Here's the cover from layout to pencil, ink, painting and final image. The painting is actually just an ink dye wash on translucent paper -- no color, just a one color wash. I wanted to get all of the textures and look of a watercolor but without all the hassle of mixing and painting a bunch of different colors.

After scanning, it's changed from grayscale to CMYK, selections are made and color values are changed. In concept, I think this is similar to what Richard Corbin used to do (early Warren stuff and Den), only I think he was painting and airbrushing on acetate for each color, which must've been a huge pain and no way to tell exactly what the final result was going to be. Much easier with a computer.

Above: 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.

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

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 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.My 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.