The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is a nonprofit that partners with the Golden Gate National Parks to produce, among other things, really clever merchandise about the parks. In 2007 they released Escape From Alcatraz: The Dummy Head Breakout (written and illustrated by Sara Ryan and Steve Lieber, our fellow Portlanders and a couple of really awesome people), the first in a line of comics detailing the 14 different escape attempts that took place while Alcatraz was a federal prison. For the second issue, they came to me and Lukas.

We’ll be telling the story of the 1946 escape attempt, the one called the “Blast-Out” of Alcatraz, or even “The Battle of Alcatraz.” It’s a really amazing, violent story — a half-dozen conspirators exploited several holes in the way Alcatraz was built and run, and managed to get a hold of weapons and free the entire inmate population… only to discover they’d misplaced the one key that’d get them out of the cellhouse building and out onto the island. It all ended in a stand-off between three armed prisoners and two platoons of Marines.

Lukas and I are really excited about telling the story — it’s got firefights, twists of fate, psychotic killers, 18-year-olds getting in over their heads, acts of heroism, acts of barbarism… and pretty much all the protagonists die. Think Reservoir Dogs with ’40s gangster slang in place of pop culture references, set in the most famous prison in the world. Think AWESOME.

The comic is going to be 22 pages, full-color, and will be available for sale in the Alcatraz gift shop probably sometime next summer.

As a side bonus, when Lukas and I went down to SF for WonderCon in February we got to go on an amazing private tour of the island. (I, personally, spent 10 hours on Alcatraz that day.) Here’s some photos I came away with.

The story looks really pretty in print — and as an added bonus, they included a couple piece of Lukas’ concept art in the sketchbook in the back!

You should really go buy it.

But for those who missed the announcement, Lukas is up for the Russ Manning “Best Outstanding Newcomer” Award, which will be given away Friday at the Eisner Award celebration. And Lukas and Brandon have their own project announcement to make while the con is going on — so keep an eye out here for it! It’s not Witch Doctor affiliated, but it’s pretty damn cool.

Oh, hell. Here’s a hint.

During the con Tony ended up drawing a fun little pin-up of Morrow, which ended up going on the wall of Lukas’ art studio after the show… and somehow didn’t get scanned and posted here first. Oops! So, here’s Morrow, Tony Morgan-style.

We also never got around to pointing out that Rantz Hoseley — editor of Comic Book Tattoo and head of the Longbox Project, the “iTunes for comics” program that’s been getting a lot of buzz recently — name-dropped Brandon in an interview he did with the Word Balloon podcast.

On the podcast, Rantz was talking about the mindset of some creators who feel like worrying about the business side of comics makes them ’sellouts’ — and he uses Brandon as an example of someone who, in his words, “gets it.”

I can tell the people who ‘get it’ right away — and if they don’t understand the nuances of it, then they’re open to, I don’t want to say the experience of it, but the kind of mindset-difference that it takes.

Brandon Seifert is a perfect example. He does a book called Witch Doctor which he’s been putting out independently. And I think he’s going to end up being a massively huge success, as a writer and as a creator. He’s got really unique, brilliant ideas that touch on the same kinds of themes and standards that people love in comics, but he does that wonderful thing of bringing his own unique flavor and twist to it in the same way that people like Brubaker and Fraction and Bendis do, in making it identifiably and distinctively their own.

I think people like that — at the risk of sounding all Whitney-fucking-Houston here — are the future.

Also, Witch Doctor: First Incision got a nice review from the folks at Comics Should Be Good, which was a pleasant thing for us to wake up to today.

Should’ve mentioned this sooner, better late than never: Lukas and I are exhibiting at the Stumptown Comics Fest this weekend, here in our very own Portland, Oregon. We’re pretty much right when you walk in the door, so you’ll probably have trouble missing us.

And we have new things for you. Ooh, exciting things! Like what? Like a new comic!

And for those of you who can’t make it — here’s a preview of the first page, the one we posted the pencils and graytones for!

For First Incision, Lukas used a pretty standard process — pencil the pages, and then ink them. This time around, he’s trying something different, the technique he used on his MySpace Dark Horse Presents story. He did the pencils normally — but then he scanned them in and did graytones over them, and now he’s printing them out and doing the inking over them. This, right here, is what it looks like with just pencils and graytones — so picture inks on top of this.

This is the first page of the story, just so we don’t give too much away.

What do you think?

Incidentally — are you Witch Doctor’s MySpace friend?