Is This Really Agents of Peril #29!!?

Yes, it is... and that's all I'm gonna say for now.

Also, Nightmare City is back with the 7th page of the comic's first story.

As for Creepsville... well, I hate making excuses after posting what I hoped to do with this Blog, but here's the deal: I'm still coloring the page that would have gone up today. I'll post it next week. My excuse is life... working the day job, being a dad, working around the house, and hanging out with my wife. It will be done and posted here next week. After that, I'll just cross my fingers.

In fact, two weeks from today, the page will take a break, because the whole family is participating in the Avon Breast Cancer marathon walk in Chicago. Colette's sister, Chris, is in the walk. We'll be making sure she has water and food along the way.

As usual, click on the images on this page and the much larger versions will appear as if by magic before your bedazzled eyes.

See you next week on Memorial Day weekend. And as H.R. Pufnstuf said, "Keep those cards and letters comin'."

Creepsville Toy Pirates #3 and Agents of Peril #28 -- Pretty Much Says It All...

Here are this week's installments of Agents of Peril & the Creepsville story "Destroy All Toy Pirates."

Rat and Percy make the break into 4 colors in Creepsville, while Frank and Dick are still out of it. On the latter point, I'll just say this for the last time, next week it's gonna get weird in AoP. For how long I cannot say, mainly because I don't want to say.

As usual, click on the images here and they will appear on your browser at the right size to read 'em. If they still look small, hold you cursor over the image and click once. Hopefully that increases the size for you.

What's that? Oh, yes, something is missing...

Nightmare City is taking a one week break due to pesky technical difficulties. It will be back, picking up where it left off.

At Last: Agents of Peril #27 -- Happy Mother's Day

Maybe a bit later than I would like it to be, but here, finally, is the 27th installment of the latest Agents of Peril comics strip.

Maybe it's appropriate that the strip be presented by itself (at least this week). What I mean is that I'm now journeying into unknown territory with the strip. This installment is the first of the newly wrought installments in an attempt to finish a story that has waited over a decade to get done. (I've made a habit out of doing this... for example, the movie Carnivore I worked on took over 10 years.)

I have to admit that given my Parkinson's condition, I feared that I would no longer be able to draw the sort of detail-obsessed, ink crazy type of work I loved doing years ago... and still do. What do you think?

After this story, there will be more. I'm looking forward to it!

Click on the image above to see the larger scan as it should be seen. I've noticed that my browser tries to shrink the image to fit the window. If you're having that issue, click on the image once and it should grow to full-size.

Oh, and have a great Mother's Day!

Creepsville "Toy Pirates" #2... and Where the Heck is Agents of Peril?

It's Saturday and time for this week's strips: Creepsville, Nightmare City and Agents of Peril... Hold on, where's Agents of Peril?

Ahem... there will be slight delay in this week's AoP update due to minor technical difficulties. Hopefully, later today, this week's strip will be posted. In fact, I'm holding it in my hand... there are Frank and Dick on the moon and that weird alien spacecraft... oops, best keep my yap shut and let you see for yourself later this weekend.

Meanwhile, the second page of the full-color Creepsville story, "Destroy All Toy Pirates" is here... including cameos by a few characters you'll see more of in the future.

In addition, I have page 6 of Nightmare City, featuring Dick Protozoa.

As always, click on the small images on this page to see the larger, correct-size versions.

Also, have a great Mother's Day. Thank your mom for bringing you into this world and being there when this world knocked you down. Give your mom a hug and help her around the house. I'm sure that she has hundreds of flowers to be planted.

What's that, Colette? My wife says thousands. She's a Mom, too. I had best get my work clothes on.

Blathering Self-Indulgence -- The 1st Anniversary of the Laughing Reindeer

Just out of curiosity, I went back this last weekend to see when my first blog entry happened here at Laughing Reindeer World Headquarters, learning (much to my surprise) that it was one year ago today. At that time, I very quietley signed up to Blogspot and posted a nothing bit of smoke about the new site.

In the year that was, I wrote articles devoted to the Mexican Aztec Mummy movies and my favorite 70s TV horror films, brought back my Agents of Peril online strip, relaunched Creepsville (in color) this last weekend, talked monsters in my irregular Confessions of a Monster Kid columns, started teasing about something called Secret Project #1 (still working on it), actually got my wife to read a few things here and there on the blog, wrote about the creative motivation of real-life close brushes with death, corresponded with new and old friends and had general good monster-oriented fun, despite the unusual title for the Blog.

Here's to year 2 and beyond... I can hardly wait to see what happens.

Creepsville Is Here! Plus Agents of Peril #26 & Nightmare City

The Saturday morning line-up of comics here at Laughing Reindeer World Headquarters has just increased. As promised, this week starts what I hope will be a long run of my original Creepsville comic strip.

I have to add that this week is actually the first page of a story originally published as a back-up in the first issue of the second Trollords comic series (ooh, I'm getting dizzy). The story was originally printed in black and white. Starting today and serialized here each week will be that story... but this time in color.

As I was looking at this story, it occured to me that maybe a few of you have no idea what a "Toy Pirate" is. Back in the day (and I suppose there are still some who do this), the action figure toy market was infested with a number of dealers who specialized in high-desire collectible toys, specifically those hard to find chase figures... or short supply figures in cases delivered. Initially, the chase figure might be the toy the company thought might be the least desirable of the line, very often female characters because action figures were considered boy toys. Later, seeing the chase phenomenon evolve into madness, the toy companies might release a short figure deliberately to induce insanity among the toy collectors who just had to have that Punch-Himself -in-the-Head Lex Luthor. Serving this market were Toy Pirates, who did things like buy toys out the back door of large toy chains only to sell them at much higher prices via mail order or toy and comic conventions. They found that some desperate completists (an all too common disease of comic book collectors) would pay the big bucks just so they could show they had Malebolgia.

Now, I'm sure some of you are just thinking, "What in hell is he talking about?" Before you dismiss this outright, Toy Pirate wheeling and dealing had such an effect on the big biz of toys that even the Wall Street Journal looked at the phenomenon in a front page story. In fact, it was that WSJ story that prompted and inspired me to do this draw the story at that time.

Okay, now that I've let the Creepsville genie out of its bottle, what am I gonna do? Well, once I get done posting this story, I will start putting up page-by-page something you Creepsville fans have never seen (with the exception of a teaser piece of art I posted here last year), a complete issue of the original series that was never published with the intriguing title of "Dangerous Spooky Theatre." If that sounds familiar to some of you, go back to some of my previous blogs here and check out the Johnny Ruckus/Monster Patrol story I posted here last year.

Running at about 40 pages, it is the longest story I have ever done in the series. When that finally starts here, I'll provide my usual background info and liner notes on the creation of the comic.

Okay, let us not forget that this week also sees the latest installment of the Agents of Peril online comic strip. I've mentioned in the past that the story is going to get very weird (as if it wasn't already) in the weeks ahead. Even as I worked on the all-new upcoming pages (for the first time in years on this strip), I wondered if I had gone too far.... Hmmm... Nah!

Last but not least, here's this week's latest page from Nightmare City featuring AoP's own Dick Protozoa.

As usual, click on the artwork here and check out the much larger, easier to read and more satisfying scans for fans of insane inking textures that you've come to expect here.

After you've done that, have a great weekend, which carries you through to a great week, great month, great year, great life... and a new era of world peace and stability. Noble Peace Prize administrators should now consider me nominated.