ULTRAIST STUDIOS

Word On The Street is TODAY!
Bring your umbrella and check out Ultraist Studios and Possum Press at booth MM19.
We have new comics, free sketches and BUTTONS!

*UPDATE* I probably won’t get around to posting pics from the show, so instead, why not head over to POSSUM PRESS and read Blair’s report, and see some sketches and pictures!

*UPDATE 2* The Urban Firefly wrote a Word On The Street report featuring SPY GUY and THE POSSUM. Very cool. You can read it here.
-

Episode 259

-

Friday came around… no comics.  When I checked online and saw that the expected “over-night” delivery was going to be Monday at 5:00 pm I got more than a little worried.  Erika did some detective work while I was at the con, and managed to find out that the comics could be here between 12:00 noon and 5:00 pm on Saturday; a ray of hope!

So early morning Saturday I tracked the packages from Mirabel to Burlington, and intercepted the transport truck at the sorting station just before noon, grabbed my boxes of comics, and sped to the Fan Expo where Blair was manning the booth.  Talk about deja vu (nearly the same thing happened for the release of Spud & Harry #1).

Never the less, the comics arrived in time for FAN EXPO 2009, and the people couldn’t be happier (except for Christopher Miller who came by early on Friday… sorry Chris).

Both Deadpool and The Comedian agree that SPY GUY #1 is the best SPY GUY comic yet!

Speaking of celebrities, I managed to take these pics:

Linda Hamilton

Lou Ferrigno

Bruce Campbell

Now I REALLY wanted to get a pic of Spock, but unfortunately wasn’t able to… I missed him and Captain Kirk back in 2006 as well…  oh well.  Maybe next time.

And what would a comic con be without FREE SKETCHES!?
Here are some of my favorites:

Black Widow vs. SPY-Derman

Spy Guy vs. Fazeman

Dark Possum vs. Dark Spy Guy
(The un-expected concept of this one is one of my favorites since Spy-Mite! And the idea never would have existed if it wasn’t for doing these sketches.  It’s great exercise in creativity.  I’d really like to colour this one).

Spy Guy vs. The Possum
(These team-up sketches are always fun to do.  Especially trying to mix it up by fitting in a gag that wasn’t expected.)

-

So I missed Fan Expo 2008.  I was busy with my wife, having a baby.
But this year my schedule is open and I intend to be there!

Hopefully with a brand new comic.

Which brings me to a funny story…

Remember what Dave Sim said way back in the blogandmail #338 (August 15th, 2007)?  Well, it seems, once again, I’ve engineered a situation where everything had to go off like clockwork in order for it to happen.  It got right down to the wire, and my plans were almost foiled by the platinum foil edition.

Today I received this message from Lebonfon:

Hi Mike

We just got the covers, but we got some problem on the saddlestitch machine.

We will build a 100copies (50 of each version) manually so you have at least this for the Fan Expo.

Tonight or tomorrow morning we will saddlestitch the rest and try a saturday delivery for the others 300 if you want.

Please advise

Gestionnaire de Projet / Project Coordinator
Imprimerie Lebonfon inc.

Talk about down to the wire!  So… if you’re one of the lucky ones to pick up your SPY GUY #1 at the FAN EXPO this weekend, you get the ULTRA-RARE-HAND-SADDLESTITCH edition! We’re making them old-school now folks!

If you’re at the show, be sure to come by the POSSUM PRESS / ULTRAIST STUDIOS booth at table A39 and pick up the latest SPY GUY, and THE POSSUM (which is fantastic by the way – Blair really outdid himself on issue #4 – best POSSUM to date).  We’ll be doing the usual free sketches if you buy something, and we’ll have the classic VALUE PACK so you can get everything for cheap!

See you there!

ps.  Perhaps on SPY GUY #2 I’ll heed Dave Sim’s sage advice…

-

Last Sunday was the annual Word On The Street festival in Toronto, and despite calls for rain, the day ended up being warm and sunny. Once again Ultraist Studios was in attendance with Possum Press, and this year we debuted the SPY GUY and The POSSUM Superhero Movie cut-out stand-ups for the first time ever, which got a lot of attention (and photos).

An interesting side note:  I noticed all day that I was drawing a disproportionately large number of sketches with children robbing banks.  Must be a sign of our times.

Click to enlarge.

-

ULTRAIST STUDIOS will be unavailable to attend this event.
However you can still find POSSUM PRESS at booth A39.
Drop by and say “hi”.

-

Wow. December. Already.
November turned out to be a bust for blogging.

But that’s okay. ‘Cause I’ve been busy.

Here are some of last months happenings:

Trampoline Hall
October 22

My brother and I were invited to a gathering at Fort York where we acted as Comic Steinographers.

Click for reverse angle.

Our efforts were printed and the book debutted at CanZine.

Contributor list:

Reverend Altor
Roxanne Bieskis
Arthur Dela Cruz
Shannon Gerard
Kathryn and Stuart Immonen
Eric Kim
Blair Kitchen
Dave Lapp
Steve Manale
John Martz
Brian McLachlan
Diana Tamblyn
Sean Daniel Byron Craig
Becky Johnson

… and myself.

Indy Spinner Rack
November 08
The fine folks and Indy Spinner Rack gave SPY GUY a plug in their SPX recap.

With such memorable quotes as… “we have this one, we didn’t have the second one, and I haven’t had a chance to read them… but I WILL read them” and “here we go… ultra… is…. ultra…. ultrai… ultra eye studio… geeze man, I’m drunk.” and “BLAIR was super nice”.

Listen to the snippet below. Or listen to the whole thing here.

They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Seriously though, thanks for the plug guys… especially Mister Phil (who actually managed to get “ultraist” right).

Hollywood Hero Con

Blair spilled the beans more than I was going to here, so if you want the full story check out possumpress.

In preparation for the Hero Con show, I also created the mockup cover for SPY GUY#1 and had some nice banners and cutouts created. With any luck, all that stuff is currently in transit back to the Ultraist Studios HQ.

Computer Fixed

The Ultraist Studios Portable Computer had to go in for some repairs and is now slowly getting back to operational status.

SPY GUY Webcomic

I’ve been sitting on this next strip for almost 2 months now. Just never seem to have the time to get it net ready. However there have been some requests to get that strip moving again, so that has been bumped up a notch on the things to do list.

Blog Journal Fodder

Over the past year, there have been a number of articles that I have typed up, and never posted. I had debated between posting them or just letting them die. But I figure they’ve been started anyway – so I might as well post the things. I’ve been especially wanting to kick start that Archeology Project again… a few of those are ready to go.

T-Shirts

Another residual project from the Hero Con show was the Ultraist T-Shirt that I’ve been meaning to make for the past 2 years. Well, the prototype is is done. Now it’s just a matter of ordering a box of black t-shirts and busting out that silk-screen kit.

SPY GUY #1

Trying to get page 5 done this weekend.
Hence the hack job of a blog journal post.
The above will get filled in over the course of the week.
So check back for pics, and audio, and proper grammar.

SPX 2007

4:50 am Friday morning, Blair and I hopped in The Possum-Wagon and commenced on our journey to Bethesda MD USA for the Small Press Expo. It was a nice drive. Travelling through Maryland on the I-70 I was captivated by the beautiful rolling hills and miniature mountains, with scattered farms and colonial houses. I wanted to move there. Immediately. It sure beats the concrete sprawl of the GTA. I should have taken a picture. Next year, I’ll take a picture.

1:00 pm we arrived at the convention center ahead of schedule. How we managed to arrive on time, when we’ve been consistently running late on our local cons, I have no idea.

That left us plenty of time to eat some lunch, set up the booth, and get ready for the doors to open at 2:00.

Not that it mattered much. Friday was a very slow day. And yet, it held a few surprises. Like the interview we did for VOA Indonesia. And meeting up with people I had only ever encountered online. So that was nice.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been trying to adjust my own internal anxieties by letting go of worries, and trying to embrace an optimistic and positive outlook on things. And this con turned out to be a good testing ground to prove some theories. In fact, each time I recalibrated my internal dialogue to keep with a more positive outlook, it seemed like good things would happen.

Learned a few lessons… like this one: Ecclesiastes 11:10.
And this one: Matthew 11:29-30

After the show on Friday, the Marriott set up a bar downstairs. And I could really go for a glass of wine. Of course a glass of wine would cost me the profit of two comic sales. Well, they finally broke me down and I approached the bar.

Was asked “do you have a ticket?”

“No… where do I get a ticket?”

“I don’t know. It’s $6.50 without a ticket”

So… if I get a ticket, that’s like selling two comics…

“I’ll be right back… I’m going to find a ticket”.

This sent me on an expedition through the convention center looking for the SPX organizers who would surely be the keepers of the drink tickets. Sure enough, they were in the bar upstairs, and surprisingly, Karon Flage saw me and waved me over. Of course, she had mistaken me for someone else (bald heads look alike) but she was more than willing to hook me up with some drink tickets. Yes. This was the sign that told me this weekend would turn out just fine.

Lesson learned: Matthew 7:7

Oh yeah. There was also cake.
It made me laugh.

In an attempt to cut costs, we had abandoned the idea of spending $100 a night for a plush room in the Marriott, and instead camped out in the Possum-Wagon. Aside from being impaled by strange seat hooks and attachors, and having reoccurring nightmares of being harassed by parking lot security, I had an incredible sleep.

Saturday, I awoke to a brand new day. A sponge bath in the bathroom sink freshened me up, and I managed to score a free coffee from the restaurant upstairs, and some French toast, strawberries, and another coffee from a buffet downstairs. This all seemed to endorse the above lesson.

Here Blair has finally awoken from his slumber in the Possum-Wagon.

The show that day started off moderately slow, and remained that way until eleven o’clock when things went crazy and picked up. Here are a few sketches that were done over the weekend. Check out Possum Press for more.

It was a great crowd. Not as artsy and esoteric as the APE and TCAF crowds, and not as pop-culture mainstream as the FAN EXPO crowds. Which seems to be a good fit for our target audience for both SPY GUY and THE POSSUM.

One added bonus was that while I was wandering, I noticed a bunch of other artists I had been introduced to on Dave Sim’s Blog and Mail (that I’ve been meaning to check out). So when I did my round of trades, these were the first artists I hit.

Specifically Scott Berwanger (Anubis), Pat Lewis (Abominable), and Steve Peters (Chemistry).

I never did manage to get a trade with Jim Coon (Beaver). Maybe next year.

In all I scored a box full of comics, (that I’ve been reading all week on the GO Train). That always makes a break-even or profit losing show seem all the more worth while.

Some other notable events were meeting with the Diamond reps, getting some comics to Heidi MacDonald (could there be a review in our future?) and meeting Dan Merritt from Green Brain Comics, who told me one of his agents picked up our books at the Toronto FAN EXPO this summer. Cool.

We had great neighbours at this year’s show. To our right was John Bintz who draws “A Moment of Clarity” and to our left was Kevin McShane, who does the superhero / hollywood parody “Toupydoops”.

The end of Saturday finished of with the Ignatz Awards, and some more wine and drink tickets.

This ended our SPX Saturday.

We had another wonderful night sleep.

Sunday morning I woke at the crack of dawn, where I sponge bathed in the sink, and made my way to the hotel lobby where I bought a coffee, found a comfortable seat, and cracked open my stash of trades.

What a great morning.

10:00 – 1:00 we attended the panels that were offered, which was a good way to spend the last few hours of the con.

All things considered, SPX was a success.

-

Yes. Tomorrow we commence on an SPX road trip.

Click the banner above for details.

Or click to Possum Press for more info.

At the moment I don’t feel like typing.

On a side note: Word On The Street was a great success!

Want to see pics and stuff?

Again, click over to Possum Press.

Haven’t felt like blogging.

Mind has been focused on SPY GUY #1.

And attempting sleep.

Perhaps SPX will inspire some blog entries.

Stay tuned.

-

Wow. The Word on the Street festival is tomorrow. I guess now would be a good time to put up a blog post to announce it to the hand full of you that check out The Ultraist Studios Blog Journal, and happen to be in the Toronto area…

Word on the Street is a national, annual, one-day celebration of reading and writing that promotes Canadian authors, books and magazines, and highlights the importance of literacy in the lives of all Canadians. The Word On The Street festival in Toronto focuses on promoting Toronto and Ontario authors and literacy organizations.*

This year Ultraist Studios and Possum Press have joined forces to attend. Listed under MAGAZINE MEWS Niche magazine publishers: Ultraist Studios / Possum Press will be located at booth MM5 which is located at 2 o’clock on the Queen’s Park Crescent circle. See map below for details.

I have always heard good things from comic makers about Word on the Street. It will be interesting to see how many comics can be sold in a single day, and if it will be enough to make up the table cost. At least my weather widget assures me that tomorrow will be mostly sunny with a high of 22°C.

In other news, the Ultraist Studio Store is debuting a SPUD & HARRY #1 / Creature From Jekyll Island special. More details and pictures to come.

-