leaders had watched and studied our planet. They had seed the colonial era and westward expansion. They had witnessed slavery and violence and war; and they now saw that the human race had again set itself on a road to cataclysm. Into this maelstrom of ideas, the Aquarians sent a messenger of peace and of voluntary cooperation—a champion possessed of un-paralleled speed—a man named Mar Yam-Llyr.

In a golden rocket, he blasted through space and through time, Mar Yam-Llyr landed in Presidio, CA, and quickly found himself numbered among the first ranks of mystery men under the code name The Golden Rapid. Along with his compatriots in the Foreign Legion, the Rapid defended the shores of America before joining the fray of WWII.

After the end of the war, the Golden Rapid and the rest of the Legion traveled the world, using alien technology to heal the land ravaged by the war, teaching the people to live all the better off the land. When he was not abroad, The Rapid made his home in Presidio, California where he trained local boy Gil Henderson as a side-kick.

In 1951, Yam-Llyr received a panicked communication from Aquarius, stating that the planet was in danger. Boarding his rocket, he left earth behind…

Credits:
Created by: Mathew D. Rhys; Christopher David Lawton
Designed by: Richard Depew; Matthew D. Rhys
Image by: Richard Depew; Matthew D. Rhys (colors)

It is another Throwback Thursday, and we at Ideal Comics want to share another new cover for an old story. This, our 22nd story, is a novella-sized, Greg-centric epic; and follows Nerd-and-friends on a cross-country trip to the  Fremont City, CO where all manner of chaos erupts! Ideal Comics is proud to re-present “National Villainy!”

This cover features a multi-media collaboration between Rolf Gerdau and Mathew D. Rhys; while the interior art was done by Rhys, Chris Lawton, Barry Tetz and Joseph Carradine. It’s an extravaganza, folks!

You might have noticed that things have been a little slow over on Forces of Good and Evil. While there are reasons (and if you were following us there, you’d already know that!),  we at Ideal Comics still want to share as many goodies with you as we can! So on this #ThrowbackThursday, let’s call back to our second Chad-centric story–complete with a brand new cover from young artist “Michael Van Reese”. We are proud to re-present “Gym Class: Hijinks and Hi-jacks!”

In Case You Missed It, as anyone who knows me can attest, I am a huge fan of old things—old music, old stories, old whiskey.

AHEM.

Imagine my glee in finding a classic Star Wars Marvel comic from 1979 made by two giants—Archie Goodwin and Carmine Infantino! Follow me to Gaming Rebellion as I ask the question “Whatever Happened to Jabba the Hutt?”

Hello, Internet! To any of you who may have followed my column over at Ideal Comics, it is no surprise that I have a lot of comics. A lot. Now, I wouldn’t say I have an excessive amount or anything, but I do own several file cabinets whose only purpose is to hold comics–five of them, in fact.

Time was that I had all my books bagged and boarded and sorted by title and publication date; and all the good stuff Gen-X-nerds were supposed to do. In my mid-20’s I got just a little bit prosperous, and signed up for a comic subscription service, then I got busy and then I got poor again; and before you could say “limited edition, foil-embossed cover” I had a problem.

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In Case You Missed It, back in December, I mentioned that I was moving “Quarterbin Follies” off site. I was offered a spot over at Gaming Rebellion, and it seemed like a great venue to rant about the hits and misses of the stacks of comics in my file cabinets.

Now, I am not going any where. You will still find me puttering about the Ideal Comics offices, muttering about continuity and symbolism; it is only that the GR guys offered me a hell of a soapbox. (Though I ought to climb on top more often.) Nevertheless, I didn’t want to leave behind any folks that might watch this space; so without further ado, a live teaser for “Quarterbin Follies #32: It takes a Miracle”

Today’s story begins at the end. The very end.

Ragnorok.

Jack Kirby, when working with Stan the Man on The Mighty Thor, well, Kirby decided to go out with a bang. In a series of back-ups called “Tales of Asgard” Kirby laid out the end of Asgard and the House of Ideas’ Aesir, as he adapted Ragnarok for the 616. This was “prophecy,” a fore-telling from the mind of the King, rather then the direction Marvel editorial would have one of their stars go.

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Hello, Internet!  We here at the Scottsbluff offices of Ideal Comics are fresh from the floor of the Cheyenne Comic Con. It was a real great time as we spent three days talking about comics and handing our free Ideal Comics coloring books. Free, you ask? Yep, super free. Because that is how we roll.

We decided on an experiment: mini-coloring book of eight pages featuring brand-new adventures of our Golden Age stalwarts Al Djinn and Night Terror–complete ‘Golden Age’ style stories in eight pictures.

We had a lot of great feedback on both the coloring books and the company as a whole, and it really made us take a step back and reassess our position. Since we released our first anthology Zing Comics #1 in 2007, a lot of water has passed under the bridge. Life has moved on, and we have just been bobbing along. Well, this summer going to be the Summer of Ideal Comics. We have plans to redouble our efforts to finish the long awaited Zing Comics #2 as well as finish the Special Edition of Zing Comics #1 (and digital editions of both). As things move on with these projects, we have a few more projects to announce in coming months, so stay tuned.

But with every step forward you run the risk of loss. We have decided to change our update schedule for our web-comic Forces of Good and Evil from twice weekly to every Friday. We are super pleased with the relaunch, and love what Rolf Gerdau has been faithfully bringing to the table; but we also don’t want to lose quality as we press toward this mark!

We are greatly excited, and hope you will take this journey with us!

Our own Rolf Gerdau recently took first place in a local art contest with this info comic. A neat and insightful piece, Rolf uses an almost whimsy parallelism to discuss the very serious ideas of home, contentment, and satisfaction in frank but inclusive terms. Everyone, rich or poor, is challenged to take a hard look at themselves, their assumptions, and their perceptions of those around them. We are proud to showcase it here, and you can read more about the piece and the contest here. And be sure to follow Rolf’s work over at the Forces of Good and Evil!

(Comic/Artwork is the property of Cirrus House, Inc. Used with permission)

When I think of Ideal Comics, I think of two words: Genuine and Inspiring. Ideal’s founders, Chris and Rhys, are true fans of fiction and it shows. I have always seen the pair as an invaluable and willing resource for all things comic/sci-fi/nerd related. Their passion for world/character building goes far beyond merely knowing the minutiae of any given comic book. It permeates their dedication to creating their own living breathing fictional universe, “Escher’s World.” For every character of theirs you see or read you can bet there is a mile’s worth of backstory. No matter how big or small, whether it is a throwaway gag or an entire series, every character has a history, every event has a purpose, and every effect has a cause. Chris and Rhys have grown up immersing themselves in the world of fiction and their dedication to creating one of their own definitely shines through every project.

When I first encountered Ideal Comics, it was through the adventures of Chad Little and Greg Mason in Forces of Good and Evil. The webcomic completely blew my mind! Since I was a kid, I have always wanted to create stories—books, movies, cartoons, comics, whatever. But there always seemed to a mystery in the process. How does an idea go from point A to point B and turn into a completed project? How does your imagination become reality? For me, Ideal Comics revealed that magic. They showed me that all you had to do to see your dreams come true was have a little bit of gumption. When I first saw the simple black and white format of Forces, I remember immediately having the epiphany “Wow! You can create stories without spending millions of dollars or compromising your ideas!” That has been a very important and invaluable lesson that I have always cherished and will always owe to Chris and Rhys.

Darby Ellis Lewis Wilson is a thinker and writer, and co-creator of the Super University for College Kids