Three months….

That's how long it's been since my last blog post. Some of you may have been curious as to my absence. Others were probably glad to not have humongous blocks of text to suffer through for a while. But at any rate, I'm back, with a recap of what I've been doing, and what's coming up…
As of this past January, Dead Duck is no longer being published by Ape Entertainment. This wasn't because of poor sales, and it wasn't Ape's decision. It was entirely mine. I just chose to amicably end my Dead Duck work with Ape, and Ape graciously handed back publishing rights to me. We still have a friendly working relationship and are working on various freelance projects together, but my primary focus is finding a new publisher for Dead Duck (which I'll discuss more below).

I've had a bunch of cartooning gigs since December, most being in the sketch card field. For those unaware, sketch cards are tiny little illustrations that an artist does for a particular trading card set. Typically, one original sketch card is inserted into a pack of pre-printed trading cards, so they're considered very collectable. In the past year, I've been fortunate to work on a set of Archie sketch cards for 5finity and a set of sketch cards based on cartoonist Dean Yeagle's character Mandy. More recently, I drew 105 original sketch cards for Topps Trading Cards' Star Wars Galaxy 5 series. You can view them all here:

This final block of full color cards were my return cards. Typically when you draw a certain amount of sketch cards for a company, you get to keep a few of them as part of your payment. You can then sell them off yourself to private collectors. Because Star Wars is such a popular franchise, I was able to sell my return cards immediately, and was able to put that cash aside for a trip that will hopefully provide a bright future for Dead Duck.

On Saturday March 27th, I'll have a table at the Michigan State University Comics Forum. I'll be selling artwork and will possibly be part of a panel discussion later that day. You can find out more information here.

In April, I'll be attending C2E2, a major comic con in Chicago. And no, this isn't the same con I attended last summer. That was Wizard World, a nice con, but smaller than this one. Waaaayyyy smaller. I won't have a table at C2E2, but will instead be walking the floor for a few days, trying to interest publishers in Dead Duck and possibly net some side work on other properties. I've already been talking with a couple publishers about working on some popular books, so hopefully C2E2 might be the place where such deals are finalized.

On May 14th-16th, I'll have a table at The Motor City Comic Con in Novi, MI. It will be my first time there as a professional, and I'm looking forward to it. I'll be selling prints, and taking commissions on original drawings and sketch cards. I will also be selling issues of Dead Duck, and will include an original sketch inside the cover with every purchase. So I hope to see some of you there.

So that's about it. More news as it comes, and hopefully in less than three months time. I've missed you guys.
Much love,

--Jay