ROOK CITY

Evil Ain’t Easy on ZUDA!

Seth — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 20:55:02 +0000

Well, here’s the huge news I couldn’t tell you all until now… my comic Evil Ain’t Easy is currently in this month’s Zuda Comics competition! For those of you who might not know, Zuda Comics is an online division of DC Comics. Every month ten comic strips are chosen for the international competition, and votes from online visitors to the site determine the winner. This winner is then rewarded a year-long contract with DC Comics to create 52 more strips for the site.

Evil Ain’t Easy is my humor strip that tells the story of a maniacal scientist bent on world domination who is constantly thwarted by the everyday annoyances of life. He is accompanied by the laid-back henchman he created and a moody, little, old landlady.

It’s quite an honor to even be selected for the competition! So far, readers seem to enjoy the humor of the comic. It’s pretty light-hearted compared to a lot of the other comics on Zuda. I hope that uniqueness appeals enough to people to get their vote, as there are several great comics in this month’s competition.

So anyway… I need your help! Please take a few minutes to read the comic, register, and VOTE for it (registering is quick, easy, and spam-free)! Please also rate it, favorite it, and leave a comment… all these things will help it win.

Evil Ain’t Easy will only win if we can really spread the word and get people to vote for it! I’ve setup a production blog at evilainteasy.com to help promote the comic, and there you’ll find lots of sketches, downloads, and more! We’re going to be running a few different contests to promote the comic, so stay tuned to that blog for details… and you might win some free stuff!

Thanks in advance for anything you can do to help out!

Twitterized

Seth — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:32:27 +0000

Just a quick note to let you know that Elton and I are both on Twitter now. Elton mainly posts about his Life, the Universe and Sci-Fi blog, while I’ll be keeping everyone up to date on the progress of our comics. Feel free to follow us if you want updates even more frequently than this blog!

Elton on Twitter

Seth on Twitter

(When my dad heard I was on there, he asked if this meant that I was “twitterpated.” See where I get my witty sense of humor?)

New RANDOM INK site launches!

Seth — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:52:25 +0000

That’s right… another webcomic for your reading pleasure. It’s exciting to finally have all these stories up in their entirety on the web. We’re looking forward to hearing your reactions to them. Random Ink is the first comic we published back in 2005, and it’s great to have this anthology where we can do any style of comics we want. Hopefully, you enjoy the variety, too!

Be sure to poke around the site. The stories page will give you a quick overview of the different tales on there. You can check some character sketches and pin-ups, as well as download some new free wallpapers and more.

And here’s the big news… every Tuesday for the next six weeks we will be posting a new complete story on the Random Ink site. Currently you can read all the stories from Random Ink #1, but starting next week you will begin to see the ones from #2. And they’re all in FULL-COLOR! So be sure to check back then (or subscribe to our RSS feed), because we’ve got a lot more to show you!

(BTW… Duel and Decaying Death sites are in the works!)

A more realistic Toby

Seth — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:10:02 +0000

Ok, he’s not that realistic. But more so than usual, anyway. It was interesting trying to tone down the cartooniness on him.

“What’s this for?” you may ask. Well, you’ll see soon enough…

Music nerds unite!

Seth — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:16:57 +0000

I just finished adding something kind of fun to the Characters page. You can now check out what each of the main characters are listening to these days. Just click on the link in each character’s info and a pop-out music player will open that lets you hear their music for yourself. Pretty nerdy thing to do, I know… but it was fun deciding just what kind of music they would each be into. In fact, if you listen carefully you’ll find some hidden clues to their personalities in some of the lyrics. Things we haven’t been able to show in the stories yet.

Let us know what you think. And check back… their playlists are bound to change every once in a while.

The future…

Seth — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:51:57 +0000

OK, so you’ve read through the archive and noticed that the current page has been up for awhile now, and you might be wondering… what’s next? Is this story ever going to continue?

The answer is yes! Several more pages for this story have already been drawn and are just needing to have the grays and lettering added. “Convention Blues” will end up being about 28-30 pages in length (and we are already writing the stories after that). However, I don’t want to start posting new pages until I have a sufficient buffer of completed pages to insure that I stay on time. That should be by June at the latest.

In the meantime, on the Sketches page you can get a little preview of a bunch of characters that will pop up in the rest of story. That is one of the most enjoyable parts of this story… creating all of the crazy supervillains for the convention. A few of them are even inspired by cheesy characters Elton and I made up back in junior high.

I’ll also be posting new sketches and other content here, so stick around!

Planet Comicon Wrap-up

Seth — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 05:32:17 +0000

Whew… another great con. “We’ll never forget this one.” That’s what I said many times this weekend. Matt, Laura, and I drove up in the rain Saturday morning, despite the predictions that KC was in for a snowstorm later that day. We got setup, and things were pretty slow for the first hour. But after that we were plenty busy talking to people, selling books and prints, giving away bookmarks, and doing sketches for everyone who bought something. Everyone was worried about the turnout, but the con was pretty full most of the day, even as the snow started to fall outside.

We were lucky enough to get to sit by Matt Hawkins and Kyle Strahm, two local comics guys I knew from the Comic Creators Network. Below you can see Matt and me.

Matt was there selling a new book collection of paper toys that he and others designed called Urban Paper. You should give it a look. Check out the awesomeness below (the close-up shows the one he designed)!

Kyle Strahm was cool enough to do a Rebuker sketch for me in his style. Definitely the freakiest version of any of my characters anyone has done. I love it!

The snow starting falling really hard. Apparently even Cobra Commander had to call and get a ride…

The craziest part of the trip for us was leaving the con and trying to find a gas station, some food, and our hotel. Even though we were on a main road, the snow was still piled up about 6-8 inches. We eventually got to our hotel, only to be thwarted by the tiny hill of the parking lot. Much pushing and shoveling ensued, and we were rescued by a well-timed snowplow. We collapsed and dried out in our hotel room, and Matt and I finished up some sketches that people were coming back for the next day.
Sunday was warmer and sunny… the roads were no problem. We arrived back at the con well rested, only to find it was even busier! This was weird since usually Sunday is dead compared to Saturday. A very good kind of weird.

I think our favorite part of the whole con was meeting so many of you there. The response to our books was really great… everyone seemed to find something that appealed to them. Here’s some of the awesome people who bought our stuff…

This lady teaches teaches middle school Social Studies, and her favorite character is Wonder Woman. So of course she requested a sketch of Wonder Woman teaching Social Studies. I think she liked it.

And hey, even Ash likes our books! How cool is that?

Here’s a closer of view of some sketches I did…

So, once again this was a great con. We sold way more books than we had at any other event. We took 300 bookmarks with us and came back with none. This will definitely be a yearly tradition for us.

If you were there and stopped by… we really appreciate your support and encouragement. And we hope you stick around!

P.S. A few of you never came back for your requested sketch. If you can email me your name and what you requested, I’ll snail mail those to you.

Characters galore

Seth — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:23:48 +0000

I just finished updating the Characters page. Now you can find out more info than you ever wanted on all of the main Rook City characters. There’s a lot of background stuff on there that is not in the comics yet, so you might want to check it out.

I also added more stuff to the Support page. And with that… the site is complete! Of course, I’ll be adding new stuff occasionally, but all of the main pages are up.

If you want to be alerted of updates, you can subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up for e-mail alerts (on the left sidebar).

Thanks for coming by!

Downloads are up

Seth — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:15:23 +0000

You can find some cool new freebies on the Downloads page now. There are two different wallpapers available for your viewing pleasure. And if you saw us at a convention this year, then you probably picked up one of our free bookmarks. Well, now you can print out your own, if you want.

Hopefully, I’ll put some more up eventually, but this is a start.

Rebuker unleashed

Seth — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:48:52 +0000

For those of you who were following Rook City on the old site, I wanted to point out that there is already one whole story posted here that was never up on the other one. “Gratuity” was the second Rebuker story and was collected in the Rook City #1. It was a fun chance to draw the old guy on his own as he continues to dish out justice on the city…