Where’s the new story? Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

I’ll start off with the bad. If you’re clicking over here to read Zip and Li’l Bit’s latest story, The Captain’s Quest, which I’d promised to start posting in January, you’ll notice its not up yet. Sadly, Zip and Li’l Bit have had to take a back seat lately because I’ve been really busy working on other projects. I’ll be able to get back to this comic soon though. Unfortunately, I can’t really commit to the date that I can start posting The Captain’s Quest yet because I’m not sure at this point, but I hope to have it online in a couple of months. I’m really sorry about the delay and hope that everyone can bear with me and keep checking back. I’ll do my best to get it going as soon as possible, and promise that it’ll be worth the wait.

Now the good news. I’ve been working on a couple projects lately, other than Zip and Li’l Bit. Not sure what will pan out, but one thing I can tell everyone is that while Zip and Li’l Bit aren’t making it to print just yet, my artwork will be. I’m doing a book for a series called TOON Books, which are published by Françoise Mouly and her husband, Art Spiegelman, on thier RAW Junior imprint. TOON Books are a series of comics for early readers, and if you haven’t read any of them yet and have children, definitely run out and buy a couple. I’ve got them all, and my five year old son loves them. He reads them to us all the time.

Anyway, I’m just now finishing up the book I’m doing for Françoise, and if all goes well, it should be coming out in the Spring of 2010. It’s a bit of a wait, I know, but I’ll have The Captain’s Quest up for you to fill in the time.

Since it’s time for Zip to get up, that means we’ve made it to the end of the story. I hope everyone enjoyed The Sky Kayak. I had a great time thinking it up and doing all the writing and drawing. It’s a lot of fun. I’d really like to say how much I appreciate all the people who took the time to leave a comment as the story went along and everyone who’s written to me to ask questions or just shoot the breeze. I’ve met a lot of people as this comic has gone along and it’s been great.

So what’s next for Zip and Li’l Bit? I’ve got another story in the works which I’m calling The Captain’s Quest. That’s the good news. The bad news is that I’m going to have to take a little break and won’t start posting the next story again until January. I’ve got another project that I’m working on right now that is going to take up most of my time for the next couple months, but then I’ll be able to get back to Zip and Li’l Bit and get the next story revved up. I’m excited about it.

If you can, leave a note and let everyone know what you thought of The Sky Kayak. I’ll be glad to hear from you.

Later.

Yay! Mr. Shadow is back! Of course, everyone knew about that little blacking out problem that shadows have, right?

It was a really busy time last weekend. They had the MoCCA Art Festival here in New York and it was a blast! I spent most of the time hanging out with fellow Lunchbox Funnies creators, Ryan Sias, and Mike Maihack. Our other Lunchbox alum, Dave Roman, was there as well. It was great fun hanging around talking to everybody that came by to say “hello”, and also sneaking off to say “hi” to all of the other creators who were there who I am a big fan of.

I bought a ton of great comics, too. Some new, and some older stuff that I just hadn’t gotten around to reading yet. Here are some of the highlights of stuff I picked up:

One of my good friends, Mike Dawson, just had a book published called, “Freddie and Me”. I can’t recommend it highly enough, and not just because I’ve known Mike for about four years now. Here’s how much I liked his book. It was an extremely hot weekend back here in New York and on Sunday the power went out at our apartment so we had no lights. Mike’s book was too good though, so I had to read the whole thing by flashlight. It was one of those little spring powered flashlights too, so I’d have to wind it up every couple of pages to keep the light strong.

From the First/Second booth at MoCCA, I picked up a copy of “Laika”, by Nick Abadzis. This was another one that was so awesome, I read all in one sitting. Thankfully, our power was only out for a day so I didn’t have to use a flashlight for this one, although I would have.

Frank Cammuso has a new book out from Scholastic called “Knights of the Lunch Table”. This is a fun kids book that I loved. One warning though, there is a rhyming scene in the book with the school lunch ladies which really made me laugh, but now I can’t get the rhymes out of my head.

I picked up a copy of Kean Soo’s, “Jellaby” which I had to buy twice. I asked Kean to sign a copy of his book for me but then when I got home, my son grabbed it right away but Kean had signed it to me. So the next day, I took my son with me so he could have his own copy. Thankfully, Kean was nice enough to sign another book for us. So everything was all good. Whew!

Okay, hope everyone makes it back next week. Maybe we’ll see Zip’s Mom.

I had the great pleasure to be a guest last week on my friends’, Danny and Charley Burleson, and Todd Dulce’s podcast, Sunday Funnies. You can give it a listen here. I listen to podcasts a lot while I’m working on my comic. It’s a great way to pass the time while I’m concentrating on my work, and Danny, Charley, and Todd are great.

Danny does a cool strip called Oy. And Todd has a comic he’s developing called Togo Toons, which isn’t posting yet, but you can view his sketches at his site and it looks like it’ll be a great one.

In other news, I apologize for not giving anyone a heads up that I was going to go to the MoCCA Art Festival here in New York this weekend with my fellow Lunchbox Funnies buds, Mike Maihack, Ryan Sias, and Dave Roman, but it snuck up on me and this weekend got here before I even realized it. I’ll tell everyone all about it with next week’s comic, as well as some cool news about what else I’ve got going on.

This was a fun page to draw. When I was writing it, I kept trying to come up with all kinds of versions of Zip talking to himself about how much he misses his shadow. In the end, though, I decided it would be better to cut the text and just try to set the mood with pictures. I’m happy with it, but let me know what you think.

People paying attention to the page numbers may notice that we’re nearing the end of the story. Unfortunately, I’ve been overwhelmed with work the last couple weeks and am running a little behind on next week’s page. I hate to skip a posting so close to the end, but I’m going to have to beg off on next week’s installment. I hope everyone can bear with me and be back in two weeks to find out if Zip is ever going to have a shadow again.

See you soon.

So as not to offend anybody, I’ll start off by saying I’ve got nothing against cats. We’ve had cats around our house off and on throughout my whole life, and I actually liked a couple of them. But the honest truth is that I’m really a dog person. I’ve had some great dogs. Dogs are the best!

Anyway, in case anyone cares, here’s a picture of my dog, Boo.

First some good news. My friend, Mark Anderson, has his first book, “Rub My Tummy and It’s a Deal,” now available at Amazon. If you want to read some great gag cartoons, click right over and order a copy.

Now, as I have no book of my own to hawk, I’ll instead talk about today’s Zip and Li’l Bit comic:

Staging a scene in comics is one of the funnest, and maybe toughest things to do. In that respect, I’m proud of how this page turned out. This whole scene in front of the house, and this page in particular, was a tough one. The problem is that Willoughby is two stories up on the side of the house and Zip and Li’l Bit are down on the ground, so to show their conversation was a bit tricky.

The second panel affected how I handled all the rest of the panels on this page. I felt it was important to show what Willoughby is looking at when he realizes that Zip’s shadow is indeed missing. So, although Willoughby is the one speaking, I wanted the illustration to be one of Zip and the ground without his shadow. Because Willoughby isn’t shown in the second panel, even though he’s the one speaking, I thought he needed to be shown in the first panel to kind of clue everyone in that he’s the one speaking in the second panel. That led to me coming up with that kind of crazy perspective in panel one.

I wasn’t sure about forcing the perspective in that first panel that much. I didn’t really know if I could make it work, or if it would look too wacky and out of place, but I think it turned out all right.

I think I had posted awhile ago about how much I loved the big Terry and the Pirates collection that is being published by IDW Publishing. Well, the third book of that collection just came out last week and the comic strip just keeps getting better and better. The first book, which collects the first two years of the strip from 1934-1936, was really good. But the second book, which runs from 1937-1938, is at least fifty times better. I just picked up the third volume, 1939-1940, and am about halfway through it and have to say that it’s at least fifty times better than the second book was. I had been a big fan of Milt Caniff’s Steve Canyon comic in the paper when I was a kid, but had never read his Terry and the Pirates comic before, so this has just been a great treat for me to discover these comics for the first time.

There are two downsides to these books though. First off, they’re so nicely put together that the price is a bit steep. I just checked on Amazon and they’re listed at about $30. The second drawback is that it’s heavy reading, in that the books are really thick. I’m totally working out my arms holding the book up for hours because I can’t put it down.

Now, to change the topic and recommend some more contemporary webcomic reading, I discovered a brand new comic called Radbod that looks awesome. The characters have a fun Gumby feel to them, and the colors are fantastic. The story is just starting up so it’ll be fun to see where it goes. I hope you enjoy it. (link via Drawn!)

I had a great time at the New York Comic Con last weekend. It was a huge show. I may be a little bit of a newbie to the whole convention thing, but I was blown away by how much stuff they had there. Man, there was a lot.

The panel I got to do went pretty well. It was a small group and we got to talk about the benefits for parents of reading comics with their kids. I had a lot of fun. A big “Thank You” is in order for Brigid Alverson, and Gina Gagliano, for the invitation to be a part of the panel. I think Brigid has too many blogs online for me to link to them all, but she just started a great looking one called Good Comics for Kids that I’ll direct everyone too. I know I’ll be reading that one a lot.

Just a quick post tonight. It’s been a busy weekend with the New York Comic Con going on and a bunch of other stuff. In lieu of a long post, I’ll direct you over to a new webcomic by a friend of mine. It’s a superhero/environmental comic called Da Beaver. Check it out.