ONE: Season 1 #2 - Now on Sale!

The second issue of ONE: Season 1 is now in print and available for purchase! Head on over to our store and pick up a full color copy with a wrap around cardstock cover for only 3.50! (plus shipping) Mini posters of the wrap around cover are coming soon and we now have mini posters available for issue 1.

Want to check the series out online for free first? No problem, we've got two places set up for that. Check it out at Webcomics Nation or at our own site.

Of Evil and Darkness #1 - Now on Sale!

The first issue of "Of Evil and Darkness" is now in print and available for purchase! Head on over to our store and pick up a copy with a wrap around cardstock cover for only 2.99! (plus shipping) Mini posters of the wrap around cover are coming soon!

Want to check the series out online for free first? No problem, we've got two places set up for that. Check it out at Webcomics Nation or at our own site (coming soon).

"Staff Favorite" @ DTC

We must be doing something right because with only one issue of our series ONE: Season 1 we've been notified by the gang over at Drive Thru Comics.com that ONE: Season 1 has picked up the honor of a "Staff Favorite" listing! We're honored and humbled by this, especially in light of all the great product they have to choose from at their site. I also want to let everyone know that issue 2 is on it's way soon. It's half colored and looking fantastic!

To download issue 1 head on over to our store on Drive Thru Comics and if you would like to purchase a print copy we have it on sale at our Indyplanet Store as well. Beautiful full color and a cardstock cover to boot! Want to look before you buy? We have that covered as well at our ONE Website.

Our Store @ Indyplanet

Our store is now live at Indyplanet.com and there you can find print copies of single issues of our comic books along with posters and eventually T-shirts. For retailers, you'll be able to carry our line which will be distributed through ComicsMonkey.com along with other distributors we partner with in the near future.
For those that like to read your comics online and want to save some money we still have our comics available at Drive Thru Comics.com and we will also be adding a few more digital distributors soon for your convenience.

Our New Webcomic Site

We have had a webcomic presence since the very beginning of Cinemacomics, but hosted off site at places like Webcomics Nation and Graphic Smash. We will still continue to have our projects hosted on these and possibly other off site hosts for the foreseeable future, but we also have wanted to have them available at our main Cinemacomics site for a one-stop destination. With that, we are excited to announce that our brand new Webcomics Portal is now live! All of our projects are now available to read online for free in one location. We would like to give a special thanks to Brent Erwin over at Ape Entertainment for all the help he gave us on the technical side of setting up our webcomics portal. His help was invaluable and we hope you'll support the fine comic books that Ape Entertainment produces.

Ka-Blam Direct Market Distribution

And with that banner comes the possibility of saving many a small publisher. Very good news that could become great news as this new distribution system takes shape.

Ka-Blam Digital Printing is launching a print-on-demand distribution service to direct market comics shops.~Barry Gregory

A bit of disclosure, Ka-Blam.com Printing is part of 01Comics which was the first publisher to publish our first offering, Zero Hunters, several years ago. So, Barry & Jenni Gregory and the rest of the Ka-Blam crew are good people in my book. When they started Ka-Blam, POD (print-on-demand), was still somewhat in it's infant stages in the scheme of things in the sense that there weren't many around at the time and the main one I knew about was Lulu.com which I used back then to see how one of my comics would look in print form. Anyway, the cost back then (haven't checked it out for quite a while) was astronomical for single issues. So, when Ka-Blam went live, needless to say that they were going to be my POD of choice because:

A. I knew Barry
B. The cost was very reasonable and single issues were an option now.

What sealed the deal for me was the day I got my first samples of Zero Hunters #1 from Ka-Blam. I was blown away by the quality. I ended up upgrading to cardstock covers for all our books and I have to say that the quality of these books is better than 90% of the books out there by traditional printers. So, don't let any naysayers start you off with a negative impression of POD books. You'll be seeing for yourself when comic shops start carrying our books and many others, which brings me back to the purpose of this post.

For those of you that follow the industry you know that small press has the deck stacked against it. And now that Diamond has raised their benchmarks again, it was probably going to lay waste to those small press publishers and creators who were for all intents and purposes barely hanging on before the new benchmarks. Well, this bit of news from Ka-Blam is news we all needed in this rather bleak time. Now, make no mistake, it's still going to be an uphill struggle for small press and many still won't make it. Profits will still be small and no one will become rich monetarily, but at the very least it gives us a chance to continue on and have print copies available as opposed to going 100% digital.

At Cinemacomics, that was our business plan anyway--singles issues through Ka-Blam and trades through Diamond and other distributors. But, now with this new distribution system we may also be able to do single issues and have them available for comic shops. And, they will always be available:

No benchmarks. No thresholds. No minimum orders. No prejudice against offering items again … as matter of fact your items once listed will always be available. ALWAYS.~Barry Gregory

So, if you are a retailer reading this check out what ComicsMonkey has to offer. If you are a fan and you want your retailer to carry not only Cinemacomics books, but other indy books, please direct them to the ComicsMonkey site and help spread the word.

The New Comic Related.com

I'd like to give a shout out to our friends over at Comic Related.com and congratulate them on their great new design for their site! It's a beautiful design by the gang over at Comic Related and in my opinion it's the best looking site out there for comic book related news. This new design is really going to do wonders for Comic Related and I'm predicting an absolute explosion for their site. Not a bold prediction seeing as how the site was exploding before the new design, but now it's going to be seismic in scope. So, to Chuck Moore and everyone else involved in the new design, take a bow on a job well done.

Plans

Just want to do a quick update on everything to let everyone know what's going on and where we're at on a few projects. First up is the sequel to The Misadventures of Clark & Jefferson from Ape Entertainment. We're about half done with it as we wait for our artist, Marc Borstel, to wrap up a big top secret project he is working on for another publisher. Once he is done with that we will get back to finishing the next Misadventures mini. I'm thinking that it will probably be out around the summer of '09 but it could be sooner or it could be later depending on Ape's publishing schedule.

Next up is more ONE: Season 1. Now, many fans know that it is behind but it's not my fault! Marc Borstel is coloring it and as I pointed out in the last few sentences he's knee deep in a big project for another company so the uncolored ONE pages are waiting for him to do his coloring magic. I actually just finished the art for issue 5 so I'm far ahead.

I'm thinking of doing a quick 3 issue mini before I finish the final issue 6 of ONE as I wait for Marc to catch up. And speaking of that, it might be a long promised project of mine if I end up deciding to do it now as opposed to after I finish issue 6 of ONE. Anyway, I'm going to be quiet about it because I've gotten into the bad habit of promising stuff and then getting sidetracked with other things that pop up. So, enough about that possible project.

I know some are waiting for more issues of The Disc, but this other possible project is kind of time sensitive so The Disc may get bumped again. It will get finished though, promise!

I'm also working on a project with another artist that I can't talk much about yet, but I'm really excited about it and all I can say is that the pages he's produced so far are stunning. I can't talk about the project or who the artist is yet but this guy is someone I've wanted to work with for a long time and it's a real treat to be able to finally. More on that project at a later date.

As I talked briefly about above, The Disc will get worked on this coming year and also some more Zero Hunters stuff--finally.

I'd love to have many more artists working on various projects to free me up, but finding reliable artists is about the hardest thing to do, so rather than go through so many headaches with that I have been tending to do a lot of the art myself lately. That said, I can only do so much and I find I've been averaging a page every two days for the art. On days that nothing else pops up I can do a page a day, but running everything can get a little hectic at times and so that usually drops me to a page every two days. So, I'm going to shoot for 2, 3 issue projects a year for me where I do the art and then have a project or two that also comes out where I'm just the writer.

Also have a writing project with another company that I can't say anything about that could end up being very cool.

Anyway, '09 looks to be busy like '08, so I'll be trying my best to get everything out that I talked about above.

So, for whatever reason our Cinemacomics facebook profile was deleted. No word on why other than the generic "you've violated the terms of service agreement". Honestly, I have no clue. Anyway, we'll try again with this profile. I'm not going to put anywhere near the time into this profile as I did the last because to be honest I'm pretty burnt on taking the time to build up the profile and friends only to have it disappear one day out of the blue with no reason given and no way to even contact anyone. People who have had their accounts deleted here or at Myspace know what I'm talking about, there is no such thing as customer service at either site. Anyway, thanks to our fans for re-finding us if you were wondering what happened to our old profile.

--Jay

CLICK HERE FOR NEW PROFILE