Cover-f7dfcc3

…

Some good news and well you know what follows next.

Hello everyone

It’s been a while and I thought it would finally be a good time to let everyone know what’s going on. First the good news the book is pretty much finished, just a few more proofing steps and then it’ll be off to the printers hopefully either by the end of this month or the first week of May. Now the bad news is that despite me waiting for as long as I felt I could Luigi didn’t meet my deadline. In all fairness to Luigi I never informed him of the deadline, because I didn’t want him to rush the work and get pages that look rushed. So instead of that story which will have to wait for a future volume I’m putting in a gallery with art from various artists that I’ve either commissioned or was gifted with to help promote the series. The book still comes in at 198 pages so there’s still plenty of story at 180 pages worth On top of that we’re changing the cover to the one below because without the other story the new cover makes no sense, so we’re going back to my original choice I’ll find a use for the other piece at a future date. I am sorry that this is taking longer than I had originally promised but I want the book to be just right and there are many little steps that have to be taken. If any of you have any questions, concerns or advise please feel free to send me an e-mail or post up on the message board.

Thank you all again for supporting my efforts on The Oswald Chronicles and I promise you all that I will do my best to continue to bring you wonderful flights of fantasy (I know it’s supposed to be fancy but I like fantasy better

With any luck soon I will be sending out pics of the samples from the printers and more news.

Take care and live the dream.

JD Calderon

We have a cover :)

Hello everyone update time again and I’m happy to report that we have a cover and the book is coming together. Luigi Teruel is working hard on his pages and sent me a note recently saying I should have the remaining pages by the 3rd week of March, which is awesome. All of the other pages have been lettered and the rest of the book has been put together so there’s only a few more steps to go and we’ll finally have a shiny new book.

The cover colors are by by Liezl Buenaventura

That’s it for now and with any luck in a few weeks I should have some more good news.

Please keep supporting the site by voting for it on topwebomcis.com

Thank you all for the support.

Two Pages today

Hello everyone

Had a bit of a mix up so we have 2 pages up today.

So enjoy

A cover and a page we have some movement :)

Hello everyone

It’s time for another update

Things are coming along slowly but they are coming along. I got the final art work for the cover from Jade and it looks great.

I sent the piece out to be colored by two different artists and I got back the first one and it looks fantastic, now I’m just waiting for the second colorist to send the cover back. I think it’s going to be a real tough choice, but one I’m looking forward to making. Luigito the artist working on the fifth and final story (Adventure Time Unbidden) has sent in 4 more pages and they look great and he said he’s looking to send another 6 pages by the first week of February. I’m kind of hoping I don’t have to use reverse Scotty time and add a couple of weeks but if I do it’s cool the pages are looking good and I don’t mind waiting for them.

Now please keep supporting The Oswald Chronicles by voting for the site on www.topwebcomics.com and go check out www.TallTailsonline.com for some fun sword and sorcery action.

Now Here’s the cover and a page from Luigito, enjoy

And now for some really overdue reviews:

New Reviews

Nexus Omnibus Mike Baron Steve Rude

I remember Nexus from when I was younger and going to comic shops and seeing it but for one reason or another I never picked up a copy. Good thing because it left me a great run of books to pick up and read now. I’ve never been a big fan of Baron’s writing but he really clicks here and does some great stuff. If you want to see some great artwork and some really interesting stories with strange science fiction slant you may want to check this out.

Hopeless Maine Tom & Nimue Brown

I took a shot in the dark on this book and I got lucky, this was a fun book about a young girl who lives in a strange place with weird goings on, while discovering how she fits into the setting she lives. Fun book that I’m looking forward to seeing vol. 2

The Sixth Gun vol. 4 Cullen Bunn, Brian Hurt, Tyler Crook, and Bill Crabtree

Zombies, monsters, ghosts, magic, six shooters and the fate of the world in the balance all in the wild west. Fun book that I’m always looking forward to getting my hands on and soon to be a TV show I hope.

Rock Bottom by Joe Casey and Charlie Adlard

This book was interesting and wasn’t what I was expecting when I ordered it. I thought it was going to be some sort of weird superhero story. Instead what I got was a weird superhero origin story. I’m on the fence about this book, because the artwork although good was done in a style where it was obvious the artist was expecting it to get colored, so there are no spot blacks in the book. Instead what you have are a lot of thins lines with nothing on the page being distinct. The story is self contained and ends in this volume and was good but not really something I think anyone needs to go out of their way for.

Spaceman by Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso

Spaceman has some really great artwork with an interesting story that I enjoyed. There was something in the book I didn’t enjoy and that was the authors use of a strange dialect he imposed on his characters, other than that I thought the book was well done and I’m happy I picked it up.

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Conqueror Work by Richard Corben

Richard Corben and Edgar Allan Poe what more do I have to say, go out and get a copy, it will fill you with the creeps and make you happy at the same time. My only complaint is that the story only fills a standard comic book, I just wish there was more.

BPRD vol. 4 by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis, and Dave Stewart

This volume continues the adventures of the BPRD crew as they try to save the world from demon frogs, ancient underground dwelling trolls with giant bio mecha and any and all other dangers to humanity. Fun, fun, fun is all I can say great art, fantastic story in a great format. Hundreds of pages of monster hunting drama

Fables Werewolves of the Heartland by Bill Willingham, Craig Hamilton, Jim fern, Ray Snyder, and Mark Farmer

I always look forward to anything that Bill Willingham sets his hand to so this book was no different, although I was a little disappointed by this book. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the book, but this book is a Fables special, like 1001 nights of snowfall, and Peter & Max. Now the difference between those books and this one is that those two books were very good to great, while this one is just good, which isn’t really a bad thing, but when I think of a Fables special I think of something special, not a Midwestern werewolf story, that does give some background to Bigby but not much else. If you’re a Fables completest as I am go out and get it, it’s a good story with some good background, I’m greedy though, I wanted more.

Valentine by Alex de Campi and Christine Larsen

I bought this book purely on the strength of the cover and man was I surprised when I opened it up, because the style inside is an anime/manga type style. The story is about a fairy dimension traveling adventure, fun book but I would’ve preferred if the cover was more representative the interiors.

Pinocchio Vampire Slayer of Wood and Blood part 2 by Dusty Higgins and Van Jensen

This was a fun series of books that I’m sad to see end and it’s a shame because this book was a ton of fun and is worth looking at if for nothing else the sheer strangeness of it.

Marvel Tales by Alan Davis

Many years ago Alan Davis created a group of super hero family within the Marvel Universe called The Clandestine. It was a beautifully illustrated book with some okay writing, but I remember having fun reading it. That series was cancelled after a few issues and Alan Davis being the determined dude that he is hasn’t given up on his creation and I’m happy that Marvel allows him to do these sneaky Clandestine adventures in other books. This is clearly a Clandestine limited series that he was allowed to do in three other titles and I have to say I really enjoyed it. So if you like great art and a fun story go check this one out.

Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen and various

Loki, demon dog and a death maiden as a girl friend, along with a strange guilt complex, although he doesn’t understand why no one will trust him, even though he comes through on the good side every time. These three books and the series as a whole was a lot of fun from his goofy dealings with Mephisto and Helstrom (formerly known as Son of Satan to him dealing with strange ancient gods. It’s a shame they decided to end Kieron Gillen’s run and I don’t know if he’ll carry this type of style over to his next project or not but I will keep an eye out for it. Great stuff, go check it out.

Thank you all for supporting me and The Oswald Chronicles. I will try to make these more frequent as we get closer to press.

Best JD

Kickstarter update 10

Hello everyone

Time for another update

We’re making progress, Daphne is putting the book together in InDesign and she’s almost done with the book at least with the portion of the book that we have.

Some real news and I have to apologize for it, that we decided to produce a trade paperback as opposed to a hardcover. The hardcover was something I wanted to do but it was just too cost prohibitive and would’ve put me in debt which is something I’m looking to avoid. But on a positive note the book will be 192 pages instead of 128 pages which I think is awesome and it’s going to be a great looking book.

We’re still waiting on some pages from Luigito Teruel but he’s delivered the first ten pages and he’s provided layouts for the next nine and here are some of those layouts.

On top of that Jade is providing a new cover for the book and here are some of those layouts, from these a new cover will rise. Which one do you like?

Again I would like to thank all of you for the support, have a happy new year and be safe.

Best JD

I haven’t completely fallen off :)

I haven’t completely fallen off

Hello everyone I would like to say first and foremost thank you for supporting The Oswald Chronicles. After the Kickstarter campaign I had to take a breather, I was a little burnt out with posting all the time and just needed some time to step back and recharge and letter pages, lots of them My TV died recently and man without the temptation of that evil but beautiful machine around I was able to get a good deal of work done. And here are some of those pages. The pages are from ‘It Came Seeking Me’ a story that was illustrated by Matt Lundsford. The original grey scaling was done by my buddy Benito McCrey but I had made a mistake when sending him the files. I had sent him flattened high res PDFs that were saved as line art that he converted to grey scale. Now what he did which he had to and it’s entirely my fault, is when he converted the file it pixilated the text causing the text to look like it has little ridges when you look closely. Yea, I know it’s really anal but when you’re into printing the way I am these things stand out and stare at you until you fix them, like a waterbug sitting in the living room eating chips and taking control of the remote while you’re watching some MMA.

Anyway I needed a new batch of these pages re-grey scaled so I contacted the awesome Jade Gonzalez who was kind enough to take on the task and she did a great job with them. The thing I really like is that the snafu allowed me to re-letter this book which really needed it. When I first lettered this book it was the first book I had ever done and since then I think I’ve done at least 350 pages so my choices and eye have improved. I’ll never be a master letterer but I only strive to be serviceable.

The top pages are the old ones followed by the new pages, enjoy

Next Daphne is going to lay the whole book out in Indesign and once that’s done it’ll go through a number of editing passes from myself, Daphne and a few friends and then it goes off to Steve the paid pro in the group who will look at we’ve done laugh pull out his mighty red pen and remind me why it is I go to him for this sort of thing.

Now for some reviews

American vampire vol. 3 by Scott Snyder,Rafael Albbuquerque, and Sean Murphy

Scott Snyder and crew continue telling the tale of rebel vampires as they travel through the nooks and crannies of history during WW2 and how they were impacted and help impact some of the events during the war. Great stuff as usual and I’m looking forward to the next volume, I think these are perhaps the best Vampire tales being told today, although True Blood on HBO is way too batshit insane to ignore

Creepy Comics vol. 1 by various

This book has some really good artwork with a few good stories and some forgettable ones. I don’t think I’ll be checking out any more of these. I have the feeling that the people who participated in this book are fans of the original Creepy and Eerie series but I don’t feel any real drive or inspiration in any of these stories and for sure not much in the way of any scares. Unfortunate because I was really looking forward to reading some good horror when I picked this one up.

Pearl Of Pandaria by Micky Neilson and Sean Galloway

Admittedly I have very little knowledge of World of WarCraft games and the stories placed within those worlds and I thought this would be a good entry way into them. It is if you want to read several pages of info dumping something I don’t think the author had a choice to do, the information had to get to the readers. I think it could have been done a bit less obviously. Once you’re past the history lesson you get to the story of a young girl who’s infatuated with her world traveling uncle who has been missing for some time and who she wants to find. Defying her father she leaves her native lands to seek out her uncle. Her father sends one of his greatest warriors to go retrieve her and bring her back, he dies at the end rescuing her and her uncle after reconciling with his lost friend/rival her uncle. Does any of this sound familiar, me too I felt the same, sounds like the plot of many Kung Fu flicks I watched as a kid, not necessarily a bad thing but it just doesn’t work here. The artwork by Sean Galloway is very nice and has an animated feel to it. My only complaint is that he doesn’t draw in the pupils in anyone’s eyes so everyone looks dead in a weird kind of way. I know it’s an aesthetic style thing but it made it difficult for me to connect to the characters on an emotional level. If you’re a fan of WOWC you may want to check it out for the artwork and the history lesson, but not much else.

Starman Omnibus vol. 2 by James Robinson, Tony Harris and Wade Von Grawbadger

In this volume we see James Robinson covering various parts of his lead character’s history and we see him vacillating from larger tales to smaller more personal stories. Great stuff and I’m happy that DC is producing this series in this format for new readers like me to enjoy. I love reading a good super hero story every now and again and I know for the next couple of years I’ll be getting them from Starman, James Robinson, Tony Harris and co.

Well that’s it for now and as soon as I have more news I’ll pass it along, like the new cover

Thank you one and all for being part of this and supporting this dream. It’s going to take a few months to come out but I think the book will look awesome when it does and don’t forget to vote for Oswald on topwebcomics.com.

Best

JD Calderon

Only 24 hours left

Hello everyone

This is going to be a short one but an important one so listen up, there’s only 24 hours left for the Oswald kickstarter campaign.

So please spread the word via facebook, twitter and any other social media you’re enjoying

You can see the whole thing here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17217803/the-oswald-chronicles-vol-1

Thank all of you for the support for the site and the Kickstarter and for those of you who still haven’t gone out and gotten yourself a book, what are you waiting for? I’m looking to make this a 160-192 page hardcover

And here’s another page from My First Day that very few have scene

Thank you all again and go get yourself a copy of the book

Best

JD Calderon

Only 48 hours left

Hello everyone

This is going to be a short one but an important one so listen up, there’s only 48 hours left for the Oswald kickstarter campaign.

So please spread the word via facebook, twitter and by climbing up a tree in your neighborhood and yelling out the url no, no on second thought don’t do that last one

You can see the whole thing here http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17217803/the-oswald-chronicles-vol-1

And here’s another page from My First Day that very few have scene

Thank you all again and go get yourself a copy of the book

Best

JD Calderon

3 Days left :)

Hello everyone

Again I want to thank everyone who has already supported the Oswald campaign and I want to remind those who have yet that there are only 3 days left for the Oswald Kickstarter campaign and I urge you to go out and get one of these books before it’s too late. I also have two interviews currently up one of them is on comicrelated.com and the other is on Kickstarter Conversations go check them out and find out what I plan for the future of The Oswald Chronicles.

Kickstarter Conversations

http://kickstarter-conversations.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-oswald-chronicles-interview.html

Also here’s a page from the future illustrated by the fantastic Luigito Teruel that may make it into the Kickstarter book

Farscape vol. 7 by Rockne S. Obannon, Keith Decandidio, and Will Sliney

This is the current trade paperback to this series of a show with such wonderful graphics I have really fond memories of but unfortunately I can’t say the same of this series. I’ve had the same complaint about this series from the beginning, the stories are great and they feel like the episodes from the series but the art is not the greatest in the world, for some reason Boom has always felt the need to higher guys who just aren’t there just yet as far as their skill set. I’m sure these guys are going to be great in a few years but now just isn’t that time and it’s unfortunate because these stories deserve to be illustrated by more competent artists, it’s a shame.

The Judas Coin by Walter Simonson

Walter Simonson is one of my all time favorite creators and I was looking forward to getting this book and as far as the graphics are concerned it’s all 10’s but the story although good put me off a bit because it looked like a portion of the story was based on reality but then you have other portions that are pure fantasy, like a dragon boat of mammoth proportions that had more in common with an aircraft carrier than a dragon boat. Great art but I wanted a bit more when it comes to the story, although it does have a few high points, like the tying theme of a cursed coin. As far as I’m concerned if Walter Simonson is illustrating it I’m there.

Alien the Illustrated story by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson

Here’s a book I always wanted to get my hands on and I finally got on in reprint many years after the fact. This adaptation of the classic movie was done a while ago and was done by two of my favorite creators, the book is awesome and has been cited as one of the best comic film adaptations ever and I have to agree. If you’ve seen the movie you know what’s going to happen but it’s great to see Walter’s work in such an early form and to see how it’s changed over the years.

Thanks again to all of you for supporting Oswald and go out and pick up a book at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17217803/the-oswald-chronicles-vol-1?ref=category

Best

JD Calderon

Only 5 days left for The Oswald Kickstarter Updated

Only 4 days left for The Oswald Kickstarter updated

Hello everyone

Listen to my ramble on about all things Oswald at http://comicrelated.com/news/18271/the-related-recap-320

I don’t really have much to say today other than thank you to those who have supported The Oswald Chronicles Kickstarter campaign and to those of you who haven’t yet, what are you waiting for go get yourself some Oswald awesome goodness There are a few details that I left out on the Kickstarter page that may interest those of you who are on the ledge, first the book is listed as a 128 page trade paperback, well what I’m actually looking to do is produce a 160-192 page hardcover. It may still be a trade paperback but I’m seriously looking hard at a hardcover because I think it will look better and there will be at least three stories that haven’t made it on the site and at least one of them never will. Tomorrow I should have some more announcements, hopefully. Thank you all again and please spread the word where you can and go get a book

And here’s another random page from My First Day:

Trio by John Byrne

John Byrne is a creator that I grew up reading enjoying and admiring when I was younger, but as I grew older I started to move away from his work and at times I even looked down upon it. But I have to say John Byrne is back, at least for me he is. John Byrne does something very few creators can do these days, create a solid fun comic without any pretense to wanting or being anything other than it is. His stories although simple are straight forward and have little in the way of hidden messages and such to his readers but for me that makes his current spate of work that much more enjoyable they’re just straight forward adventure stories that are there to create wonder and fun for his fans. His work may not be for everyone but for me I’m happy to have them, thank you Mr. Byrne for reminding me not to be so stuffy

Joe Hill’s The Cape adapted by Jason Ciaramella and Zach Howard

Joe Hill’s the Cape is a whole other animal that surprised me when I first read it, because I was expecting him to zig when he zagged and when I finally saw him zag he went zwiggy, great stuff and I wish he would do more comics work, but can you believe he’s actually dedicated to his prose work, the nerve This one is not for the meek you have been warned.

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by Eric Shanower and Skottie Young

I love Skottie Young’s work and admire what he and Eric Shanower are doing with this series. They’re bringing to life a bunch of stories that would pretty much be ignored and forgotten if not for these adaptations. My only concern is the quality of the stories, this one had some nice moments but for the most part it’s pretty pointless as to what happens and what you really get is walk through of some strange folks who live in the underworld of Oz. I don’t want to judge Mr. Baum by modern day story standards but it’s difficult not to, so this may come off as a little harsh. I’m still looking forward to the nest volume and I hope Skottie and Eric spend many more years working on this project.

I Vampire vol 1 by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Andrea Sorrentino

I gave this book a shot out of the blue it was on my order sheet and I said why not. The artwork is reminiscent of Jae Lee and the writing is actually pretty good, but I think being stuck in the DC Universe hampered the story and makes it less believable with characters like Superman, Green Lantern and Batman walking around. My biggest issue is how the story sets out to be a big grand undertaking by the characters with a war between humans and vamps brewing with the DCU hanging over their heads. I think it was the wrong way to go inside of this sandbox. If the story was in standalone universe with no superheroes I think this story would have played out much better (although it has been done a few times before, The Blade films for one) My other problem with it is that at the end of the trade the problem is allegedly done away with but instead of the vamp problem going away the way it was supposed to, here comes the next big bad villain, now this is something I should be accustomed to by now having watched so much Buffy and Supernatural, but my only reaction to this was really. Not a bad book if you can pick it up really cheap if not give it a pass, shame really because both the writer and artist are talented by their hands were tied when they were dumped in the DCU.

Thank you all again and keep on voting at topwebcomics.com and go get yourself a copy of My First Day at the Oswald Kickstarter campaign http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/17217803/the-oswald-chronicles-vol-1

Best

JD Calderon