On a personal note today, I encourage anyone reading this to avoid products by the company VTech, at all costs (and believe me, it’ll cost you if you don’t!). The web is littered with stories similar to mine, and I only wish I’d seen them before I bought a rather expensive phone system from them. We got ours about a year-and-a-half ago, based on a great review in Consumer Reports. Of course, the one-year warranty is up, and now the buttons on all our extensions are sticking, to the point where you can’t dial (it’s worst on the number 2, which is consistently stuck on all our extension phones), and you have to nearly break the bones in your finger just to hang the thing up after a call. It appears this is a design flaw in many of their phone styles, based on the disgruntled responses I’ve seen posted on various websites. Everybody’s phone buttons are sticking.

VTech’s support line is fully automated, with no way to speak to an actual human about it. Their web support is a few pat answers on a FAQ page, including a dumb one telling us to use alcohol on the buttons if they stick (of course, it doesn’t work).

So basically what I’m saying is, VTech blows. Don’t do business with them.

Yep, you read right! For Valentine’s Day, we’re doing our fourth giveaway, this time with copies of ALTER EGO #64! We’ll be mailing out a free copy to the first 500 people who request it on February 14, so don’t miss out! It features Roy Thomas’ blow-by-blow of the original Golden Age “Monster Society Of Evil” Captain Marvel saga, just in time for the release of BONE artist Jeff Smith’s new rendition of the Big Red Cheese, debuting this month from DC Comics! As as a special bonus, the TwoMorrows Tune-In podcast for Feb. 7 will feature an interview with Jeff, talking about his work on the new comic.

If you own any of our books, let me encourage you to take a few minutes to write a review of them on Amazon.com. It’s easy, you get to show the whole world how intelligent you are, and you’ll be doing us a big favor by helping other people learn what our stuff is like! When you log into Amazon.com’s site, do a search for the book, scroll down to the “write a review” section, and let ‘er rip! We particularly need reviews of these books:

How To Create Comics, From Script To Print
I Have To Live With This Guy!
Wertham Was Right
Modern Masters Volume 1, 2, and 4 (Davis, Pérez, and Nowlan)
Best of Draw, Volume 1 and Volume 2
Heroes & Villains: The Wm. Messner-Loebs Benefit Sketchbook
Hero Gets Girl! The Life & Art of Kurt Schaffenberger
Thunder Agents Companion
Superheroes In My Pants
G-Force: Animated
Comic Book Artist Collection, Volume 3
True Brit
Comics Above Ground
Collected Jack Kirby Collector, Volume 2

And be sure to e-mail us once you’ve posted one, so we can thank you personally!

Hulk TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc., Flash TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

We just sent Modern Masters Volume 11: Charles Vess to the printer yesterday (which is the reason I’m a couple days behind on blogging). I’ll admit that, while I’m familiar with his work, I wasn’t a rabid follower of it; but after seeing this book, I’m about to be. He’s just… so… darned… good at what he does. Editor Eric Nolen-Weathington used the word “enchanting” to describe it in his promo copy, and I think that’s precisely the right for it. Even when he’s drawing Spider-Man instead of elves and faeries, everything just comes across as magical. There’s a gorgeous color two-pager included that shows Spidey chasing the Hobgoblin, which I’ll link to here, but this small size doesn’t begin to do it justice (it’s shown huge and full-color in the book). Chris Irving conducted the interview for it, which is one of the liveliest we’ve done to date. With the Stardust movie coming out this summer, Vess’ fame will continue to grow even larger, and I think this book does a nice job of giving his fans an intimate look into his world.

Spider-Man, Hobgoblin TM & ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

How much do you really, really love our magazines? If it’s a lot, you probably already have most (or all?) of them. But if there’s one of our mags you’ve just recently been turned on to, and want to get all the issues we have in stock, we’ve just made it easier and cheaper to do so. Our new Ultimate Bundles let you buy every issue we have in stock of Alter Ego, Back Issue, Write Now, Jack Kirby Collector, or Comic Book Artist, for half the normal price! Will we sell any of these huge batches? I dunno, but based on the number of people who seem to be buying the whole runs, a few at a time at full price, it may make sense to check it out at our website and save a few bucks.

Also on Free Comic Book Day (May 5, 2007), I’ll be posting a complete recent issue of each of our magazines to our web site, in PDF format. So if you’ve never tried, say, Rough Stuff magazine, you’ll be able to download it and read a whole issue, free of charge. I hope this’ll encourage everyone (with a high-speed Internet connection; these’ll likely be fairly large files) to take a look at all our magazine offerings and see if they’re something you’d like to get regularly. If so, when you’re in your local comics shop, picking up your free copy of COMICS 101 (see previous post), you can ask your retailer to start ordering it regularly. Of you can just subscribe from us. Either way, it’s all good.

We mail out a lot of free books to professionals. Always have, always will. Pros are the lifeblood of TwoMorrows, and I figure, they help us out so much with interviews and cover art, the least we can do is send them a bunch of books and let their productivity grind to a halt when they arrive. (So yeah, when your favorite comic ships late, chances are it’s our fault.) And we know they’re appreciated, just based on who goes out of their way to stop by our booth at conventions (sometimes, it seems like there are more pros milling around our booth than are in artists’ alley). But it’s especially nice to see a guy whose work we really respect, going on about our stuff. Such is the case with Cerebus creator Dave Sim, who posted this link:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cerebus/message/107319

Check it out, and thanks, Dave!

Speaking of Pete Von Sholly, he’s got such a stockpile of ridiculous cartoons (that he keeps stuffing my email box with), that I’ve decided to run one a week here. This is a particular favorite; if you like what you see, check out his TwoMorrows book Comic Book Nerd, or either of his two Crazy Hip Groovy Go-Go Way Out Monsters parodies of old monster mags. Plus he’s done lots of stuff for Dark Horse Comics, like his Morbid books, but we don’t get a cut of those, so why mention ’em?

Enjoy, and have a nice weekend!

Joker TM & ©2007 DC Comics.

If you follow our stuff, you undoubtedly know the name George Khoury. George has been writing some of our most popular books for several years, dating back to Kimota, The Miracleman Companion, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, G-Force: Animated, and our upcoming book on the history of Image Comics. George’s pet project (with collaborator Jason Hofius) is called Age Of Heroes, and it features interviews with nearly every actor who’s played a super-hero on television, from Adam West to Lynda Carter. The book’s just about completely written, the interviews are all done, and just yesterday, we got in Alex Ross’ pencil prelim for what’ll be the painted cover of this upcoming color hardcover. (As you can see, it’s a beaut! And what a guy Alex is, to take time from his incredibly busy schedule, to do a custom piece for us, knowing we can’t come close to paying his usual rate for a painting.)
The next hurdle is getting the final clearances wrapped up, but if all goes well, this one’ll be out sometime between Fall 2007 and Spring 2008. Stay tuned!

All characters TM & ©2007 DC Comics.