My Reading Stack

Between old Santy Claus and gift cards, I've got a crazy stash of books to read. And no, I've never read "The Hobbit" (or the LOTR trilogy for that matter) or "A Princess of Mars". Looking forward to both.

2010 Goals - Scorecard

Around this time last year, I went public with my goals for 2010. I think it’s only fair that I publicly acknowledge whether or not I met those goals. So, here goes.

Some of them were accomplished and some of them were not. But I can say with all honesty that the reason I wasn’t successful with some were do to my success with others. I was amazingly (thankfully) busy this year. As you can tell from my blog posts alone. In 2009, I had 84 post, as of right now I have 123. So, I was crunched for time, but I did try. Here we go…

Redesign my website. Started out big at the beginning of the year and then fizzled out. Lately I’ve just been directing people here since it’s more up-to-date.

Spookytown. Yikes, this is my biggest disappointment. I didn’t even finish drawing it much less scanning, coloring and lettering. I did take them to set up the lettering for every page, so there’s that.

Sketch Cards. My biggest success. I started the year never having been on a sketch card set. I finished the year having been on eight. Dead@17, Empire Strikes Back, P’ups, The Pro, Mixtape, Hack/Slash, Clone Wars, and Domino Lady / The Spider. And already in the works for 2011 is Lady Death, Bettie Page, Thor, Captain America and Marvel Beginnings. Part of that goal was to get in sets for DC, Marvel and Star Wars. Two down, now to get DC.

I’ve done so much of them that I have to cut back. I already reluctantly turned down Sheena for 5finity because f time restraints. So, I think this year you might see less of them from me.

Publish a sketchbook. Done and done. I was very pleased with myself for this one. I had wanted to do it for some time. It was a lot of work to compile and I think the end result is pretty nice. Hey, you can buy it online you know.

The Complete Shades of Blue. Goal un-achieved. I thought Jim had the lettered files from all the issues, but it turned out that he didn’t. But, he’s actually having them re-lettered (and colored) to put them online. So maybe you’ll hear something about that later.

So there you have it. Two for five. But I can proudly say that the failed ones weren’t failed to due to laziness. And like I said I a year ago, even if none of these silly things got accomplished and my family was still healthy and happy and was able to support them, the year would be a success. Unfortunately, we lost a family member this year, my cousin Aggie, who we all miss. We also lost our 12 year old cat Frankie. But mostly 2010 was kind to us and we appreciate. Look for my 2011 goals coming soon.

20 in 2010 Book Challenge

At the beginning of the 2010, Heather and I started a challenge, to read at least 20 books each during the year. Even with all the stuff we have going on, both of us have always read a lot. We’re chain readers, if you will, knowing which book we’re going to read next before we’re finished with our current one. Bookmark goes out of one into the next.

Here are my results. Technically, I read 51 “books”. But to be fair, a lot of them were comic book or comic strip collections, which could be read really quickly. So I thought in the spirit of the challenge, only written, non-comic books should be counted. But in fairness to me, I thought I should get some credit for reading them, since they did take time after all. So I’m going with every 10 of those count as one book.

So, I read 18 “actual” books and 34 comic type books. Using my equation, that nets me just over 21 books. Success! Success!

Here is my list:

• Gorillaz: Rise of the Ogre by Gorillaz (Great band, great art, great book)
• The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes (Pretty good)
• The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl (A bit so slow at times)
• My Custom Van by Michael Ian Black (Sporadically funny)
• The Rocketeer, Cliff’s New York Adventure by Dave Stevens (Beautiful art)
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Yes, I gave into the book that was everywhere. And I liked it.)
• L.A. Noir by John Butin (Very interesting read)
• Hellboy: The Ice Wolves by Mark Chadbourn (Hellboy novels are almost always good. This one was too.)
• Bob Flame: Rocky Mountain Ranger by Dorr Yeager (Bought this at the gift shop in Rocky Mountain National Park)
• No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (Movie follows the book almost exactly, the towards the end there are differences)
• Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke (Always incredible, I have the second book cued up)
• Too Fat To Fish by Artie Lange (Hilarious and sometimes sad)
• Hellboy: The All Seeing Eye by Mark Morris (Good)
• The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo and Bagram Ibatoulline (Children's novel)
• Kick-Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. (Kick-ass)
• The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming (Not terrible, not great)
• The Dick Tracy Casebook edited by Max Allan Collins and Dick Locher (Great illustrations, hit and miss storylines)
• Dead@17 Afterbirth by Josh Howard (Always fun)
• The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler (Chandler entertains)
• Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsey (Love me some Dexter)
• Dead@17 The 13th Brother by Josh Howard (More Josh goodness)
• The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi (Pretty engrossing, look into it)
• The Clash by The Clash (I wish the Beastie Boys would do a book like this)
• Bone: Crown of Horns by Jeff Smith (My first time reading the Bone series, loved it)
• Red Rocket 7 by Mike Allred (Really enjoyed this and all the musical references through the years)
• Shes’ Crazy, He’s a Liar, Now What? by Cecily Knobler (This is a book I illustrated. I read most of the working manuscript as I was doing the art, but went back a read the entire thing. Very funny and shocking at times. Cecily, you've got some stories in you.
• FoxTrox: Houston We Have a Problem by Bill Amend (I was sad when FoxTrox went Sundays only, knowing these collections would stop)
• Scott Pilgrim 1-6 by Scott Lee O’Malley (Awesomeness)
• The Walking Dead Volumes 1-9 by Robert Kirkman (and various artists) (Awesomeness)
• Y: The Last Man by Brain K. Vaughan (and various artists) (Awesomeness)

As you can see, I was all over the place. I don’t know if I could pick my favorite from all of these. Walking Dead, Y and Scott Pilgrim are definitely standouts. My Custom Van was definitely the most disappointing. It was a fun ear of reading, I gotta say.

We're going to do it again in 2011. I already have two books going right now and about ten lined up. And for the record, the lovely Heather ended up reading 19 books. What a loser, right?

Merry Christmas!

R.I.P. Frankie Man 1998-2010

Rest in peace Mr. Man.

2010 Goals

This year I hadn’t planned on having any resolutions, but then I thought that maybe I should. Help keep me in check, you know? But maybe they should just be “goals” instead of resolutions”. I always have a ton of things I’d like to accomplish in my daily life, whether big or small, and getting them done usually falls down to how much time I have. Spare time is a remarkably foreign thing to me. I never have nothing to do. Ever. I can’t recall the last time I twiddled my thumbs or tapped my fingers on a desktop.

So here are five things I’d like to do in my professional life in 2010. By the way, we are calling it “Twenty Ten”, right? Just want to make sure I’m down with the cool kids.

Redesign my website. Ugh. Most of the content on there is 3 or 4 years old. Except for the comic book page, which I updated it in 2008 (Go me!). Good grief, in my bio I don’t even have a kid and we still have 3 cats. Currently, I have an illustration site as well as a design site and my plan is to merge them back together. The good news is that I’ve already started on this project and my hope is to have the new site up by the end of the month. Side note, did I just use two Charlie Brown phrases in this paragraph? Ugh and Good Grief? I ‘m pretty sure I did.

Spookytown. This year: Finish drawing it. Scan it. Color it. Letter it. Publish it or get someone else to. Not too lofty, right? I should mention that I have Ideas for other books pinballing around in my noggin. A monster story based in WWII, a crime drama, a 60s era space program story mixed with a love triangle, and series based on characters I’ve had since the late 90s. And I can’t even start any those until I get Spookytown out.

Sketch Cards. I started doing sketch cards recently and I found that enjoyed it. I want to get involved in that community and get into some actual card sets. I can tell you that I’m participating in an upcoming one, but can’t say who it’s for just yet. Stay tuned. But I also want to get into a set put out by big players. Marvel, DC or Star Wars. To have my work in an officially licensed product from any one of them would be a dream. I have some contacts; I just need to work on more samples. If anyone reading this would like me in one of their sets, let me know.

Publish a sketchbook. With on-demand printing sites, what’s stopping me? Only time, as mentioned above. I would love to have a book to sell at shows. Draw a bunch of new pin-ups, gather up past ones and put ‘em in a book man! Sounds simple enough.

The Complete Shades of Blue. This is something Jim Harris and I have talked about doing for a while now. Putting everything Shades of Blue into one big book. Every issue, the DWP shorts, the unpublished Devil’s Due short, the mini-comic, pin-ups, web strips, ads, everything. And we’ve toyed with the idea of a new story to go in it as a bonus.

Of course, there are also personal and family goals. Keep providing for my wife and kid is pretty major. Getting back to the gym is cliché at best, but since Junior came along it’s been hard for us. Also, little things like organizing and developing the hundreds and hundreds of photos we’ve taken since, oh I don’t know, MAY of last year. Man, when you have a kid, the camera is always clicking. Going to Colorado didn’t help either. Reorganize my studio. And in area of low-budget films, my buddies over at Dog Food Productions and I want to participate in the 24 Hour Video Race again, get our past stuff on dvd and produce at least one other film.

Well, there they are. We’ll see how I do as the year progresses. Oh yeah, I just want to go on record as saying to 2009 was pretty good to us overall. I’m thankful for a happy and healthy family. And if I can still say that at the end of 2010 and not even one of my silly professional things gets done, then this year will have been just fine.

Christmas Goodies

I got a lot of cool gifts for Christmas this year, here are some of them. I think I've got a lot of great reading ahead of me. Really looking forward to Darwyn Cooke's Parker book, wrapping up Bone and starting Scott Pilgrim. Also The Clash book looks most excellent. And Hellboy books are always good. Hope everyone had a great Holiday and has a great new year. Thanks to everyone and anyone who stopped by here in 2009. I hope to see you back again in 2010 and I hope that I can keep it interesting here.

Jack the Knife

I couldn't resist. Jack had his one year photos taken.

Update

It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted, which is lame. I know I get disappointed when I go to the blogs that I regularly haunt and there are no updates. "What? No new post?", I protest in my head. So here's at least a little something about what is going on in my uninteresting (at least to people other than myself) life.

Mainly, I've been busy with freelance stuff. I wish I had time to take a break (as you can see from the "tired eyes" photo), but I do like having work, so I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm thankful for it. I've been doing more things for Tesars Modern Steak and Seafood. Designing labels for different sauce bottles, typesetting some online menus, another illustration, this time of his wife. Bunch of fun stuff. Also, I've been extremely busy doing illustrations for a relationship book that's coming out soon. I did the cover and so far I've done over 60 images and there are still a whole bunch more for me to do. I don't even know what the final count will be. I'm excited to see the finished piece.

I've still been pretty good about working on Spookytown. I did miss a day or two on my "must work daily on Spookytown" New Year's resolution. Hopefully in a month or so I'll post about my progress. Also in comic book related news, I'll be contributing a page to David Hopkins' "One Night Stand" project. It's similar to his "Mine All Mine" anthology that I also participated in. One writer, one broad topic, multiple artists, one page each. This theme is "casual encounters". I eagerly look forward to it.

Also, the big goings-on at the Slayton headquarters is Jackie Bear turning 1 year old. It's hard for me to believe, but it's true. I posted a bunch of photos from his big bash.

That's all I got, later for you.

R.I.P. Tunis The Cat 1990-2009

Our 19 year old faithful feline companion Tunis passed away today. She had a good long life. Sweet dreams girlie girl.

Jack Boy

Celebrated my first Father's Day this year. Hard to believe. Also, it's hard to believe how fast the boy is growing. I posted his 9 month photos over at his site. Be warned cuteness overload can be deadly. It... can... be... deadly.

Be sure to check out his sweeet kicks! Chuck Taylors!

Jack

I’ve done a lot of updates at Jack’s website. Way more than I’ve done here lately. But I kinda have to keep it up to date with my mom and dad living so far away. It’s the best way for them to keep up with his progress. Speaking of which, he’s really growing and changing a lot. He’s crawling like crazy, eating solids and pulling himself up on things. It’s crazy to look at his one month photos and comparing them to how he looks now. Totally different. Anyway, he’s a lot of fun. So, if you’re into that type of thing (and by “that type of thing”, I mean photos and videos of an amazingly cute kid), check him out.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post some more stuff here soon. The whole computer fiasco mentioned below really threw me off my schedule and knocked me out of any kind of creative flow I had going. I even missed three days on my Spookytown resolution. I had been doing so good, drawing something every single day but having to scramble to get a new computer and get it up and running made me stumble. But I’m back. And hopefully posts will be back too.

SciFi Expo Wrap Up

Big thanks to everyone who stopped by my table at the SciFi Expo this past weekend. I had a great time and did a bunch of drawings. Thanks to Mark and Ben for having me.

Jack vs. "The Claw"

Jack bravely takes on the "The Claw". You may know it as "The Tickle Monster" in your neck of the woods.

Birthday and Christmas Goodies!

Well, I've got my reading (and viewing) planned for a while now. Good stuff!

Happy Halloween!

New Baby Photos

If you're interested in that sort of thing, I posted a bunch at JackSlayton.com.

Dancing Jack

Play "Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys when viewing this. I added it below for your amusement.

Mr. Mom 2008

Courtesy of my friend Kelly...

Update

Everything is going well. We're all home now and getting into the swing of things. Heather and Jack are both doing great. Thanks to everyone who sent congratulations to us. We appreciate it.