Mark G. Heike and Stephanie S. Heike
, comic book creators!
News and Updates from Steph'
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July 20, 2010
No, we're NOT going to San Diego and we're happy about it. We know a lot of
people that complain that the con's too big and that they can't get any work done
not only at the con, but the week before and after the con-- basically their work grinds to a halt for three
weeks because their editors and/or artists are too wrapped up with this silly
SDCC convention business, which is basically a movie and tv con now, the
people in comics just go for a week-long excuse to party.
Well, we'll still here, getting work done.
No, I don't have the comic art thing up, I've got to size it down a little to start with.
I've got a new web feature to be unveiled when the new FF is out--you'll just have to wait!!
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July 1, 2010
Happy Canada Day to the guys in the Great White North! We're going to have a new "art for sale" page.
The e*bay fees are too high, so we're going to try selling art on our own site for a while.
Still working this out, I'll post a link when we have it have it up, tentatively sometime this weekend.
If you've got any vintage obscure 80's VHS tapes or vintage obscure 40's comics, we can work out a trade too.
Mark and I are on a retro kick. We've been watching his favorite kiddie show,
Outer Limits, which is, like, not as good as Twilight Zone.
But, it's okay, he's taking me to see the Scorpions and Ratt in Tampa. Woo Hoo!
I'm working on various stuff. Doing MUCH more Femforce-related editorial stuff, since Bill has "Stan Lee'd" and gone on to work on his direct-to-dvd projects.
Still doing freelance inking/ghost-work/mainstream stuff anonymously (yes, I know it's spelled wrong, not ignorant, just too busy.) for other artists that make $$$ .
It's slow going on 21st Centurions, because I have to stop and do all this other stuff.
Angry about the Gulf Coast oil spill. Why didn't they
temporaily resend the Johnson act (like they did during Katrina) and
allow outside help cleaning the oil spill from the word go?
Oh right, we've got an incompetent administration now...
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June 16, 2010
Rik Levins passed away on Sunday, the same day as Al Williamson.
Rik had been teaching at Full Sail digital arts school here in Orlando for the past few years.
Obit
Rik was best known as the creator of Dragonfly at AC and for working on Captain America at Marvel.
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May 29, 2010 More items went up today including lots of AC cover art! Clicky on the Ebay button!
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May 28, 2010 Keep checking here, Memorial Day weekend (or you can just check by Monday night, we should everything up.), as we have a blow-out sale to pay for car repairs!
(Water pump went) Click on the Ebay clickee for details!
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May 22, 2010 Most overused nonsense fashionista word of the moment : fierce.
In less than a week's time I've seem (or heard) this word in a : girl's song
lyric, four or five fashion blogs, a tv fashion news report and fashion magazine
ALL describing a girl's look and none of which remotely look "fierce", which, unless you're throwing on a full body
lion or tiger costume, you really shouldn't use in everyday conversation to describe what a person's wearing.
"Ooh, you look "fierce"! OOH!" Can you seriously imagine using this adjective to describe someone's
look--male or female--and not crack the heck up? I mean, really!
I guess they ran out of adjectives like fine, fun, fabulous and fresh (Sheesh! I remember when "fresh" was the "Hawt" buzz word.)
I plan to annoy people all summer with the word "fierce", so I can be "trendy" too.
"It's SO "fierce"! "Does this look "fierce" enough?"
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May 20, 2010 Have you read the latest comics this week? Are you angry and digusted by current comics?
Making an offer good until the end of the month. If you're not a regular reader of our comic books, you can send us a
current-in-store Marvel or a DC comic book that you bought and are disgusted with, and
we will mail you one of our comics at our expense. Contact us
for more detsils.
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May 03, 2010 Why is it that so many comic book creators like characters sitting around talking?
Lest you think it's my fault, editor Mark insisted on a babble of exposition page on page one of my story.
He ended up pulling some of it and I scripted the "Gordon rant", but the plot actually starts on page 2.
Picked up some incredibly bad books for FCBD. Best one of
the lot was...ah, not going to hype it here, because it has a major flaw. We saw the pages at C2E2 in clear, sharp well rendered B&W
and...the coloring job foisted on this guy's work was dark (on a story that shouldn't have been moodily colored!)
and "painter-ly" as in "you can't see the line work that's the main
reason this guy has the chops he has in the industry" bad. Awful.
Anyway, lots of books with crossed balloons (which is why your character on the left
should always talk before your character on the right,
unless you're doing manga and it's always the character on the right that talks before your character on the left,
because traditional manga is read right to left, not left to right.
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April 28, 2010
Just wrapped up a FF issue,# 152 the schedule was bumped up a month,
because of the cancellation of the Rowena Graphic Novel-- Sidenote Rant: WHY, WHY, WHY didn't ALL
of you many, many people who complained about us cancelling the gentle medieval giantess's graphic novel
ORDER it from your favorite comics shop and thereby giving us enough orders through our distributor,
Diamond Comics Distribution?!
Inundating us with checks, money orders and cash for the Rowena graphic novel does no good now. We needed the
upfront orders through Diamond to go to press.
Anyway, the guy who pencilled and inked the story that I wrote was then forced to
rush and turn it in a whole month early and the results were, as expected when you have to make someone
turn work in a month early, subpar his usual stellar work, so Mark and I had to redo some panels,
which consisted mostly of me recompositing panels for left to right dialogue and pencilling new panels.
I was looking forward to this one, but like everything else it got screwed up somehow before publication.
Got more cruddy freelance ghost-inking work to do to pay the bills--a thankless job.
Which, between that and my regular assistant editorial duties at AC, is putting me behind on 21st again.
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April 10, 2010 Well, we aren't even there yet and we've already had some difficulties with the C2 show.
Not going to go into details right now because we haven't even been to the show yet but to put it mildly, we've had better organization coming from the WizardWorld shows,
at least BEFORE the show than we've had from C2 and that's not a positive sign. We're going to be set up with
a spot in artist alley but we may skip a day
or two like we did last year at WW, since this time Mark isn't feeling well, so we may not do the whole weekend.
We're finally at a show near the waterfront instead of at Rosemont and it figures that Minnie's closed before we could eat there.
I've wanted to eat there for the past couple of Wizardworld Chicago shows, but since we're not locals
(we have to fly in from Orlando, FL then drive from Milwaukee, WI to get to Chicago, IL) Mark didn't want to spend
a whole lot of extra time driving around the city without knowing where he was going.
Guess we'll be eating Golden Chicken in Milwaukee again after the show, which will be good since
if there's one thing you can't find in Orlando, it's GRRRREAT fried chicken!
If they eat it in New York, Europe, Asia or California, you can find it in O-town, but you can't find
one decent fried chicken place. There's the usual suspects of KFC and Popeye's, but they're not favs of mine.
I grew up with Jerry's which is long gone (since the 90's) and Mark grew up with Golden Chicken.
We drove to Deland once just because we heard there was a good fried chicken place there since the 1950's
and unfortunately the grease they cooked it in probably had been there that long too.
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March 23, 2010 March 22 was the
anniversary of the infamous Stamp Act, which was about unfair taxation without representation.
When you have people grabbing money and power and telling you it's for your own good, that
you're not intelligent enough to handle responsibilities
and run your own life, that's wrong.
Don't believe the hype. It's all about money and power.
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March 16, 2010 Working on the cover to FF #153. AC started publishing
Femforce way back in 1984 when I was in high school!
Did you know we have ÔEMÔOPC comics printed in Russia and Femforce comics printed in Italy?
There used to be two places to go to get the South Florida/Miami experience in Orlando.
One of them, Burdine's is gone now.
Burdine's was a department store designed for the "Florida lifestyle" which means that it
had year-round beach and warm weather clothing and tropical themed merchandise.
They had buyers who lived here, which I can't stress enough how important
that is, that not every region has the same clothing needs.
Unfortunately, Burdines got bought out by Macy's which is all based on the lifestyle of
snotty Neu Yerkers, which means there's absolutely nothing to buy there anymore
if you live in Florida, unless you're a snotty ex-pat Neu Yerker who wants to
look like a wilted wet bird while dripping in the humidity and heat.
The other place is Pollo Tropical. It's always a pain ordering there and the
food isn't really worth standing in line for 30-35 minutes--but you do get the Miami experience.
They do have the best fast food sweet plantains.
Unfortunately, Pollo Tropical decided to change their bright and colorful Miami decor
to a mottled, ugly "street person sleeping in their own pee" Miami decor.
Their new decor is something that probably looked good on paper, but doesn't work in practical usage,
the restaurant just looks grimy and beige-y now.
Maybe I'll go back in another eight-nine months.
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Feb 25, 2010 Working on three different things--current freelance gig,
21st project in progress and yet another commission. Just getting over a lingering nasty cough n' cold.
Going to throw a few vhs on the tv to keep me going.
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Feb 13, 2010 We don't have any snow:P It's snowing everywhere but here.
I'd like some snow!!!
You guys are SOOO lucky to go out and play in the snow every day!!
Here it's like 50 something and cloudy. Bleah! Me want SNOW!!
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Jan 22, 2010 New Ebay listings! Click pur
ple ebay button! Also, FF #151 is on sale at the AC shop right now!
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Jan 19, 2010 It's a new year, all right...where's the happy? I've been working.
As one of the few indy female comic book editors, I've been pretty darn busy working on future
issues of FF, plus I'm working on freelance inking jobs which pay bills. When I can, I'm working on 21st.
If I have any time left over, it's watching old movies and cooking.
Mommas don't let your girls grow up to be comic book artists! (or let your girls grow up to be comic book writers or editors, for that matter!)
Our buddy Nick got some dvds, so we got his vhs copies of some old 30's movies, so Mark's happy.
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