Nick Marino

I was the lucky winner of a contest held by TopWebComics.com at the end of March. The prize? An iPad!!!

This video is my thank you to Richard from TWC, and it's also a chance for me to show off Super Haters on the iPad, not to mention Time Log on the Kindle app (which I obviously don't know how to use very well). Plus, there's a little peak at the AudioShocker Comics Archives v1 digital comic card.

Oh, hey, while you're at it, you should go vote for Super Haters on TWC!

It's been a while since I've done an update like this and there's a lot to cover, so let's get to it!

- The image you see up top is the art for the very first AudioShocker Comics Dropcard. Confused? Dropcards are essentially little gift card looking things that give you a unique code to access downloadable content. They're pretty common nowadays for musicians, but as far as I know, I'm the first person using them for comics. The Dropcard pictured above will make its debut at this year's SPACE.

- That's right, I'll be at SPACE (Small Press Alternative Comics Expo) in Columbus on March 19th and 20th. I'm rolling into town with a ton of great Pittsburgh comic creators including Shawn Atkins, Dan Greenwald, Scott Hedlund, Marcel Walker, and Seth Fronzoli (plus some other great PGH comics cats'll be there too, like Tom Scioli, Nate McDonough, Andy Scott, and more). AND I'll be catching up with some friends like Brian John Mitchell and Josh Blair (AAHHH NO MORE NAME DROPPING!). I'll have a bunch of comics with me, both old and new, including...

- The New Time Log (1 of 3), which is currently at the printers! It's my first foray into full color printing and it's a bit ironic considering I'm pretty against expensive, over-printed comics... But this bad boy is one high-quality sucker! Smooth paper, lush tones, and-- oh look at me, I'm gushing. Anyway, I'll be posting more about this book in the next few weeks.

- Speaking of new comics, I'm a contributor to Andy Scott's comix anthology, specifically Andromeda #7. I have a two-pager in there called "Adventure 101." Click the linked issue title to check it out on Etsy.

- And continuing the theme of collaboration, over on my daily webcomic, Super Haters, I'm gearing up for a new feature -- Super Haters Guest Weeks!!! Each month, beginning on the second Monday, I'll be featuring seven days of strips by a guest writer. First up in March is Ross Campbell, who's got some pretty nuts stuff planned for Destruct-O-Tron and Mind's Eye.

- I also have a ton of other stuff going on, like an upcoming talk at the Out of Gutter comics discussion group at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library in Oakland, the bi-monthly Sequential Underground podcasts, Time Log nearing the end of ACT II, Project Basement (v3 starts later today (Powers and Costumes this time around)), an impending Deadpool comic with Brian John Mitchell, and... this brief 24 Hour Comics Day 2010 interview that I did with the TGT Webcomics Podcast (my section of the interview starts at 28:20).

Buy your own from Amazon or DriveThruComics!!!

As a follow-up to the Time Log one-shot comic I released this spring, I'm doing a Time Log webcomic with Pete Borrebach, Shawn Atkins, Paige Shoemaker, and Justique Woolridge. The first installment of new material debuted today, so check it out!

So go buy a copy already!!!

I've been working hard on a TON of projects, including:

- the upcoming Time Log webcomic (only one more week to go!)

- the most recent (and final, for the time being) story arc on Super Haters

- a new opening theme for the Comic Book Pitt podcast (the song itself will be available on my next album, 7 Star Sky Flash Kick, due out whenever I have 13 original tracks mixed and mastered for release)

- Project Basement, a fan art collection of raw, energetic pieces

- coordinating the comics end of SPF 2010 (SPF as in Pittsburgh's Small Press Festival)

- contributing to the Sequential Underground Strip Club vol 1 (a rotating series of fast and fun comic strips)

- getting the Time Log one-shot into a ton of stores (shout outs to Dragon's Lair in San Antonio and Austin, Tribe in Austin, Atomic Comics in San Antonio, Alien Worlds in San Antonio, St. Mark's Comics in Manhattan NYC, Comicazi in Somerville MA, Hub Comics in Somerville, New England Comics in Cambridge, Copacetic Comics in Pittsburgh, and Phantom of the Attic Comics in Oakland/Pittsburgh -- all these shops picked up copies of Time Log to sell in their stores)

- and doing this Sleepwalker sketch for Ross because he took my Henry Poole is Here challenge:

I'm kinda stoked cause the long and hard journey of getting my comic book optimized and correctly uploaded to Amazon's Kindle store has finally been achieved. The Time Log one-shot is selling for $2.99 and looks great on both the Kindle DX and the iPad (thx to Neal for testing out the iPad version).

I think that I maybe posted about this before, but you can also buy Time Log digitally as a PDF from DriveThruComics, where it retails for $1.99.

As for future digital platforms, I'm still holding out hope that ComiXology or iVerse will get back to me (well, it's been a while, so I'm not holding out too much hope...) and I'm looking into some other non-conventional comics avenues. I think that the Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony Reader might also be in the cards for Time Log, as well as some other eReader devices.

If anyone knows about a good site or eBook device I should hook up with to sell Time Log, gimme a shout!

It's been a couple weeks since I tossed out an update, so here it goes:

- I finished scripting the second act of Pepper Jones, Adventure Scientist (remember the sample I posted from the first act?). The third act was practically written as a script, so all I need to do is break it into panels. This project is, for those who don't know, a digest-sized full-length graphic novel I'm co-writing with Shawn Atkins, who's also the artist:

- I've had a few story conferences with Pete Borrebach regarding the direction of our upcoming Time Log webcomic (launching in August!). Again drawn by Shawn, Pete and I thought that this story was locked down... until we went back and looked at the scripts we wrote three years ago and realized they needed to be completely overhauled. So overhauled we have! We should have the first few strips written by the start of June.

- Yeah, I shifted myself from one apartment to another over the weekend, but the real shifting is going on over in Super Haters. I bet everyone thought last week's ending was just a mindless joke, right? Well it may have been mindless but it wasn't a joke! Expect some... changes this week. (Here's last week's ending:)

- I've crossed the 15,000 word mark on my super-secret project (which is technically no longer a secret... you just need to know where to find it).

- And finally, I started stripping. Yep, over at Sequential Underground's Facebook page, the Strip Club is underway. It's a rotating cast of cartoonists telling one big semi-coherent story through a series of comic strips. Here's the first panel of my first contribution to Strip Club, Vol 1:

Okay, so not too long ago, I posted some updates about Time Log, my ten-years-in-the-making time travel epic. Now Time Log is here, and there are two awesome ways to get your copy!

- You can download Time Log at DriveThruComics for $1.99

OR

- You can buy a print copy of Time Log over at the AudioShocker Store for $4.00 (we take PayPal)

Reviewers, if you're interested in getting a review copy, email me at nickmarino @ gmail.com.

And for those of you who hate paying for things and/or love the copy of Time Log you purchased and want more, a Time Log webcomic will be launching on the AudioShocker in August. Keep a watch for more.

Pencils, inks, and panels, letters, and:

So close to finishing this damn comic!!! I'm almost there. I've got less than four pages of gray tones to go and I CAN'T WAIT TO BE DONE!!!!!! This is fun but also torture.

Anyway, I think this will be my last post of process art. Maybe I'll take a photo of the page when it's printed... I guess that'll be my epilogue. In the meantime, check out this 2001 Time Log video Pete and I made. The TL story has, uhhh, come a long way to say the least.