Hi everyone,

The first Peter & Company collection book is coming up fast, and should be ready to order within the next few weeks. In anticipation of that, I would like to officially announce the prices for the books. There will be two separate editions, and both will be available for purchase through Lulu.com.

The trade paperback edition will be $24.99.

The collector's hardcover edition will be $34.99.

Both editions will have the same content, which consists of the first 100 comics (#75-100 will be in full color), a 10-page book-exclusive full-color comic, new commentary and a few other potential goodies (time permitting). I won't say what the book-exclusive comic is about. You'll just have to pick up a copy of the book to see for yourself.

As soon as the book is available to purchase I will post the links both on my site and in a future journal update. Lulu is a print-on-demand service, so anyone who wants to order a copy will be able to order it through their site, which is organized in a similar manner to Amazon.

If I had a means to do so, I would start taking preorders at this point, but unfortunately I have to wait until the book is finished before I can take any official orders.

So yes, June 1st will be the latest date you can expect the links to be posted. Stay tuned!

-Jon P.

I was just informed over IM's by one of my readers that Peter and Company has been chosen as the "Best Comic of 2007" by the editors of CannedGeek.com. I was surprised to find that I had actually won the vote over both Lackadaisy and Perry Bible Fellowship, both being comics that I would rate much higher than my own in terms of quality.

Needless to say, this has made my day.

You can read the article and see the winners of the other categories here.

In case anyone was wondering where I disappeared to for the past week (both online and in real life), I was in the hospital. With pancreatitis. Again.

Yeah.

I'll spare all the gruesome details since I'm sure no one wants to hear them. I'm just happy to be back home. I feel completely drained of energy and strength, but on the plus side, my girl Whitney is spending the entirety of Spring Break with me at my apartment to take care of me and help me recover. I also can now finally start playing my copy of Smash Brothers that has been silently mocking me the entire week from the corner of my hospital room.

My first day back is leaving me feeling very disconnected from reality. I get long-winded just from walking to the fridge for a drink. I took a nap and told Whitney in mid-sleep that I had good breath because "I just killed a bunch of beasts," whatever the hell that means. The pain killers they gave me at the hospital must have screwed with my head or something.

They also gave me a prescription for Vicodin in case the pain returns. Whoopie.

All in all I'm hoping to get back on track with Peter & Company updates before too long. I really don't want to miss another week, but if I can't get my strength back it just might have to wait. I did manage to get about 6 pages colored for the P&C book while at the hospital, so at least I made good work time out of being sick.

Anyways, that's about it. I'll have more to show soon once I come back to reality. Things will be better soon, I'm sure.

Update: Come to realize tonight that I'm also showing signs of withdrawal from the pain meds they had me on while at the hospital. Looks like I got a couple of rough sleepless nights ahead of me. Wonderful.

So I went through and cleaned out a ton of ancient deviations from my gallery. I had over 250 submissions, over half of which were outdated with old character designs and freshman-level SCAD projects. I have deleted pretty much anything that isn't Peter & Company-related or a project from the past 2 years that I'm actually proud of as a portfolio piece. Also I was tired of my random pieces of art -- like the NeoPets Baby Lupe crap doodle from 2004 -- getting even more favorites and comments nowadays than the pieces I actually want people to look at. Never again will I post fan art to DA... it results in nothing but empty favorites and fanboy comments.

So yes, I am currently in the process of putting together a new forum/community. This will not be an extension of my own work like my old forums (so, in other words, it won't be called the "Peter and Company Forums" or something similar). Rather, I am arranging an environment which will cater to any artist who is wishing to improve and willing to work to do so. I am going to be putting up sections for posting, critiquing, and tutorials, as well as pooling together resources and links to other sites. I just got tired of trying to find a forum that caters to any subject or taste in a non-elitist atmosphere.

I'm in the initial planning phase right now, just putting together ideas for what content could be included and how to organize it. Eventually I will come up with a name for the place and register the URL accordingly. Some potential names include the following, with the URL that would be their home if chosen:

Ink Level (www. inklevel.com)
Fill The Paper (www. fillthepaper.com)
Pencil Cravings (www. pencilcravings.com)

Those are just a few of the names that my girl Whitney and I have managed to come up with during our brainstorming sessions. She's going to be helping me by contributing a few of her own tutorials in certain subjects, and I will be looking for others to add their expertise to the archive of topics once the forums get launched. Ultimately since I hope to teach college art after getting my Master's, I want to be able to have a place to send my future students. Sort of a "go here, look up [thread], and use it for your assignment today." It'll grow in size over time as more people register, and who knows, maybe I can spread the word around SCAD and get a good community going if I can tailor it properly.

If anyone has any ideas on content, name ideas, or would like to be a part of the community once it launches, hit me up on here or in IM's and let me know.

Seeya'll later!

-Jon


Update: The name and URL "Draw, Dang It!" (www. drawdangit.com) is available, and I'm seriously considering making it the name of the forums. Let me know what y'all think.

So I got this in the mail via UPS today:

[link] (stupid subscriber-only journal image display!!)

It's a traditional bamboo Go board, 3/4" thick, and is reversible with the standard 19x19 board on one side and a "quick game" 13x13 on the other. Included are two Kitani style jujube wood bowls, filled with black and white single-convex Yunzi stones, which have a good weight to them and feel very solid when placed on the board.

It's my opinion that if I'm going to buy a classic board game of skill and strategy, I'm going to make sure it's a collector's item that my grandchildren will be fighting over in the will. That being said, I've begun investing in good, solid editions of classic tabletop board games. My next planned investment is a good, unique-style chess set, seeing as how I don't own one and can't stand the idea of buying a $10 plastic Milton-Bradley set. These ones look awesome, but are just a tad expensive. Anyone have any good suggestions for a place to buy unique chess sets?