April 2005 Blog Archive

From www.gravyboy.com

April 27, 2005

I'm not sure if it was the Robitusson, the Sharpie I was just using, or a combination of the two, but man, I feel like I'm gonna hurl.

 

I've spent this week at home sick.  Teaching school for me has been like going to a foreign country.  My immune system apparently isn't used to all the bugs that are being passed around.  

 

I hope you enjoy this weeks Fanboy Almanac.  Yesterday afternoon I was unconscious on my couch trying to rest when the phone rang.  On the other end was Marty...asking for suggestions for the punch line to today's strip.  So, being groggy, and sick, and under the extreme stress of someone asking me to be funny.  I came up with...

 

Nothing.

 

If you don't like it...blame Marty.

 

Move along.

 

-Brian

April 18, 2005

 

 

 

Great news for all of you comic book news junkies out there. GravyBoy.com proudly presents the newly created Comic Book News Page. The News Page pulls the latest comic-book-related news items from some of the hottest sites on the web and delivers them straight to your browser. It's a convenient way to significantly up your fanboy quotient in one sitting.

 

Currently, news feeds are available from ComicBookResources, ComicBookMovie.com, Comic World News, and the comic book section of About.com

 

We'll be adding more content as we find it and updating the look a bit, but feel free to check it out now and let us have your feedback.

 

Enjoy!

 

P.S.  For the technologically impaired - I recently rediscovered the offline joys of the Comics Buyers' Guide. It's a really great mag that rolls out 200+ pages of comic book news and reviews every month for a measly $5.99. Some of you may remember the guide as a  weekly newspaper-style production. It's been retooled and re-vamped as a monthly and it's a change for the better. The one I picked up had some incredible artwork by GravyBoy friend and compatriot, Mark Sparacio. Color me impressed.

 

-Marty  

April 17, 2005

According to our sources, traffic to gravyboy.com has more than tripled in the last three months.   And by "sources" I mean "counters."  But "sources" sounds like we're important...so I'll stick with that.

 

Marty's been working on a news page that's going to automatically collect news stories from various comic websites as they're updated.  If you gotta know minute by minute what's going on in the world of comics, you'll be very pleased.  You know who you are.  

 

This evening we had a small birthday dinner for Marty who turned the ripe old age of 31 last week.  The festivities included bbq chicken, cake and ice cream, and shooting marshmallows into the outside attic vent of his in-laws house.

 

There's nothing like the sickly sweet smell of marshmallows in a 100 degree attic to keep the smell of the dead mice at bay.

 

Or so I've heard.

 

Okay, so I haven't heard that.  Hey look, here's a page of a story Marty and I did for contest an anthology book was having .   We didn't win.

 

 

 

Remember.  Gravyboy.  Pass it on.

 

-Brian

 

 

April 13, 2005

I see that Marty was successful in his attempt to fill in as artist for me this week while I was away living the good life.  I even have to give him props for pasting that "mad brian" head into panel 3.  He never ceases to amaze.  

 

The work we put into all this tomfoolery amazes even me.  

 

Speaking of tomfoolery...We're entering what I like to call:  "Let's get some name recognition going."  I know, it's not very catchy, but it's to the point..and quite frankly, all I can come up with this late.  I'm tired.

 

So here's the deal.  We're making a big push in promoting GravyBoy in preparation to launch the book nationwide (i.e. solicted through Diamond)  So if you wanna help promote, here's a simple way to start.  

 

 

 

1) Copy this image into your signature if you frequent message boards

 

2) Make sure the image links back here to gravyboy.com.  The code for that will, on most boards, look like this 

 

[url=http://www.gravyboy.com][img]http://www.gravyboy.com/images/promo/forumsig.jpg[/img][/url]

 

3) That's it!  If you have a website, you can use that image to link to us too!  (note that the code for linking will be different, but if you have a web page, you probably know that.)

 

Now, time to get some sleep.

 

 

-Brian

April 9, 2005

 

 

 

So, my wife is working tonight and I'm sitting on the couch with my son reading My Little Word Book to him. It's a picture book with pictures of all kinds of objects that might be of interest to a one-and-a-half year old. I started out by pointing out and repeating some of the words he knows by heart - dog, ball, cat, socks, banana, etc.- and then moved on to some new words. He sat in my lap and listened very attentively as I went through the book pointing out pictures and saying the words.

 

Confident that my little learning experience had been successful, I then pointed to a random picture on a page (a ball, I think) and said "What's this?" My son looked up at me and quite confidently answered... "Book."

 

Can't put one past him.

 

At least I can be confident that my son will grow up knowing the difference between reality and convincing facsimiles thereof. Scott McCloud would be proud.

 

-Marty  

April 6, 2005

On today's Fanboy Almanac strip I got to draw stormtroopers.  That was fun.  And I just kept doodling out some more star wars characters since I was on a roll and the night was pretty much shot since it was too late to get started on anything else.   So here, have some mediocre star wars characters:

 

 

Chewi is yelling because Han is standing on his foot.   And he's smirking because he knows it.   

 

I just made that up.

 

He doesn't have feet.    

 

-Brian

April 4, 2005

In case you were wondering what that tired feeling you have is from, it's because we set our clocks ahead an hour yesterday.  If you're not tired and don't know what I'm talking about, then you were an hour late to work this morning.  That's probably why your boss was yelling at you.  Or, if you work where I used to, why he was yelling at you in Farsi.

 

I always love this time of year.  I get excited when I see the hint of green on the trees, and the days getting warmer and longer.  But man!  Gotta hate losing that hour of sleep!  

 

I got another page done this evening, and inked part of another...and I think now I'm going to wind it down and relax before I hit the sack.  But before I go I have two words for you regarding issue 2.

 

Cow.  Pants.

 

And they make me laugh.

 

-Brian