News

So Issue 5 is done and out at the printers. Quebecor tells me that I’ll get mine in time for
Mid-Ohio Con. If you’re gonna be there,
make sure to stop by, because you won’t be able to get it in stores until the following Wednesday
(First Wednesday in December).

There’s gonna be a cool promo for this year’s Mid-Ohio Con…
I and four (five?) other artists are getting together to make a little minicomics Passport — a guide
to the best in Small Press comics! I’m not gonna divulge the list yet, but suffice it to say you won’t
be disappointed!

Whoosh. The last several weeks have been a total whirl. I’m trying to forcibly calm my life down,
as I just can’t take the pace much longer. The last time I posted was about four weeks ago. In a
span of only fourteen days, the following happened: I did seven (!) library talks, helped plan my mom’s
birthday dinner, totalled my car, found a new car, wrestled with the insurance company over both cars,
failed to get to a friend’s wedding because of the car wreck and had to deal with that, started work
on my church’s website and had to attend two meetings for my CoHousing Association.

In the two weeks since then, I’ve attended Motor City, (which involved cleaning my filthy house for
Layla’s visit), started to plan for Mid-Ohio Con, attended four more CoHousing meetings, finished the dialogue wrangling on Issue Five,
did a signing at Green Brain Comics
and managed to get the rest of the car woes hammered out. Knock wood.

Jane. Is. Exhausted.

So that, dear reader, is why there have been no darn updates recently. When I finally get my center back,
there will be more.

I’m also starting a massive site overhaul on both the Vogelein side and the Fiery Studios side. I think that
dribs and drabs will be up as they’re finished, rather than wait for everything to be completed at once.
One thing I will be doing shortly is putting up the original illustrations I did for Call of the Wild and
Alice in Wonderland. Then I’ll be putting a whole new face on Fiery Studios — it’s about time; the front end
hasn’t changed a lick since 1998. So keep your eyes out… things will be changing.

I gots fans! hee hee hee So Shane and Sara Goodfellow, whose fan letters were printed in Issue #3, done a really
super nice thing for me. They live clear up in Sarnia (2-3 hours away, depending on bridge traffic)
and drove out to the con on Sunday. Sara, sadly, couldn’t make it — so she sent me a big bag full of Canada! The care
package was full of all the yummy Canadian snacky treats that I love to fill up on when I go to visit friends
in Kitchener-Waterloo: Smarties, President’s Choice Soda and Key Lime cookies (the bag didn’t last three days…) and
Digestive Biscuits! Thanks again, guys! I’ll spend an extra couple of days at the gym, but it’s worth
every minute.

Motor City comicon was a real blast. Attendance was light, but there were a whole lot of fabulous creators
there, and hanging out with the gang made it all worthwhile. Layla Lawlor drove up from Illinois and camped out
at my place for the weekend. It was a lot more fun having another artist to drive up with, and Layla finally
got to see Michigan — at least the inside of one of our convention halls.
Wendi and Sean Strang-Frost have a new couple of minis out and are branching off into illustrated
prose, with quite exciting results; Pam Bliss brought along her newest Hopelessly Lost But Making Good Time, the definitive gide to
making minicomics; Matt
Feazell had his usual brand of fabulous minis and cool Cynicalman paintings,
Sean Bieri brought me the most beauutiful new
art prints made on his Print Gocco (a little Japanese tiny silkscreen machine) in (gasp) 6 colors! Each one of those
colors needed its own screen… amazing. Suzanne Baumann was spotted
among us, helping devour basketsful of bread at La Shish, Jen Hachigan brought not one but two new issues of her minicomic, Lore; and Paul Sizer was there to show off two (!) softcover TPBs of Little White Mouse, along
with the initial issue of the third series, Open Space. At La Shish, we passed around many sketchbooks, doing the Jam Sketch thing, and even
did a jam comic on a piece of pita bread. Fun!

I did some long overdue changes to the site today. The Guestbook is FINALLY updated, there’s a new
“Front Door” image on the Vogelein site, (I hated the old one), and you can now buy many of the prints
on the Fiery Studios side by using Paypal. More updates… eventually.

Issue 4 will be in stores on Wednesday. I feel the need to apologise that it shipped a week late — many
factors contributed to its delay; most of them screwups on my part. Sorry, gang.

You can order it now in the Online Store.

It’s done.

Tonight I finished Issue #5. I find it somehow fitting in a strange sort of way — It’s kind of a
complete circle. #5 got off to its real start the week of September 11th last year… I’d taken a
full week off of work, starting the 14th, to go to SPX in Bethesda. As everyone knows, the show
was cancelled, but I still had the week off. I wasn’t feeling like working anyway, so I took the
week off and basically spent the entire time brain-jacked into CNN. The constant stream of news
was oddly numbing, and I got a ton of work done on the comic. I didn’t want to cope with real
human beings, and the quiet womb of creativity afforded me what little solace could be found in
those days.

To commemorate the anniversary, tomorrow I’ll be participating a peace march headed up by the Ann
Arbor Ad Hoc Committee for Peace and many of the local Islamic organizations. We’ll hold candles
and walk single file through the streets, bearing signs that say “Our Grief is not a Call For
War”.

I labored.

No, seriously, folks. I got this close to finishing the artwork on V#5. I pencilled the
last page, but I’m not entirely satisfied with what I saw, so I’m letting it sit for a while, and
am going back and making fixes in the rest of the artwork.

You see, one of the benefits of taking a year or so to complete a single issue is that you get to
really be anal retentive about the art. I am enjoying this luxury immensely. Why? Because ever
since people have started telling me that they really like this little faerie tale, I’ve been
totally sweating the ending. I’ve got a wallop to deliver to the reader, and I’ve got to
make sure that all the facial expressions come through correctly, or I’m not going to stick
the landing, and this crazy, twisting gymnastic vault of a story is going to be pretty, but all
for naught.

So last night I’ve got the pages to #5 all in a stack, and I’m going back and checking the faces.
I was heard to mutter several times throughout the night: “What was I thinking?!” “Was I
asleep when I drew this?” “When did I completely lose my sense of facial structure?!” “Who is
this grey freak and what has she done with my heroine?” So suffice it to say, I spent a number of
hours patching faces, eyes and lips to make them look passable. Not better, passable. I am
so glad I’m ahead of schedule, ’cause I’m not close to done, yet. I did make Messana cry
with the second to last page yesterday. No dialogue yet, and he already started to cry. This is
a good sign.

Another thing that I found out is how very very much I like my new style. I’ve mentioned here
before how bloody long it takes me to finish a page. We’re talking an average of 16 to 24 hours
per page, not counting pencilling, scanning, lettering and pasteup on the computer.
They’re fully painted, and take forever to finish. For the epilogue of the book, I decided to try
a new style of painting, one that was way more watercolor-dependent, instead of the thick,
wet-on-wet style I’ve used throughout the first four issues. I also chopped the pages down to 9 x
12″ instead of 11 x 17″ and started working at just about half the previous size. The result? I
love it. Pages are cracking along at 8 hours apiece, including pencilling. That’s a savings of
about 20 hours a page. The people I’ve shown it to actually like it better than the original
style, and once it’s reduced to black and white from the payne’s grey and that I use, you’ll
hardly be able to tell. It’s a little more black-line dependent, but not by much.

As I was going back and fixing the faces, I had to work in my original style again, and found
myself cursing myself. “Why did I torture myself like this for five years? I’d be twenty issues
in by now, if I’d only gone with this other style, first!” Still, my muse she is inscrutable.
Live and learn. I have, indeed, learned. When I was back to the old style it felt like I was
painting with Q-tips instead of brushes. I’d lost that much control. So suffice it to say that
any and all new V issues will be in this new style.

Something else that I did was count all the pages in #5. It’s currently at 31. This means that
there will be no black separation page between the end of the main story and the epilogue.
Sorry. It’s either skip that, or sacrifice a page of story, and I’m simply not willing to do the
latter. There’ll be an additional page and poem in the collected TPB. There will also only be
room for one single page of notes, printed inside the back cover in tee-tiny text. I’ll put the
notes that the story can’t live without in the issue itself, and then offer more complete notes on
the website, or free by mail to anyone that doesn’t have access to the web. The expanded notes
will also be included in the TPB.

So that’s about it for what’s going on with #5. Look for it in stores worldwide in November.