Mysteriously Adventurous Christmas to all!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from us at Mysterious Adventure Magazine. Thanks for all your support and have a great season.

-Matt & Scotty

Rayguns & Sixshooters

The fellas over at Rayguns & Sixshooters mentioned MAM in their Indyplanet pull-list article and also did a little write-up on the Summer issue.

Rayguns & Sixshooters is made up of Marc Fletcher, Barri Lang, Patrick Goodwin, Eric Dotson, and Anthony D. Lee who are all plugging away at comic booking themselves. We got paired up with quite a few great books, almost all done by friends of ours.

Thanks for the shout guys.

-matt

Gelatometti- Scott & Matt LBCC video...kinda

Check out a little video that Scotty and I make a VERY brief appearance in over on the Gelatometti Blog. If i remember correctly that kid was asking for Deadpool...but I don't know.

You can kinda see Ryan behind my fat head, but his books got some primo screen time...so that makes up for it.

MAM caught a beat down...a Bish's Beat!

MAM got another mention on Bish'sBeat. Paul Bishop did a nice little write-up of our first issue way back when and it was super cool to stumble upon this today.

Bish reviews everything records and pulp mags to CDs and comics. Check out his blog here.

thanks alot, Paul

-matt

ComicBookCollector'sBlog REVIEW!

We had the pleasure of meeting Michael Hamersky and his wife at the Long Beach convention. He was very engaging and asked alot of questions about the book and our process. It was refreshing to have people ask us about the book and not just scour the table for something free.

Michael did up a great review for both issues- and when I say great, I mean honest. When we get "It's awesome!" or "I really liked it!" that's always great to hear, but when somebody gives and in-depth opinion of what they felt worked and what they felt didn't- it gives us a better barometer for making the book better. A good review validates some things that you thought too (but didn't change) or makes you acknowledge a gut feeling that you had yourself because you're seeing it on paper.

Check out the review at Comic Book Collector's Blog!

-matt

Long Beach Comic Con 2009

Some pics from the first annual Long Beach Comic Con.

Mysterious Adventure Magazine creators Matt Bennett and I.

Matt at the Mysterious Adventure Magazine table. We were in between Old Dying Kitty Comics and Taco Comics. At the top left corner you will see a wrestling ring. Yes, an actual wrestling ring where dorks actually wrestled throughout the weekend.

On Sunday Matt and I joined the folks at the Atomic Apple booth and did free sketches for the kiddies. Here are Matt and Ryan Cody hard at work.

Matt and Ryan joined by Jim Hanna.

- Scott

Lines for Stranded Print

Inks for the Stranded print available at LBCC. Matt threw down some slick colors that can be seen below.

- Scott

LBCC poster print for "Stranded"

"Stranded" is a sci-fi spectacular that will be showing up in MAM eventually. It was written and laid out by me with Scotty plotting and laying out as well. We've got Derrick West supplying some awesome pencils & inks while Andy Poole is taking care of the colors (that's right you heard me...colors!)

Scotty and I did this up (Scotty lines w/ me on colors) so that we had another awesome poster/print for LongBeach.

-matt

Letters are important

So here's a couple in-the-works pages from our next issue. These pencils are by Bratty Ben Perkins and on their way to being inked by the Marauding Mike Babinksi. It's another chapter in the Denver Dockry serials.

Whenever possible, I'll start blocking out the letters as soon as possible. More often than not, multiple issues will arise with balloon placement and dramatic flow of dialogue. In this story I got to do alot of fun back and forth quippy dialogue with the detective and his weasely sidekick. So in that spirit of fun, multiple issues arose with how to interweave the balloons so the reader still gets that sense that the exchange is quickly bouncing back and forth. If you look at Ken Bruzenak's stuff, in POWERS specifically, that guy is a genius at that kind of thing.

Doing this will also give me an idea of what (if any) changes need to be made to the script, now that I have glorious pictures to help tell the story. More often than not, I'll re-script quite a bit (not just for space issues) but also for need.

Thanks for taking a peak behind the curtain.

AtomicRobo LOVES Mysterious Adventure Magazine

So Scott Wegener supported us in our recent issue, but did you know that AtomicRobo does too?

Yep, that's right...I know he looks alot taller in his book.

LONG BEACH COMIC CON

We'll be at booth #96 at our first annual Mysterious Adventure Table at the First Annual Long Beach Comic Con .

Stop on by

-matt

Summer Issue AVAILABLE NOW!

MYSTERIOUS ADVENTURE MAGAZINE's second installment is now available for purchase from the fine folks over at Indyplanet!

If you've gotta few extra bucks on ya, throw it down for some seriously great looking pages. Scotty and I will have them available the booth at Long Beach Comic Con as well.

Thanks for the support!
-matt

OMG! MAM @ LBCC! TTYL!

I'm trying out that texting language that all the kids are so fond of.

So Scotty and I will be in attendance at the first annual Long Beach Comic Convention. We'll be in Artist's Alley at booth #96. Eventhough we're DEAD last in the listing, we gotta pretty decent spot right on the corner off one of the mail aisles. It looks like it's kind of a hike from the entrance, but hey- it'll work.

We'll keep you updated on what kinda goodies we'll have with us. Thanks for looking.

-matt

Schiavino and Flora show some LOVE!

Anthony Schiavano (SergeantZero) did up an in-depth review of our Spring issue on PULPTONE.

check it out, folks
-matt

Dave Flora (GHOST ZERO) sporting his copy of MAM

http://www.ghostzero.com/

Summer 2009 Cover

A little rescheduling results in a new cover! Lines by myself and Dan Schkade (The Fowl). Colors and design by Matt Kaufenberg.

We like to do behind-the-scenes stuff here, so I've also put up my reference pic and original line art. Don't laugh, it's really helpful.

-Scott

Our new MAMber Josh Covey

Josh and I are working on "The Broken Heart Of Ogopogo" (well Josh is done, so now it's my turn)

One of the first things we did was reattack how i had originally laid out the story. I always wanted that first panel to be a splash page, but in the interests of speed, I incorporated into the first page. Josh brought some of that back. He slowed the pace and let the script breathe more and really crafted it into a more solid story.

This is the layout split that happened when Josh got ahold of it. He really opened up the whole idea, i think you guys will enjoy it.

-matt

Raging Sea sneak peak

Well folks, we neglected the ba-jeezus out of July, in terms of updating the blog. I don't wanna make excuses, but we gotta whole lot done...so i forgive us.

I'll post the big old "state of the union" schpeel tommorow! Here's a little Shaner goodness to hold you over. Evan Shaner is working on the continuation of the "Fisherman's Wife" story from our first issue.

Down to Zero Tease

Another preview from the Summer '09 issue, this is a panel from "Down to Zero". Story and pencils by me, inks by Michael Babinski, and tones by Matt Bennett.

-Scott

Joe's got crabs!

Veteran MAM'mer jammer, Joe Dellagatta hooked us up with this smokin' hot pinup for the Summer issue. This is the HOLY DIVER, a character of Joe's own creation, that we'll hopefully be seeing more of real soon. Joe's guy is the first non-Scotty or non-Matt created character to appear in MAM.

Scotty and I also have another surprise creator contributing to the new issue as well. The mystery man in question has got himself a fan-favorite original character making an appearance in sequential form.

stay tuned for more folks

-matt

Coming Attractions

Bill Thom over at the pulptastic Coming Attractions was nice enough to give Mysterious Adventure a little shout out on his site. Go check it out and take a look through all of the other pulp goodies.

Denver's a bit sketchy

Denver Dockry that is! He's the lead character in "Saying Goodbye With Bullets," which appears in MAM's Summer issue. This is a prelim sketch Ben Perkins did for a pinup that will accompany the story by Kasinger and Babinski.

Expect more gritty streets and grizzled detectives in the demon-themed pulp story. Just the kind of thing that you've come to expect from Mysterious Adventure Magazine.


ALSO...our very own Scott Godlewski popped up over on MAJOR SPOILERS ! That's pretty cool.

-matt

OTRCAT.com

I don't know about you, but I love me some old time radio. There's nothing else like it. It's especially good for listening to while drawing. Maybe I have such an affinity for it because it's totally dependant upon the mastery of sound. Much like comics only need to be seen to be enjoyed. Single sense entertainment is where it's at! And I know exactly where you can get some of that old time radio goodness. OTRCat.com! There are thousands of episodes of the greatest radio plays ever produced. Jon will take care of all your old time radio needs. Tell 'im Scott sent ya.

Things that go Ka-POW in the night!

***SPOLIER ALERT***
***SPOLIER ALERT***

The Cloak punches the crap outta this guy in the MAM Summer issue. So I spoiled that for you...a superhero vigilante guy punching a two-bit thug. So maybe that's not really a "spolier" as much as an expected plot device. But anyway.

I hope Scotty doesn't mind that I'm giving you guys a sneak peak at this panel. It's just one of many that you'll get to enjoy in the story entitled "Night Shift."

-matt

Summer Issue COVER is DONE!!

To mirror Scotty's blog entry:

"The great Matt Kaufenberg just sent us the new cover for Mysterious Adventure Magazine Summer 2009. Yeah, that guy's crazy good. I'm sure as we get closer to our release date there will be more preview goodness over on the Mysterious Adventure blog."
----------------------------
Speaking of "over on the Mysterious Adventure blog"...welcome! We will be posting more preview goodness. We've got so much freakin' awesome being packed into this issue, that we might be surpassing the Spring issue in the eye-candy category. It's hard as the dickens to not spoil every bit of art that we get as soon as we get it.

-matt

Back Cover by RYAN CODY!

Rampaging Ryan Cody (from HurricaneKids & Villains and many others) was awesome enough to treat us to a little pen and ink action of the upcoming flip-cover for MAM Summer '09.

Scotty and Ryan recently hooked up on a super top-secret project. All we know of the project is a single mysterious image they've posted of a lone figure amongst a pile of bodies.


MAM Summer '09 is chuggin along. This thing is looking prettier and prettier with every image that comes in.

-matt

Mysterious Adventure Interview

The multi-talented Bill Cunningham was nice enough to interview Matt Bennett and myself about Mysterious Adventure Magazine in the inaugural edition of his new "Almost 20Q" feature on his blog. Be sure to take a look around his page - he's got a bunch of neat stuff. Thanks, Bill!

Crap to God to McDaid

So when we were deciding what MAM would be, both Scotty and I were clear that we wanted to give you, the reader, the most bang for your buck...and what says bang for your buck like 12 different incentive covers . We figured, how 'bout a cover within a cover and this one wouldn't even have that pesky (albeit awesome) logo-text.

The our search began for the perfect guy to do the cover for us. I'd been hounding Danny McDaid to work with me for a couple years at that point and with his ever increasing workload it was looking less and less likely that we'd be able to work on a full project together. The fate smiled and dropped a whopper of a good idea in my lap. Scotty loved Dan's stuff too, so there was very little decisioning to be done at that point.
At the time, Scotty was blazing through "Ambush..." pages and I decided to do a rough design as a framework for Danny's cover. By rough, I mean horrid horrid crap. I told Scotty what I though would look cool and showed him my scribbles, he cleaned up the idea and gave it depth and drama.

So I sent my blathering about a character montage and our images across the pond to Danny and he eventually sent us back this inktastic wonder that adorns the Spring 2009 issue.

-matt

NEW CONTENT!

With mid-year quickly approaching, we're getting closer to MAM's second issue. We're aiming for a quartely release scheduel, so as long as we keep hooking up with the same kind of insanely talented and punctual guys, that we have so far, then we'll be sittin' pretty.

We've got one story all finished (we're just waiting on me to make up my mind about the lettering) and few others possibly on deck to go into issue two as well.

I wanted to give a good solid tease of some upcoming content.


So these are some layouts by me, pencils by Michael Kasinger, and inks by Michael Babinski. I'll jump in after Michael & Michael and letter it up. This is a little noir heavy love story (of sorts) that follows our character Denver Dockry through a bad break-up. The story's called "Saying Goodbye with Bullets."

-matt

ComicsMonkey

I thought this was worth mentioning as long as we're talking about IndyPlanet. I don't know how many of you currently publish or are thinking of publishing your own comics, or even use Ka-Blam to do it, but if so, you may want to get in on this. Ka-Blam, an on-demand printer, also runs a site called IndyPlanet which will print and sell your on-demand comic orders online, issuing you the difference in printing price and cover price. And now, in light of Diamond's new solicitation requirements which make it tougher for the little guys (i.e. us) to penetrate the direct market, Ka-Blam is developing a direct market distribution operation called ComicsMonkey. So you now submit your order to Ka-Blam and request that it be added to their ComicMonkey listing, and now retailers can search their catalog for your title to put on their shelves. It's print on demand, so retailers don't have to order a set amount of books. It is an opportunity to get your stuff seen by everyone, at any comic shop in the country. So bug your local retailers and let them know about this.

And let them know they need to carry Mysterious Adventure.

-Scott

Indyplanet upping MAM exposure

This may be of little interest to the lot of you, but I found it pretty cool. Indyplanet http://www.indyplanet.com/catalog/ the folks who list our comic online (where it's available for purchase- if I haven't mentioned that) will put books up into their ad field at random. I've personally been drawn to multiple titles due to this ad tool, so it's really exciting to see that we've been added to the mix.

I hope that this extra exposure gets the book into the hands of folks who might not have really been looking for it.

-matt

Original Back Cover Lines

Here are the lines for the Cloak piece Matt posted earlier. As you can see, Matt's colors made this piece.

-Scott

EarlyBirdExclusive backcover

When were putting together the Spring issue of MAM, we (like all first time publishers) ran into our fair share of hiccups. A hiccup being a non-inflamitory way of saying a complete and utter disaster.

We rolled with the punches though.

One of those rolls was to give deals and little perks to our followers/fans and hopefully a little incentive to pick up our funny book. We had a low low introductory price and an exclusive backcover by the Savage Scott Godlewski. The backcover (that was swapped into a pinup once we added our intended backcover) was of theCLOAK. Who gets one of his adventures chronicled in the next issue of Mysterious Adventure Magazine.

For those of who didn't get that early version, here's a peak at it.

"Ambush" Character Designs

Just some quick character sketches for the main players in "Ambush at the End of the World". I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted for the Dead Baron and Katya. The Flying Phantom took a couple of passes, as did Metzger. Thank goodness I gave that one another shot. That first Metzger is ridiculous.

-Scott

From Layout-to-Page: Just Another Regular Guy

So I did up this crappy little flash slideshow thing for our "Just Another Regular Guy" story and the blog wouldn't take it. Scotty fixed the stuff that I screwed up and we started fresh. The blog still won't take it. You can check out the slideshow here http://mattcrap.deviantart.com/art/Just-Another-Regular-Guy-FULL-115093872 for now.

Thanks for lookin'
-mattcrap

"Ambush" Page Process

I think it's cool to see how other artists approach page design and breakdowns, so I threw together a little piece on my page process.

From the script I start beating my head against the wall, sketching out a bunch of panels and multiple angles for scenes and try to work out panel sizes and placement to ensure everything fits naturally and the storytelling is smooth. It's something that kind of just happens, but I almost always work in some variation of the three-tier layout.

Once I've gotten something that works, I draw up a final thumbnail at 50% of the art board size so that I can enlarge it by 200% and lightbox it on to my bristol board.

Once it's lightboxed, I pencil it (the tightness depends on time and detail) and ink. I use a 4H pencil, and sometimes an HB for important details, and a #1 red sable brush with the occasional Micron tech pen.

Then the peerless Mr. Bennett slaps some tones on it and it's ready for printing.

I think this is my favorite page from "Ambush at the End of the World". As usually happens, the script changes from typed page to finished page. Case in point, I decided to end the scene with a staredown between Dr. Metzger and his White Whale, the Corsair.

-Scott

Welcome Fellow Adventurers!

Hey, all! Welcome to the official Mysterious Adventure Magazine blog!

Our first issue premiered at the Phoenix Comicon in January 2009 and is now available at IndyPlanet.com. The Spring 2009 issue features 4 stories by Scott Godlewski, Matt Bennett, Joe Dellagatta, and Ben Perkins, with a covers by Scott Godlewski, Matt Kaufenberg, and Dan McDaid.

The Summer 2009 issue is under construction and will also be available at IndyPlanet.com. Stay tuned!

-Scott