The first issue of KING! came and went some time ago, though we had a few more books and posters the rest of them are in New York right now being sold at a con by Thomas Hall, the fellow who writes the series. I don't know how many will be left over after the convention. However, during this hiatus KING! was being looked at by a few publishers. Many months later we've come to a 90% decision on who we will be going with to publish the ongoing series, but it may be a little more time before I can say who that publisher will be. What I can say is that the first issue will be republished with the publisher's logo on the cover and (possibly) extra pages of story...more zombies mostly. The first issue will not see print until the rest of the series has been completed or is damn near completion just so Tom and I can avoid any late schedules on our part.

In the meantime, however, we will be having another book published by Markosia (publishers of "Starship Troopers" and "Kong - King of Skull Island") later this fall, a horror graphic novel called "Enlightenment - The Devil You Know". This book we've been working on for the past 4 years or so. The cover can be seen here as well as what I hope will be the back cover.

.

Anyway, I won't be bothering you with any more news on Enlightenment since this is the KING! journal.

Cheers!

Daniel

I did a signing at Atomic Comic's Frightnight event with some other horror comic creators.

Me on the right, Tony Parker on the left.



He worked. I stuffed my fat face with pizza.

I drew a spiderman for a little lad. His mother didn't believe me when I said that I'd never drawn Spiderman before. I actually needed reference material. So I leaned over to Parker (irony, I love it) and asked him if there were any Spiderman books around.

Dumbass.

It was a pretty surreal experience to say the least. I got to meet people that I adore, people that I admire, and a person I damn near worship. We sold far more copies of KING! than I expected and drew more zombies for people in one day than I have in all of 2006.

On Friday night, Tom and I attended the guest of honor dinner in a small little banquet room at the hotel next to the convention center. We sat at a table with Jay Fotos (color artist for 30 Days of Night, '68, Deathbringer, Spawn, etc), Rob Osbourne (creator of 1000 Steps to World Domination, The Nearly Infamous Zango, and Sunset City For Active Senior Living), Dan Wickline (current writer of 30 Days of Night - Spreading the Disease) and several others. The dinner was also attended by Noel Neill, Mike Mignola, and George Perez. We had chicken with what looked like Fruity Pebbles sprinkled on top.

Saturday night the convention held an art auction, of which I was asked to donate some artwork for. So I stuck around to watch my illustration get auctioned off by George Perez who mced the whole thing. The guy was hysterical. And the artwork was sold for unbelievable prices. For example, a Space Ghost painting by Steve Rude went for $60, a Mignola Hellboy sketch went for $160.

Mine went for $80:



All in all it was a great experience. Here are some pictures:

me with Jay Fotos


Me with Mike Mignola


Me with Tom Hall and Rob Osbourne


Also, it's not finalized yet but I've been asked to sign copies of KING! at Atomic Comic's Fright Night in Mesa on the 17th of this month. Everybody that's cool will be there, so you should be too.

Ok. Thanks for reading. Cheers.

Daniel

KING! #1 is now available to order. 24 pages, full color & squarebound...



Shoot on over to www.blackliststudios.com to order. However, if you're gonna be at the Phoenix Comic Convention this coming weekend (January 27th-28th) then come buy the book from us directly in the small press section of the exhibitor hall.

Cheers, baby.

Here are the inked pages 5 and 6 from the first issue of KING! These two pages will be posted again when they're colored, and again when they're lettered.

January 26th-28th "KING!" #1 will be available at the Phoenix Cactus Comic Convention in Mesa, Arizona (http://www.phoenixcomicon.com/index.php) before it's official release date in February, which will be announced early December. Bradford ("KING!" artist and co-creator) will be there to sign copies and lithographs and make some sketches to anybody interested. It is not definete yet whether or not Tom Hall ("KING!" writer and co-creator) will be there, but we'll let you all know when the decision has been made.

On a side note, Bradford is plugging away with the interior art for the book while Tom is wrapping up the last issue of this 4 issue mini. Ideas are floating around for the next story arc, but nothing written in stone. It would like be written on paper.

In the mean time here is the cover to the first issue of "KING!":

KING! #1 is scheduled to be available in early February, but this limited edition 11x17 lithograph poster is available now for 8 bucks (price includes shipping). Orders outside of the U.S. will be a little more in price due to shipping, so contact us personally to find out how much more we're looking at. Otherwise, visit our website (http://blackliststudios.com/index2.html) and click on the lithograph image to order.

"KING!" Limited Edition lithograph:

Welcome and thank you for your interest in reading this journal. What we hope to do is provide regular news, updates, and artwork involved with the production of the new comic book series "KING!", debuting in February of 2007 by Blacklist Studios. Later today we will post information on how you can purchase a limited edition 11x17 lithograph poster of "KING!" and his Blue Suede Colt revolvers.

Later.