For this year’s FCBD I stayed local. I had a wonderful time as a guest at Harrison’s Comics in Salem, MA. Sold a lot of copies of the newly re-vamped White Rose #0, and gave out tons of free sketchcards to a seemingly never-ending line of young and not-so-young comic book fans.

I also got to hang out with my good pal Dirk Tiede, creator of the terrific Paradigm Shift. And I had the pleasure of meeting horror-host and 700-year-old witch Penny Dreadful and her husband Garou, as well as their erstwhile arch-nemesis, Dr. Von Bulow.

A big thanks to Larry Harrison and all of the Harrison’s crew for putting together a great day for creator and fan alike!

I’ll be at Boston Comic Con Saturday 4/30 & Sunday 5/1 at the Comicbook Artists Guild table. If you’re in the neighborhood, please stop by and say hi.

I’ll also have a few copies of a special Boston Comic Con edition of White Rose #0 to celebrate the upcoming launch of the next chapter, but more on that soon…

Cloud 9 Comix
MassArt Continuing Ed

Welcome back to the White Rose blog and the new stormborn.com. We’ve had a few technical difficulties and a host change, and it’s taken me a couple to weeks to get the site back up and running. More changes coming soon!

Tomorrow I’ll be exhibiting at MICE: The Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo. If you’re in the area, drop by and say hello!

I’m not 100% sure, but I think this might be the Boston area’s first “show dedicated to independent, alternative, small-press and self-published comics, webcomics and ‘zines”.

Where:
Art Institute of Boston
700 Beacon Street
Boston, MA

When:
Saturday, 9/25/2010
Hours are 10 am-6 pm.

I’ll also be part of a panel discussion on webcomics and social media. Here’s the full schedule:
11:00 Writing for Comics – Jerel Dye

12:00 – “Webcomics/marketing through social media” – Franklin Einspruch moderating. Panelists: Dirk Tiede, George Burnett, Jen Vaughn, Tyler James, Susan Soares, Joey Gee

1:00 – “Connecting comics and education” – Moderator: Lisa Pasenelli Panelists: Michael Gianfrancesco, Dr. Jennifer Cook, Marek Bennett, Alexander Danner, Martha Moyer

2:00 — “A Cultural History of the Underground Comix: Sex, Drugs, and Race and Politics” – C. Che Salazar

3:00 — “Beyond Kinko’s: Getting Published, Indy-style ” Jaime Garmendia, moderator. Panelists: Karl Stevens, Jesse Lonergan, Liz Prince, Everett Soares, Shelli Paroline, Zack Giallongo, Don MacDonald

4:00 — Comicking Techniques 1: Dave Marshall –Inky Stories: Making Comic Books with Traditional Media

5:00 — Comicking Techniqes 2: Jack Turnbull,Old school coloring techniques vs. digital color.

Inked this over the original pencil design for the Issue #0 cover. The printed cover was changed radically for Small Press Idol ’09, but I still like this one better.

Mail Me Art is a British-based project, run by Darren Di Lieto, the founder and co-editor of the illustration news portal the Little Chimp Society. Over the course of a year, the first Mail Me Art project brought together a vast collection of artistic work sent in the form of mail by both professional and amateur artists of all ages from across the world. A wide variety of media were used in an equally wide variety of styles and the work arrived on everything from postcards and envelopes to boxes and pieces of wood. Read more about Mail Me Art | The Project.

Here’s what I sent sans postal stamps and stickers:

Envelope front

Envelope back

I’m back! Took a week and UNplugged from anything online to recover from the Small Press Idol madness. But back now and ready to go. The final tally is in on the contest – official results below…

IDOL ROUND 4 RESULTS from Ian Shires
And the Retailer order has landed. To be honest, it’s been at my PO box since Friday and I was just able to get up there and get it yesterday. So it’s a 155 copy order for White Rose – and it counts because the order was placed on the 31st online as a mail in. This places them in Second place…and with enough AVG that even if ALL of the Underground mail-ins come in, they will not be able to beat that. THUSLY: The Final Standings can now be made official! Faction wins the title, $700 cash bonus, and a 4 issue commitment. Let’s hear it for Faction folks!
1.) Copies: 99 – [Mail: 6] DLs: 37 Bulk: 430 [8] People: 87 AVG: 163.25 – Faction
2.) Copies: 209 – [Mail:16] DLs: 32 Bulk: 263 [7] People: 85 AVG: 147.25 – White Rose
3.) Copies: 283 – [Mail:39] DLs: 9 Bulk: 28 [2] People: 186 AVG: 126.50 – The Underground
4.) Copies: 56 – [Mail: 3] DLs: 13 Bulk: 138 [1] People: 43 AVG: 62.50 – Varsity Squad

White Rose and Underground put up a heck of a fight, and the process taught us lots of new things as the new options in ordering and how we calculated the winner were put to the test. Varsity Squad comes in a respectable 4th, and we will follow up on all the runners up, who knows, there may be a place in SPA Comics for them yet. Michael Niziolek has already joined staff to Run Self Publisher! Magazine – watch for our first new issue any minute! We’ll be bringing the new Idol website up soon, and getting all the Idol information everyone wants presented in a really great new way. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we’re at today.

Well, folks – looks like we’ll be coming in 2nd by my math…

There’s one number off in the standings below, and that’s the large not-yet-paid-for retail order for White Rose – it’s really 155 copies as opposed to 135. But even with the correct number of copies we don’t have enough to top Faction’s numbers.

So I’d like to take this moment to congratulate Erik Hendrix and the Faction team, as well as salute the teams from The Underground and Varsity Squad. Well-played all! It’s been an honor to compete with you!

Stay tuned for further developments from the White Rose, though. We may not have won Idol, but we’re not going anywhere!

Here’s the semi-final standings from Ian Shires…

IDOL ROUND 4 RESULTS
Haven Numbers came in yesterday…and clearly, Faction took a huge commanding lead with their order. I certainly don’t think we got the results we hoped for in the Haven/Retailer experiment…we were definitely hoping to see orders for all of the books, and from more retailers in general. But, I guess that’s something to build for next year. The numbers…

1.) Copies: 99 (+6) – [Mail: 6] DLs: 37 (+4) Bulk: 430 [8] (+125) People: 87 (+8) AVG: 163.25 – Faction
2.) Copies: 283 (+27) – [Mail:39] DLs: 9 (+2) Bulk: 8 [1] (+3) People: 186 (+24) AVG: 121.50 – The Underground
3.) Copies: 206 (+39) – [Mail:19(135)] DLs: 32 (+4) Bulk: 108 [7] (+3) People: 84 (+7) AVG: 107.50 – White Rose
4.) Copies: 56 (+5) – [Mail: 3] DLs: 13 (+1) Bulk: 138 [1] (+3) People: 43 (+5) AVG: 62.50 – Varsity Squad

So – even if the 135 copy order came in for White Rose – which, I haven’t heard back on, it would not be enough to catch Faction. The 39 mail-in orders The Underground is sitting on, if they ALL come in, would not catch Faction. I am going to keep the line open on a couple of retailers that registered but did not order yet, to see what they order…but at this point, it’s seriously looking like a Faction victory. Keep your eyes peeled for any further developments!
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Thanks for all your support!
George Burnett