The Vancouver Comic Arts Festival is this weekend – May 26th and 27th at the Yaletown Roundhouse! This is the very first VanCAF and I’m proud to be exhibiting on home turf. I’ll have copies of Seeds, I’ll have both of these prints there, and I’ll have a few prints of this non-Delilah-related favourite (Dinosaurs riding other dinosaurs!). Apparently that last image was the card-to-get at last month’s Carded! show, and now you can enjoy it full-size! For ever, if you like!

I’ll be located at table 38, but if you have trouble finding it, just look for my awesome table-buddies’ – the Shanahans! – Silly Kingdom poster.

At TCAF I sold through every single thing I brought. Fortunately, since I operate this brouhaha from Vancouver, I’ll have significantly more copies at my disposal, so come by and buy ten of everything! In fact, here’s a challenge: online orders for Seeds have been primarily coming from the United States, so Vancouverites I urge you to get out this weekend and come represent for your country! Toronto did its part… you wouldn’t want to compare unfavourably to Toronto, would you Vancouver?

Full VanCAF details are right here.

Store Orders!

I’m slowly but surely signing my way through prints and copies of Seeds. If you placed your order between the 7th and 15th of May, your order should be winging its way to you as you read this. It really has been very exciting to see so many orders from all the different corners of the globe – I’ve sent comics off to Finland, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Bulgaria, and (yay!) Turkey, among many others. Truly the internet is a marvellous thing.

Video Interview with This Guy!

Wanna hear my thoughts on art and comics and stuff? Art maven and Vancouverite Chris Bentzen (who co-runs the excellent Hot One Inch Action and Carded! shows) put together a video interview with Yours Truly – check it out, and let me know what you think of my nervous ticks!

The Delilah Dirk Emporium of Wonderment is now open! Come in and browse our fine stock – for the first week only, to celebrate the arrival of The Seeds of Good Fortune, said book will be only five dollars (regularly six)!

The first edition of Seeds is a print run of 1000 and the book completely sold out at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival – don’t wait! Comic books are in aisle 1.

Grab your copy now!

I’ve never been before, but I’ve heard it’s the best comics convention in the world. Whether that’s true or not, I’ll be doing my part to make it awesome! The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is this weekend – May 5th and 6th (not 6th & 7th as I’ve dumbly included in the image above*) at the Toronto Public Library! As I may have mentioned previously, The Seeds of Good Fortune will be debuting at the festival. I’ll also have beautiful prints and – for those of you who like the behind-the-scenes extras – the rough pages and thumbnails for Seeds, and on Sunday I’ll be taking part in a Draw-Off moderated by Wondermark’s David Malki! More details on everything right here.

If you can make it to the festival, come by and say Hi! If you can’t, but you’re interested in Seeds and the prints, don’t worry, they’ll be available for online ordering soon enough. I look forward to meeting you guys!

*Thanks, @Kid_Nemo!

As you may be aware by now, the Toronto Comic Arts Festival is just around the corner, and that means it’s almost time for The Seeds of Good Fortune (among other things, I assume). The book is off at the printers being a-printed right this very moment. Just between you and me, how would you rate your excitement level? On a scale of 1-to-10. Yeah? Not 11? Well then, it’s time to stoke the excitement-fires. Check out this preview! To be honest, I’m surprised you’re even reading this. You saw the headline, you saw your cursor turn to a pointy-hand as you rolled it over the image. Why are you still here?

But I Won’t Be at TCAF!

(…and when I say “I”, I mean “you”. I will be at TCAF.)

Don’t worry! The Seeds of Good Fortune will be available for purchase online starting on May 7th. It’ll be mailed right to your door. Gauge carefully whether or not you should kiss your mailman when he/she hands you the package. Some may not be open to such earnest affection.

Stay tuned for more details and news! If you have any questions, you know how to get ahold of me. The Twitter/Facebook/Email links are all to the left there.

Three things! First, The Turkish Lieutenant has been nominated for a Will Eisner award, in the category of “Best Digital Comic“!

This is pretty exciting stuff, especially considering the quality of the other nominees. I am also happy that the “Digital” category makes it easy to view everyone’s work – it’s hard to have read all the books in all the other categories, but I am proud to know that whether DD wins or loses against the other nominees, it won’t be for lack of exposure or availability.

That said, get thee to the Eisner Voting Site and cast that vote!*

The Seeds of Good Fortune!

Second, Delilah Dirk and The Seeds of Good Fortune is coming along well and is on-schedule. Assuming no unusual problems with printing (and assuming the printer can deliver in time), you’ll be able to get your hands on it exactly one month from today – May 4th, at TCAF (and elsewhere thereafter).

I’ll be sending out a preview to newsletter subscribers in a few weeks!

Portland Mercury Column!

Ben Coleman at the Portland Mercury has composed a great writeup on The Turkish Lieutenant. I answered a few questions for him on the topics of character design and crafting action sequences. I could perhaps have been more coherent, but they’re complicated topics. Enjoy!

* …if you can – for what it’s worth, I understand Eisner Voting is only open to “Comics Industry Professionals”.

Guys, I’m proud to announce that design #2 from the multiple-choice challenge has received the most votes and will be the basis for the cover of The Seeds of Good Fortune.

“Hmm”, you say, “that’s a strange way to put it. Basis? What does that mean?”

Simple: generally speaking, the cover will look like design #2. I may change or add some things, though, and you’ll just have to stay tuned to find out what they are. For what it’s worth, I drop all the sweet reveals on the newsletter subscribers first.

Thank you to everyone who took a moment to add their vote. I’ll even thank those of you who ignored my explicit directions by thinking about your answers and providing thoughtful feedback. You’re bad at following directions, but what is DD about if not bucking the system? Good job.

As mentioned, #2 received the most votes, though I was surprised to see such a strong desire to have Selim integrated into the design. I love that guy, but I hadn’t even considered making him a significant compositional element. Obviously, you readers must feel a fondness towards our tea-loving Lieutenant, and I take that as a very high compliment. Will he end up on the cover? You’ll have to wait and see (the pic above is just a work-in-progress capture).

Design #1 fared very poorly in the vote, but I’m glad to see it had a few ardent fans. Interestingly, the few people who have already read the story were most likely to opt for #1.

Design #3 did almost as well as #2, falling just a few points behind. The ratios were pretty consistent between voting methods (Twitter vs. Facebook vs Mail etc.), though commenters on DeviantArt favoured #3 over #2 by two votes.

Thanks again to everyone who took part!

Quick! Don’t think, just click through and pick your favourite: 1, 2, or 3!

Now, if I had a comment system on this site, you could just vote there, but I don’t. Tell me your favourite via Twitter, Facebook, or Ye Olde E-Mail!

Enlarge!

I’m excited to announce Delilah Dirk and the Seeds of Good Fortune, a brand new DD adventure coming to you this May!

Full details right here!

Fan Art!

It tickles me straight to my gooey caramel centre when I get drawings of DD and Selim in the emails. Just look at this drawing by Noelle (gingerhaze): Just look at it. Pretty great, right? For more of her delightfully charming work, you should point yourself right here. Thanks, Noelle!

Will Selim’s earnest attitude and only partial physical competence endear him to Miss Dirk? Or will she opt for them to go their separate ways?

Find out now!

More Adventures?

Interested in what’s coming next? I’m sending out a bit of a preview on Monday (the 27th) to newsletter subscribers.

If newsletters aren’t your thing (understandable, I guess, but you’re really missing out here), make sure to plug DD into whichever venue is most convenient for you – RSS, Twitter, or Facebook. All the pertinent information will make its way there eventually.

Force the World to Love Delilah

Whether you’ve been enjoying DD since it started posting almost a year ago or whether you’ve only recently discovered it, show your appreciation for the comic and spread the word by helping it get some critical recognition.

For example, the Harvey Awards are accepting nominations right now. If you’re a comics-industry professional (even in the loosest sense of the term), I encourage you to let the Harvey Awards panel know about Delilah Dirk. The full ballot is available from their site, but I’ve made it easy for you by getting the ballot started properly right here. Download and modify as you see fit, then email to harveyballots@hotmail.com

As we established earlier this week on Twitter, voting for your favourite webcomic is even more important than voting in any one governmental election. Why? Because the Inter-net is world-wide. What do the political maneuverings of our national leaders matter compared to the global reach of colourful internet-funnies? Voting for your favourite webcomic is as important as voting for President of Earth. Except instead of raising Earth-Taxes, I promise only colourful adventures.

Again, if you’ve enjoyed The Turkish Lieutenant during its year-long run, please support the comic, its imaginary characters, and its humble author by spreading the word!

When he left Kardaki, Selim’s intention was to rejoin Miss Dirk’s company. Evidently Miss Dirk does not know that this is his intention, though. Will he have to spell it out? And will she readily accept him back?

Find out now!

What’s Next?

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the story of The Turkish Lieutenant will soon be coming to a close. I understand this is a cause of unhappiness for some readers! But look, I didn’t adopt the titling convention of “So and So and the Blanketty-Blank” because I only intended to do one story.

Something new is in the works, and the very first people to find out about it will be Newsletter Subscribers, a little over a week from now. If that’s not to your taste, no worries. Eventually, all the pertinent information will be posted to the RSS feed as well as Twitter and Facebook. That’s right, you LinkedIn guys are out of luck. Stay tuned for more!