Digital vs Print

RSA #1Above: RSA Vol 8 No 1 the last printed anything.

Besides questions about original art/commissions/sketches, I get a lot of questions about publishing RSA Volume 8 in print. You know, on actual paper so that you can feel and lovingly caress your Ralph Snart in your actual hands. This creates a disturbing mental picture as I imagine naked fans rolling around on their issues of Snart. Anyway...

After all, Volumes 1 through 7 are all in print, plus the first issue of Volume 8 is in print. What's the deal? So, print the rest of them, DAMMIT! Well, please take note that I haven't published anything in print since 2008 -- almost a dozen years ago. Hello. This might suggest, besides other reasons, that I'm committed to digital publishing and have no inclination whatsoever to publish in print ever again.

So, those sick degenerates with a sick "paper fetish" will have to come to grips with this. Do you continue to wait? Gee, maybe Hansen will publish next year or the year after or maybe in ten years or so... maybe if I wait just a while longer...

By that time, I'll be dead and buried. Until then, I'll be cranking out new issues.

Finally, there's still plenty to collect. There's over 60 comics and trade paperbacks (including Doctor Gorpon and Weird Melvin), trading cards and posters.

In other news, Beer #47 turned out awesome. It was wet and dry hopped great hops flavor and aroma but not overly bitter.

Ralph Snart T-Shirt Design

The Ralph Snart t-shirt design currently begin offered started out 15 years ago as an iron-on I sold online.

RSA tee design

Read Weird Melvin In The CBG

I did three Weird Melvin space fillers for the Comics Buyers' Guide (that I'm aware of), and this one appeared in #999 in January 8, 1993. I don't have the finished art for this and had forgotten all about it. The Weird Melvin comic strip ran from #985 (10/02/92) until #1098 (12/02/94).The other two space fillers are on the back page of the Weird Melvin Comic Strip Collection.

Beer #47

Beer number 47 is a wet hopped cream ale (wet hopping is simply using fresh hops that haven't been dried). Had to pick probably 4-7 days early due to an incoming storm with possible high winds and hail. Survived a hail storm a few days earlier and didn't want to risk another.Beer #47My plants are young, so I didn't get much, only 6 ounces, but should be just enough for this one batch. Lame, I know.Cooking the cereal mash... Meanwhile, the 6-row malt is going through it's first rest.Cereal mash then added to the mash tun for the second rest. Note the high-tech Home Depot cooler.While it ferments, I'll be working on layouts and lettering for Ralph Snart #8.

Still At Cover

Um, hey, Weird Melvins are still in-stock, and I'm still selling them at cover price. You can pay more if you want.

More Twitter Nonsense

Twitter is freaking out again...237,167 impressions July 4, followed by 493,649 the next day and 221,389 the day after that. Nothing special tweeted. No new followers. Yes, that's right, 1M impressions over three days. Wuttup?

If anyone has had problems downloading my ebooks, that should be fixed now. My new web hosting plan has it's limitations, so I came up with a better way to handle it.

Beer No. 46 was born yesterday.It weighed in at about 50 pounds and appears healthy. BTW, beer No. 44, which I bottled, started uncertain but aged well. Beer No. 45, which was kegged, was pretty awesome from start to finish.

Next Snart, Beer

Work begins (writing) on the next issue of RSA. I'd like to write it over the next couple months (while it's hot) to begin drawing in September. Inking in the Summer sucks, so it's to be avoided. Some of the back-up features are either done or partially done already.

This week I'll be brewing Beer #46. Still experimenting with the cream ale style -- there's only one last thing to figure out. Getting close since Beer #45 turned out more than pretty damn good.

New Website Hosting

Same provider (GoDaddy), just different plan. Major headache -- not as easy as in the old days. Used to be you get a new server, copy over the files, change the DNS and bam! you're done. Now there's SSL certs to rekey, PayPal certs to copy over, mySQL databases to export/import, PHP to test. All of my CSS or JS minifying was broken. Some of which GoDaddy mistakened for malware (maybe because CSS and JS files aren't compressed -- yet). HTACCESS needs to be retested, which I don't know if cPanel even allows (previous plan didn't have cPanel).

GoDaddy costs more but tried the cheaper ones (InMotion and BlueHost), but they sucked -- hidden costs, poor customer service, no process or clue on transferring a site, SSL, et al from one host to another.

Wut Duh?

Two things... updated the blog with some old entries from my original blog (before the blogger.com blog), so now this blog goes back to 2005. Note the Year dropdown above.

Resurrected some old interviews from the Wayback Machine. With these old interviews, the operative theme is ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer. Also, these pages are the original html, so they're definitely not mobile-friendly.

2003: ralphsnartfanclub
2003: www.newsarama.com
2004: www.ralphsnart.com
2006: www.popthought.com
2007: www.thecartoonists.ca
2008: www.jazmaonline.com
2012: www.comicchatcast.com

Here's one interview from 2013 that's still online.

Here's Tony Caputo's response to my popthought.com interview.

Finally, noticed that Tony Caputo gave up on the dream. So if you want to start a comic book company called NOW Comics, go for it.

Inking a comic book panel of Ralph Snart

[UPDATE] Ralph Snart #7 has now released.

Here I am inking panel one of page five of the upcoming issue of Ralph Snart Adventures (#7). It's strangely relaxing to watch.
The GIF below shows the progression of storyboard script to pencil to ink and then to lettered and colored final. One thing to note is how close the storyboard script is to the final, even though, in this instance, it's very rough. The pencil is pretty simple too, but since I'm also the inker, I can get away with that. This makes the inking a bit more creative -- I'm not just delineating, I'm drawing as I ink.

The storyboard scripts I did for other artists, like the stuff I did for NOW (Married... With Children) and Disney (Goofy, Roger Rabbit), were much tighter. In most cases, the artists followed my storyboards as if they were layouts, which is the main reason I stopped doing work for Disney -- they didn't pay enough to justify what I was contributing. Sorry, but $50 per page for story idea, script and layouts doesn't cut it.
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Marc Hansen
Marc Hansen

Cartoonist and creator of Ralph Snart Adventures, Weird Melvin and Doctor Gorpon. Hansen has done most of his work for NOW Comics, but has also done work for Marvel, Disney and Kitchen Sink Press.

Ralph Snart Adventures was published from 1986-1993 by now defunct NOW Comics, and was the longest running comic in the entire NOW catalog, selling an average of 50,000 copies a month during that nine year period. Over two million comics were published, and it was the first indy comic to receive the Comics Code.

Today, Marc Hansen publishes Ralph Snart Adventures as an ebook on a sporadic basis. Current issues are available on his website. Keep up with Ralph Snart on Twitter and Facebook.

Ralph Snart is a registered trademark. Copyright 2024 by Marc Hansen.