Usually I get orders for about 20 books a week from Libraries, Comic shops and Amazon combined but last week was a record with 36 copies sold! Before I forget, here are a few more comic shops that started carrying reMIND this last week! Once again, Please go bother them for a copy of reMIND so they reorder more :)

Traders of Babylon
66 A Willow Ave
Hoboken, NJ 07030
tel: 201-659-0802

Chicago Comics
3244 N Clark St
Chicago IL 60657
773.528.1983

Showcase Comics
874 W Lancaster Ave.
Bryn Mawr PA 19010
610-527-6236

To see the full list of shops carrying reMIND, click here!

Now, onto even crazier things! I have finally decided when I’m going to start posting new pages of reMIND! I still don’t think I’ll be finished with everything I wanted to have complete but I’m going to pull the trigger anyway! The madness will officially begin on…

Monday FEBRUARY 27th 2012!

This probably means that I will be staying up late at night for the entire month of February to get as much finished as I can before this start date arrives. And just like before, there will be spelling problems and typos and little things to fix as I go but I trust that,  once again, you will all help me refine Volume 2 as we go to be the best book it can be.

But honestly, I’m pretty nervous about what everyone is expecting with Volume 2 because it seems like I have only had positive feedback from this first Volume. I keep worrying that I can’t live up to the hype but I’m sticking true to the original story however simple or complex it may seem. I can tell you that it will probably go in directions that are unexpected. That’s what I like about it.

But, I’ll just shut my mouth and see how things play out as I post pages. :)

And just so you know here are a few more comic shops that started carrying reMIND. If you live close to one of these then please go bother them for a copy so they will order more! :)

More Cool Comic Shops to find reMIND!

Wow Cool (Note: Grand Opening is Early March!)
21607B Steven Creek Blvd.
Cupertino, CA 95014

Titan Comics
3128 Forest Lane
Suite 212
Dallas, TX 75234

For a list of other cool shops carrying reMIND click here!

Also, I have to give a shout out to Patrick Bower of:

CHALLENGERS Comics
1845 N Western Ave 2R
Chicago, IL 60647
773.278.0155

who was actually the first comic shop to carry my book. Patrick has been super helpful in every aspect of selling reMIND and at the end of last year he send me an email saying:

“reMIND ranked #98 on our 2011 Sold Graphic Novels List. 

To give you a little perspective on this list, it’s for ALL Graphic Novels sold in 2011, not just books released this year. And there are a total of 3453 places on this list. reMIND was #98.”

All I gotta say is that it takes a good comic shop to move that many copies of reMIND and from what I hear, Patrick has one of the best comic shops around. I can’t wait to take a road trip to Chicago someday and check it out for myself. Thanks again Patrick!

reMIND Chapter 1 – 3 on Graphicly.com

Also, Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are all available now on Graphicly.com. You can download them all here: http://graphicly.com/coffee-table-comics. Remember that you can switch each page to sketch mode to see what the rough page layout looked like. Here is a sample of one of the pages finished vs. rough layouts.

For this new year I signed on with a sales rep to try to see if I can get reMIND into a few more stores. Tony Shenton is his name and so far he is working his magic because I keep getting orders. If you own or manage a store and are interested in reMIND, please contact Tony at Shenton4Sales(at)AOL(dot)com. You can also contact him if you have a good book that needs to find an audience.

If you are in New York, NY and want to pick up a copy of reMIND then here are a few new stores that started carrying it this week. Please go bother them and pick up a copy while you’re at it! :)

Forbidden Planet
840 Broadway
NYC NY 10003
(212) 473-1576

Jim Hanley’s Universe
4 W 33rd St
NYC NY 10001

Also, another store in California started carrying copies! Thanks ya’ll!

Fantastic Comics
2026 Shattuck Ave.
Berkeley CA 94704

You can see my growing list of shops carrying reMIND here!

If you missed my last update, I explained that once I finish Chapters 4 -6 I’ll start posting pages again because I will have about a years worth of pages ready to go! I decided that my progress has been so good that once I finish coloring Chapter 5 I will start posting pages which means I will probably be about to start in February now! I’m so excited! Chapter 5 is pretty simple to color too and so I am expecting it to go pretty fast. I can’t wait to start showing you some of these new spreads because I think I have really upped my game on the coloring.

And just so you believe me, here is a little cropped in version of the intro:

If you happen to have a webcomic that has been around for over a year then I’d love to talk to you about helping me launch reMIND Volume 2. I plan on giving a copy of reMIND to anyone who is willing to blog about it on their own webcomic. You see, it has been about a year since I posted my last few pages and so many of my regular visitors have wandered off into other corners of the interwebs and I’m trying to figure out ways to let people know that I am starting to post comic pages again. So if you are interested in helping me get the word out, I’d love to give you a free copy of reMIND to give away to your audience or you can even keep it for yourself if you want. :) Just email me at Jason@reMINDblog.com and let me know your comic/blog URL and if you are interested.

Yay!

Also, a new podcast is up at MakingComics.com with Daniel Lieske. We discuss how things have been going with the release of Chapter 2 of The Wormworld Saga! Hear is here: MakingComics.com.

Double Yay!

Before I forget to post it again, please check out Daniel Lieske’s Wormworld Saga!

It’s an online graphic novel that he’s been working on for a few years now and he just released the second chapter over Christmas! It just gets better and better each time I look at it. Not to mention the little hidden reMIND posters in Jonas’s room! hehe.

Thanks for the amazing plug Daniel! In the next week Daniel and I will record a new podcast for MakingComics.com to discuss how everything has been going since the release of Chapter 2. I can’t wait to talk about it all!

In other news, Maritza Campos, of CRFH and Powernap, sent me a picture that her 6 year old daughter drew of Victuals! She said, she studied my book several times and then drew it from memory. How cool is that!

Speaking of kids drawing stuff. My oldest son has been drawing like crazy since he was 2 and the other week we sat down at the kitchen table and drew for about an hour. In fact we did it again tonight! It’s so much fun to be able to finally draw with my son. He drew a bunch of cars, trucks and trains and I was able to get some more work finished on my Kickstarter paintings that I am desperately behind on. Here we are drawing together:

And here is my newest Kickstarter painting that I was working on:

Sorry it’s kinda blurry. I took it with my phone.

In other news I’ve been recording some great conversations with amazing comic artists over on my other site. If you are interested in hearing some then I’ll list them here so you don’t have to go digging. Here are the cool people I was able to talk to in 2011:

Daniel Lieske – The Worm World Saga

Nate Simpson – Nonplayer (Part 1, Part 2)

Skottie Young – The Oz books and a million other things

Maritza Campos & Bachan – Powernap

David Pettersen – Mouse Guard

Trent Kaniuga – Creed & Twilight Monk

________

I’ll give you another update on my progress on reMIND next week! I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance to make a new Christmas picture this year for this blog so here is a link to the one I did last year.

Merry Christmas! 

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas this year!

• Each chapter comes with the ability to see all the pages in sketch form.
• Chapter 2 has 4 pages not seen in the online version. (Chapter 2 will come out in a few weeks though)
• This is the real version that went to print. (The online version have never been updated. It’s still full of mistakes.)
• You can read it panel to panel or full page.

I’m very excited to announce our partnership with Graphicly to deliver a new way to experience reMIND. We’ve broken the story up into single chapters and added exclusive bonus content and cool digital features. Guided view takes you through the story panel by panel if you want, or read it normally, a page at a time. You’ll be able to check out sketch layers for almost every page of the story! You literally use their built in eraser tool to “wipe away” to the sketch layers! Its really a lot of fun…you have to check it out to fully appreciate the coolness.

Chapter one comes out Monday, December 12th and will be available for the super cheap price of $1.99. We’ll be releasing bi-weekly after that.

About Graphicly

Graphicly is a cutting-edge entertainment digital content delivery system and community platform, providing an immersive solution to tell, share and collaborate around story. With more than 300 publishers and over 4,000 creators from major publishers such as Marvel Comics, Image Comics, BOOM! Studios, Top Cow and IDW Publishing to indie creators from around the globe, Graphicly is the leading story-telling and sharing platform online. The Graphicly Network includes dozens of leading websites and blogs, mobile applications including the iPhone, iPad and Android; A desktop AIR application, and an industry leading HTML5 web app. For more information, please visit www.graphicly.com

http://graphicly.com/coffee-table-comics/

In addition to that awesomeness, I want to also direct your attention to the upper right hand of the site where you can see I have a new mailing list. The old one was starting to give me problems and so I decided to upgrade to a paid service that will finally be able to handle anything I throw at it. If you have subscribed to the reMINDblog mailing list in the past, could I kindly ask you to sign up again so you can stay on my mailing list? Please. I’m trying to transfer everyone still interested in reMIND stuff over before I cancel my old service. Thanks for understanding!

Once again, if you are on the reMINDblog.com mailing list please take a second to join my new list DEDICATED to people making comics.

I have finally switched to Aweber.com which is the most popular and powerful email marketing system out there. It costs money but I’m really enjoying the features.

Exclusively for the new mailing list, I am writing 20 tips for making your comic. These will be sent out ONLY through email so jump on the list if you want to get ‘em!

Thanks again for sharing my articles on reMINDblog.com and making them so popular. Hopefully MakingComics.com can take over from now on for any of your making comics needs.

- Jason

I have a super cool announcement next Monday so come back to see what it is. It’s probably not what you think though. :) Oh yeah, and there is another thing that I’m working on that has been 2 years in the making that about half of you will appreciate. Haha. I know that probably wont make much sense until you see what it is.

As some of you know I exhibited at Comikaze Expo last month and it was amazing in my opinion and I’m definitely going to sign up for next year. I sold about 50 books total for the show and Saturday was just crazy! Thank you for coming out to say hi and pick up a copy of reMIND! There were also many of you who already bought a book at another show or on Kickstarter who stopped by to see if I had anything new. I had to sadly hang my head in shame. All I could say was, “I hope to get the second Volume finished within a year from now.” :(

On that same subject, remember when I said I would start posting new pages in November? Well, baby #2 changed all that. I can’t really say a specific time frame at this point because life is now full of diapers. I had hoped to figure out a new schedule for working on reMIND but so far when I get a chance to sit at my drawing board or computer I only think of sleeping. BUT I am still making progress, about 2 pages a week. Which is pretty good I think.

On a good note, Dreamworks just offered me another 3 year contract as a Visual Development Artist. This is the best job I’ve ever had and I’ve learned more in the last three years about art than I have my entire life. Hopefully within the next three years I’ll be able to start making enough money from my graphic novels to make it my full time job when this contract is up. It really is a crazy dream but I think it’s possible and I’m going to push for it as hard as I can. But honestly, I can’t do this without you. So if you have a second to share my book with anyone you know who might be interested in it, that would be super helpful. Remember that article I wrote way back in the day about 1,000 TRUE FANS? Yeah, I’m still working on building it. haha! But I am miles ahead of where I was when I wrote that article.

So once again, please subscribe in some way to this blog because I will be in holiday and baby mode for the rest of the year. I might not be able to post anything but you never know. And now… let the holiday begin!

So here we go. As you can see below, I am finished with the thumbnails of Chapters 4, 5 and 6. I have also finished sketching and I’m about half way finished with the inking of these same chapters.  I have the coloring nearly finished for Chapter 4 plus some and a little bit of the lettering finished as well. The only part that I haven’t touched is the final chapter. If I don’t keep changing things then I’ll try to have it well underway before too long.

I’ll keep updating this chart as I proceed. And the plan is to start posting new pages online when I get Chapters 4,5 and 6 finished. That way I can work on the final chapter while pages go live on the site. This will make sure that there are no interruptions with my update schedule.

CTN EXPO this weekend!

I will be selling copies of reMIND this weekend at CTN Expo. Actually, I’ll be selling them at a Mike Yamada’s table. So come by and buy a copy of Mike’s amazing new Alphabet cards and look at reMIND. You can buy reMIND too if you want. I’ll be there for a short time signing books too but I’m not sure what time that will happen. Sorry. :)