Neil and I have a new Dark Avengers for you this week where we get to know the heroes of Hell’s Kitchen better. This Wednesday.

Preview at Comic Book Resources

After the Seattle show, I talked with Cheryl Lynn Eaton and we followed up on some ideas that were discussed at Emerald City, and if you read this site ever you know I’m always happy to talk process. And Cheryl had great questions, our short discussion is up today over at Comics Alliance where she’s just joined the team, please read!

If you can get into the most popular place online today, Comixology and Marvel are giving away 700 number one issues for free. There’s a few of mine in there like ATLAS and X-MEN FIRST CLASS, so give it a shot. Who knew people would turn out for free books?

In related website server issues, The Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon has his site back up with a nice long breakdown of the Emerald City Comicon last week. But I can’t link to it separately, you’ll have to scroll down to March 10th. I have to admit, I really want that giant Battleship table in the photos.

Is by CBR’s Greg Burgas, who is very thorough about his time at Seattle’s Emerald City show. Greg had a rad beard that gave him convention energy, and he took a lot of pictures, give a few minutes over to his journal.

Marvel: Red She-Hulk #63 is here, kicking off the next leg of our story. Betty and Machine Man meet the hottest team from S.H.I.E.L.D. Here’s a preview.

DC: Legends of the Dark Knight #6 with Gabriel Hardman is now out, see our street level approach to Batman.

Dark Horse: Willow; Wonderland #5 with Christos Gage, wrapping up Willow’s adventures in the magic realm and stuff.

Get in there, get ‘em all!

UPDATE: Jim Dougan proves you can storm into a shop demanding all the Parker and you’ll get the comics you need.

Stephen Downey is challenging us all to celebrate and create characters ourselves, and lots of people are posting to Twitter today about it. So I say remember those books over there at the right of the website, which are all original creations by me and my collaborators! Get those new ideas up and running, y’all.

Wow are there a lot of people at Emerald City Comicon. I had a great Friday despite being frazzled from waking up every hour the night before thinking it was time to go to Jonathan Case’s house and begin the drive. There are TWO halls this year, so it’s now easily the biggest show right after San Diego’s Comicon. Reminder: I’m in K-03, where I was signing books, selling trades, and drawing commission art for those who asked. Two cool dudes started it off right by asking for fun ones: Satana and Man-Thing for one, Red Ghost and his Super Apes for the other. Steve Lieber made a Vine video of me finishing the former in the hotel room last night. That’s Key and Peele on in the background, not Lieber swearing at my art.

A real highlight of the show so far has been meeting Carlo Pagulayan, who came all the way from the Philippines. We’ve worked together on Marvel books for eight years now, off and on, and he’s as nice a guy as he is brilliant talent. If you’re here definitely go see him because he doesn’t make it to the states much. It can’t be an accident that he was placed at table M-11.

At 7 David Brothers and I pulled off the first PARKER-BROTHERS panel talking about writing comics in general, and it was a success. The only extra media or prop I took was a bottle of Jameson, and offered a drink to anyone I’d collaborated with before. The best related moment came when Gabriel Hardman walked in, got his drink, and walked out, showing off those story instincts he’s known for.

Not surprisingly, David is really good at holding a discussion (he does it well in podcast form all the time). We talked about incorporating random life into structured stories to give them energy. I also explained why I believe you have to sublimate your inner fan when handling famous licensed characters, and Joe Hughes of Comics Alliance made a perfect counterpoint with “what about Dan Slott?” So I had to amend my statement to “unless you’re Dan Slott.” Really I’m just happy I could string together sentences as tired as I was and that it was at the end of the day. I hope we can take this show on the road some in the future.

As I mentioned, I finished my art jobs in my room. I wanted to go down and experience all the fun that no doubt happened downstairs in the Sheraton, but I opted for sleeping and I’m happy about that today. Going to get some breakfast and head over in a bit!

One more day until EMERALD CITY COMICON and I’m almost ready. I will have many, many trades paperbacks and books of all kinds, so come free them. Much of my Marvel work, Interman, Underground, Mysterius, Bucko, and conceivably more.

I’ll also be DRAWING. So if you want a commission from me, try to get by my table early and on the list. Prices based on the request, how involved they are, etc. I tend to do inked pieces with tones.

I’m sure I’ll be SIGNING or APPEARING ON PANELS but the only one I remember off the top of my head is at the Dark Horse Booth at 3 on Sunday signing Bucko and Willow. And of course the Parker/Brothers panel at 7 on Friday.

Look forward to seeing many of you there, safe travel!

Finally the long-pontificated talk between me and writer David Brothers (@hermanos on Twitter) on writing and working in comics. It will be at the Emerald City Comicon in Seattle at 7pm just as the main hall closes, so before you go out and get rowdy, come to room 3AB. The description:

Jeff Parker, writer of fan-favorite comics like Red She-Hulk and Agents of Atlas, sits down with David Brothers to have a frank and funny conversation about what working on comics is really like, where inspiration actually comes from, and why if you want to be a pro you need to stop being a fan. Do you have preconceptions of what the comics industry is like? Come through and watch this tag team destroy them with jokes, opinions, and hard facts.

Our talk will not be recorded, because I don’t want everything David and I say plastered all over the internet next week. We will make it a good time for you and I’ll probably rope in some of my collaborators. Look forward to seeing you Friday.

And she says those things to Tim O’Shea at Robot 6 about coloring comic books, which she excels at. I would say she’s had a meteoric rise to fame in the comics industry, but as we clearly learned the other day, meteors do not rise. Jordie does though, especially when she gets fired up about colorists being shunned at conventions. Go read, she has a lot great to say.

At long last. A few years ago, I somehow slipped up and let theinterman.com lapse, because whoever I originally registered the domain name with didn’t send out lots of reminder emails like my current dns. Which, by the way is pair.com, the same people who host my sites and are rock solid if you’re looking for a webhost.

I stubbornly refused to buy the name back at whatever crazy price was offered to me, and immediately registered theinterman.net where the info about my first graphic novel sat since. The suffixes are less important now, but it always stung that I didn’t have my original dot com. Still I was lucky it went to name poacher/resellers instead of a porn/merch aggregator. Then emails started coming in the past few months from whoever last had it warning that I better get it before it expired, and I realized that they probably weren’t going to renew it. So I showed no interest, which was tough.

And now my url has found it’s way back to me! In related news, I’ll also have copies of the book at the Emerald City show, which I haven’t had in a while because of similar bumbling on my part. And I may finally set up a way to order it directly from here. Scratch may, I WILL.

Yippee!

These could possibly be from a future graphic novel possibly from Oni Press, possibly drawn by Sandy Jarrell, and possibly colored by Kevin Volo. POSSIBLY. We feel the meteorites in Russia were an omen and are taking the opportunity to show them.

First, here’s a preview of next week’s DARK AVENGERS #187 at CBR. And now-

Many of you have been pinging me on Twitter about the solicit for DA 190 that says it’s the final issue. Because IT IS! It’s no surprise to me, at the time books were being budgeted, this was approved through 190, and I planned for the story to conclude in that issue, so there’s no racing around trying to come up with some way to tie up ends, as you’ll see.

With few exceptions, I am never going to make the end point of a monthly book known in advance. It speeds attrition, and I don’t want to lose readers- why would I? There’s always the chance a title will catch on and start climbing- it doesn’t happen a lot, but it can- and in that event the publisher would usually approve another block of schedule the book can keep going through. This is the way most monthlies work as far as I know, when they aren’t traditional flagship-type books. DA actually lasted longer than I expected a book that’s a ‘dark variant’ on a main book to hang around, regardless of what we’re doing within.

But the positive is that artist Neil Edwards and I did have plenty of time to craft a good sized story that I think has a rewarding payoff. I hope you’ll stick with us to the end and get the closure. Also, I am writing another Marvel book called Red She-Hulk and if you like what I’ve done on this, you will like that one. Thanks for your interest and support!

I’ll just use my son’s card made for his classmates to VALENTIMES at you. He’s already mastered the non-committal approach to these things. I mainly remember in 2nd grade taking in perforated cards with Ross Andru Batman and characters on them, saying punny things to the recipient. Do those still exist?

UPDATE: Chris Samnee wins again with a perfect Lois and Clark Valentine!

My artbro Jesse Hamm gives another one of his incredible essays on comics art and art in general, today on Alex Toth who is of course, one of my all-time favorites. Jesse does a great job explaining basics and visual theory, if you draw, take a few minutes and read. And if you didn’t pick up the recent issue of Hawkeye that he and Steve Lieber drew, that’s still on stands.