In September I turn 40 years old. 40 years on this earth. 40 years of eating too many sweets. 40 years of mental wandering.

And my life is changing. Always changing. What will you do as you approach 40? What will you be thinking?

Mark

-Mark Stinson

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-Mark Stinson

-Mark Stinson

-Mark Stinson

I have completely finished "Tall Hat and The Secret!" Its full-color, has 6 interior pages, and the back-cover of the folded booklet features an advertisement for comixscene.com, comixboard.com, comixclub.com, and comixperience.com. I'll release a page every few days on this blog...

If you want the print out and read the whole story right now...download and print the PDF. Shawn Geabhart is taking 200 copies of the folded booklet up to Wizard World Chicago to hand out for free (thank you, Shawn!) And I'll get another 200 copies in some comic book shops around the metro very soon...

-Mark Stinson

(click "Read More" for the artist's notes from the printed booklet)

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This page was fairly simple to color, actually. I'm happy with how it turned out. Now its time to start scripting, lettering, and "building" the published version of the story in my computer...

-Mark Stinson

O.K...an hour and a half on Photoshop, and I'm happy with how this turned out. I kept the colors consistant with the other pages...and continued to use semi-transparent layers to effect the glow rings. I'm not a colorist by any means, but its been fun messing around with the colors this time around.

Now I just have page 7 left to draw, ink, and color. Then I can begin scripting, lettering, and putting the book together. I'd like to get this done in time for Chicago. It really shouldn't be a problem.

-Mark Stinson

Finished the colors on this page tonight. I'm not going to have this story done for the convention this weekend...

-Mark Stinson

I finished the colors this morning...and I like how this turned out. At first I had the figure with completely flat colors...and a semi-opaque yellow glow over the top. In the end I dumped most of my glow effect in favor of adding shadow to the figure...

-Mark Stinson

Finished the colors for these two pages by working late into the night. These two pages face each other, and besides the differences in the details and colors, the dialogue on each will be different.

For this last page I kept the glow effects simple, and unblended. I wanted to keep it somewhat cartoony, and for story purposes...lacking in realism.

-Mark Stinson

Those foldee comix over at Comixperience...the ones on 1 piece of paper with 8 panels that are slowly revealed as you unfold them...well they got me to thinking. I decided to do a full color foldee comic by KC Comicon. One featuring my character, The Secret, and Shawn Geabhart's character, Tall Hat. Here's page 1 without a border or scripting...

My thanks to Shawn for giving me the go-ahead! This foldee will promote the comixclub.com and comixperience.com websites on its back-cover.

-Mark Stinson

O.K. A long time ago this was planned as page one of Void Pulp #3...but the time-span between books made the flashback/reminder necessary (in my mind). I liked this image of Tarn, so I adapted this one-time-page-1, into page #4.

The text in the left column will be different in the final printed version of Void Pulp #3. What do you think? Comment over on the CCN Message Board, if you would...

Mark Stinson

O.K. 3rd page pencilled and inked around 2 weeks ago...finally got to the "finishing" process on the computer. Grayscale added...backgrounds dropped in...lettering added over the top...

When I originally "wrote" the page, the narrative was going to go panel-to-panel, in a traditional sort of way. But when I began lettering it...I changed course and went with more of a "flashback" feel and an over-arching narrative.

I'd love comments on that decision, as well as anything good or bad that strikes you about the artwork...comment over on the CCN Message Board.

-Mark Stinson

Finally...the finished 2nd page. I had this drawn and inked weeks ago. But I'm busy as hell and I just sort of froze up when it came to putting the gray-scale into this page. What do you think? I'd love some comments over on the message board or here...

-Mark Stinson

Weekly. Can you say "Weekly?" Void Pulp #1 was published in 1995. Void Pulp #2 was published in 2002. Void Pulp #3 will have a page a week coming out from this point forward...and it will be done in 2005. Here's the first page...

You can comment here on the blog...or click here to comment over at the CCN Message Board!

-Mark Stinson