Off the top, I can finally announce that the Walking Mage Color Book is here!

That was a huge effort. Color work is a difficult beast and I barely got out alive. I've learned a lot on this project, which is good. I'll be needing those skills for the future.

At $11.00 Canadian and super-cheap shipping, it's a nifty little item.

As for the rest of my life. . . I am currently involved with a couple of ridiculously demanding projects which I've been keeping under wraps for some time now. . .

First up. . .

I've been in talks with a prominent animation studio here in Halifax. It's time to build T&K into something which moves. The challenge here is mind-boggling, but the people I'm working with are brilliant and hard-working, and I'll have a direct hand in the production. A lot of my time over the next year will be spent preparing this project for sale to broadcasters. It's a hairy world which is demanding I learn a lot of new skills fast. More on this as it develops.

Second. . .

Flashlight Comics Magazine!

The Toronto Comics crowd I was hanging with back in the early days of I Box's life, have banded together once again. The idea of a comics anthology has been passed back and forth for ages, but it took the genius of Dave Whelen to pull it together into something which could not only work, but work brilliantly. --The idea is that there are tons of great B&W comics which never got a solid shake in the comics world over the last ten years; all-ages, up-lifting works which just didn't manage to catch with the Spawn crowd. The line up is pretty impressive, with many more titles in the wings. It's a full-color bi-monthly project distributed directly to schools. For free.

Already, we've got subscription orders shooting through the roof, dwarfing most of the comics industry. We're aiming for a more than quarter million print run just in Canada.

And, of course, T&K will be featured. I am right now spending several hours per day pulling tone out of the old pages so that they can be colored.

The big decision to make now is whether to color using old-style wet media or with a computer.

If you order the Walking Mage Color Book, you'll be able to see my experiments with both. (The first six pages were done on a computer, while the rest was done by hand. Hand-painting presents greater quality challenges on the print-side, trying to match the quality of the originals, but those difficulties can be overcome. Computer stuff always looks sharp, but it lacks the organic feel. . .)

Anyway. . . There's still a lot of work to be done before that project goes live.

If you are a teacher interested in supplying your class with as many free copies of Flashlight as you have kids, please visit the Flashlight Comics website to sign up. It's fast and easy, and each teacher is supplied with a supplimental reading and lesson guide with each issue. Literacy is a big deal these days, (in that not enough kids are learning to read), and Flashlight is an excellent resource to help out. --Comics are the bridge many people use to cross into full reading ability. Why not use it in your classroom?

Okay. That's all for now. I apologize for not updating the site more frequently, but honestly, I've barely had time to blink.

Oh, and there's a new issue of T&K in the works as well. I have NOT forgotten!

Cheers all!

-Mark