October 2017: An Ideal Month!

Hello, Internet! Happy Hallowe’en!

It has been quite a month over here at the Ol’ Ideal Comics home base! For those of you IC faithful who are outside the Wyo-Braska corridor there is a good chance you missed the inagural High Plains Mini-Con, the first ever nerd-culture expo in our sleepy little hamlet. Around 200 folks from Scottsbluff-Gering and the surrounding environs came out to meet local creators and hear presentations by both professional and independent comickers and content creators! There were so many neat things going on, but I will mention two in this space.

At the Mini-Con, we opened the stage with Veteran comic scribe Ron Fortier. Known for writing Terminator: Burning Earth and being the primary architect and writer for Green Hornet by Now Comics during the 1990’s, Ron was kind enough to share many stores about the history of American comics and about the craft. Ron’s Green Hornet time line had a profound impact on me and upon the foundation of our IC universe, and it was an honor to have him down!

Secondly, long time IC fan Chris Lore has in the last year started his own webcomic Z-bites. We are always happy to meet new creators, but we are a bit humbled that the guys at Z-bites chose our event to debut the first issue of the expanded print version of their thoroughly fun zombie comic!

Well, this was a swell show, and we are already laying down stones for 2018. Stay tuned here for details and news!

We have also been busy with plans for 2018 products! I am working with Rolf Gerdau on a full length special spinning out from our long running webcomic Forces of Good and Evil. The story is called “I’ve Been to Hell,” and we have been hinting at this story for years and are very excited to get this out to you all. The first few pages are inked and look really fun. There are a few more projects in the mix, but that is all you get today!

In other news, last weekend the Rhys branch of the company (meaning myself and my sons) headed to Cheyenne, in part to check out Olympus Games and Comics and the Hallowe’en ComicFest! We picked up some fun freebie books as well as spent some face to face time with a hand full of local creators: David Kirk, the second half of the writing team for Z-bites, Chad Blakely of Pathetic Asthetic Comics, and Colin and Laurel of The Handbook of Heroes. I am not going into detail here, but all their products are we’ll worth giving an eyeball to (I have even provided the links)! Plus, I got a chance to talk to the Olympus Staff; and we look forward to some future news there, too!

Well, that is about it for now. We now prepare for a busy winter as we use the longer nights to wax creative. Expect weekly “Forces” updates, and at least monthly updates here on the blog as we put the shiny touches on new IC projects! Catch you in the funny papers, folks, and as always, Happy Reading!