Most of the posts this month have been uploaded from our old site, so I hope you guys aren’t too disappointed at the lack of original blogging.

I am very deeply involved in my work these days and can barely concentrate on anything else. Also, the Leechblock has me in its grip. That thing is merciless.

I had to temporarily bypass it to do the work on the new website, and between that and some other not-at-the-board obligations, I lost nearly two weeks of drawing time!

Very little progress made from a full day’s work, lately.

I had started a new project and sat down to do my layouts only to realize the proportions of the new book were to be completely different than my other works. None of my layouts would do. Back to – oh, dare I say it – the drawing board.

Further irritation: Got the templates via email. They were created with non-photo blue. Non photo blue which would not print. Not even on my printer. Even the people in the publisher’s art department could not get the template to print. What the heck was up with that Photoshop file?

After a frustrating evening, I finally realized “Hey, I know how to draw simple shapes in Photoshop, all by myself!” so I did. Black lines applied. Wow! It’s so easy!

Duh. I keep forgetting I have a computer.

I measured the templates carefully to enlarge them to fit my drawing paper, only to realize I had measured carefully and yet wrong. There goes two more hours of drawing.

I swear I know how to use a ruler.

I don’t mean to give the impression I am experiencing deeply annoying days of wheel spinning worthlessness, because I am quite alert and working very hard. But progress is slow, and it is always on those days when you can least afford it that one does something profoundly stupid that gums the works. And then the self hatred bubbles over and the only cure for the deep wound to the superego is ice cream.

I just got my car back from the shop (again) and desperately hope it doesn’t die tomorrow because I need to go to Fedex. However, we are supposed to have a winter storm, so I may get stuck. I have to get my stuff off to New York Comic Con. I’ve got a couple of finished commissions I have to pack, too.

Frankly, I would just like to get out of here a bit, and get some city sights. I would like to go to Starbucks, and maybe buy some nice gloves.

Since I last posted pics of my office, I moved the furniture and it is even more comfortable in here, though I am sure the new treadmill will take up lots of room (it’s still in the garage.)

Now, my board sits right in front of the window where the birds feed all day. Delightful! Often, several times every evening, raccoons climb up to have a treat. Can’t seem to get a decent photo. Dead annoying.

Every time I see them, I wish I had a kitty.

Here’s a commission I did for Christian Berntsen. Quite fun. Meant to get double duty out of it by using it as a trading card design but the editor went for something else.

The Star Wars Galaxy 4 Trading Cards from Topps are now available! I have a base card painting in the set.

Here’s the original drawing for the piece:

And here’s the final painting:

The drawing is by hand, and the final painting is digital.

Check the Star Wars cards out at your local comic or gaming shop!

This fangirl artist is always delighted to do Star Wars assignments!

Iran believes they have their first female serial killer (how naive that statement is). The murderess is said to have been inspired by Agatha Christie murder mysteries.

Christie’s novels, some of which depict unsolved murders, are highly popular among Iranians. The writer, who died in 1976, visited Iran several times and used it as the setting for one of her stories, The House at Shiraz.

Is quality non-fiction print book publishing a thing of the past?

The range of titles stocked by British libraries has been falling for decades. The net book agreement, which in effect subsidised the British book business, has been dead for a decade and a half. In that time, book retailers have concentrated increasingly on the genres that are easiest to sell. Book prices have collapsed. Within many publishers, sales and marketing considerations have come to trump editorial ones, and most authors of serious non-fiction have had to accept smaller advances and smaller print runs.

More on the print publishing meltdown at Rus Wornom’s blog, where he is tasked to come up with the necessary changes newspapers need to make to survive.

But why bother to read? Over here at Tall Tale Radio, you can listen to Rus Wornom’s interview on the “State of Newspapers”. Technology is swell!

Rus brings his valuable insight to the table, having written for newspapers, magazines, blogs, and several published novels. He’s been right in the middle of the editorial/business end of things, and what he has to say is truly illuminating. We try to see what the future holds, and it’s not all doom and gloom!

The brutal murder of a prostitute inspired Charles Dickens’ Nancy, the hooker with a heart of gold from Oliver Twist. Dickens would act out the murder scene in his book with such energy that he collapsed with a stroke during a performance. He died two days later.

Known for his concern for the plight of prostitutes, as shown by his sympathetic portrayal of Nancy, he would have been outraged that Eliza’s murderer had escaped justice. The involvement of Nancy’s pimp in her death was perhaps Dickens’ way of finding William Hubbard guilty in a way that the justice system could not.

Dickens certainly seems to have remained obsessed with the murder of Nancy/Eliza for the rest of his life. By the early 1860s, he needed to raise money for repairs to the large country home he had bought in Kent. Long a frustrated actor, Dickens began giving readings of his works in theatres across the country – and the highlight of these shows was always the murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes.

You’ll get a kick out of this. In order to save money, the Disney studio rotoscoped scenes from old cartoons and dropped them into new cartoons. Enjoy.

JJ Abrams director of the new Star Trek flick at Wired:

True understanding (or skill or effort) has become bothersome—an unnecessary headache that impedes our ability to get on with our lives (and most likely skip to something else). Earning the endgame seems so yesterday, especially when we can know whatever we need to know whenever we need to know it.

A CSI screenwriter is being sued by a couple of real estate agents whose names she used in an episode of the show.

The lawsuit references an episode that featured a real estate agent named Melinda, who dies under mysterious circumstances, and her husband Scott, a mortgage broker who watches pornography, drinks and is suspected of killing his wife.

For the two people out there who have not heard, Christopher Handley, the manga collector whose imported comics were intercepted by customs agents, has plead guilty to owning obscene material. Many links and analysis available here.

After talking to a few people in the know about this case, it is important to stress in all of this is that Handley does not have a history of being any kind of sexual predator; he does not collect erotica, pornography or anything like it. He is a manga collector. As the poster above, whoever it is, points out, he is not a threat to anyone anywhere. He could be any one of us. Hopefully this plea bargain will get him less than 15 years in jail, because that would be a travesty of justice of sickening proportions.

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If you don’t want to ruin your happy Star Wars memories, you may want to skip this one. And I don’t know how legal this vid is, so any moment now nice Mr. George Lucas may ask me to take it down.

That said, it’s up on Google video, so he can have words with them if he gets upset with me.

My fellow patriots, I present the Star Wars Holiday Special, circa 1978.

This is one of the worst things I have ever seen in my life. No, I am not kidding.

I have a vague memory of catching this the one and only time it aired, and as undiscriminating as I was at that tender age, I recall I didn’t care for it.

Over the years, I could not retain the painful memory of Harvey Korman in full drag playing an alien cooking instructor, and I blocked the trauma.

Nearly ten minutes of the opening of this thing is devoid of dialogue because it takes place in a wookie household. So we get to watch big hairy people growl and pantomime at each other.

If you can’t bear to sit through all two hours of this thing, check out this excerpt in which Princess Leia sings the Star Wars theme to celebrate Life Day!

No wonder Carrie Fisher started doing drugs.

Thrill to Bea Arthur in a guest starring role which may actually be the best acting in the show. This RiffTrax vid is much funnier than the actual film. (Hat tip: Brad Parnell.)

The most notable thing about this special is the Nelvana animated sequence that introduced Boba Fett. This may be the most inauspicious intro in Star Wars history, as Lucasfilm considers this story canon. Here is an unofficial fan page dedicated to this holiday treat.

Since the family wee ones are big Star Wars fans, I dug this up to share it. But after watching it again, I can’t bear to ruin their childhood, too.

The wee ones are sort of clueless about what my job is, and don’t really understand that when I make pictures of Star Wars people and whatnot, I don’t just do it for fun.

The other day, I tried to have a discussion about the meaning of intellectual property law (boy, Christmas is fun at my house!) and how film and movie rights get sold, and what makes it to the final screen is not necessarily what the author intended. The point went sailing right over their little heads, crowded out by visions of sugarplums. No kid wants to talk legalese over Christmas, I guess.

Regardless, I will bring this up if we ever have this discussion again.

Terrible things happen to intellectual property when it is not carefully managed.

That said, I hope nice Mr. Lucas doesn’t get mad at me for posting this. I like my Star Wars gigs.

I have nightmares about this sort of thing happening to my work, and of course we’ve all seen creators do terrible things to their cherished works for goodness only knows what reasons.

I promise no A Distant Soil characters will ever be drawn as sexualized children wearing nothing but thongs.

Just sayin’.

UPDATE: Nice Mr. Peter Vinton points us to this CRACKED examination of the Star Wars Holiday Special phenom, once as legendary as Yeti or Mothman.

The People Versus George Lucas.

Star Wars enthusiasts have made a documentary about their obsession, and how they feel Lucas has failed the franchise:

Fan debate over the extensive changes made by Lucas in special editions of the films released long after the original theatrical runs gets pretty intense in The People vs. George Lucas, Phillippe said: “As documentary filmmakers, we had to distance ourselves from the fact that we’re fanboys and fangirls at heart, to deliver an objective, uncensored, no-holds-barred examination of a unique cultural phenomenon.”

The British Library goes head to head with Google and offers Public Domain works online.

Many of the downmarket books known as “penny dreadfuls” will also be made available to the public, including Black Bess by Edward Viles and The Dark Woman by J M Rymer.

Altogether, 35%-40% of the library’s 19th-century printed books — now all digitised — are inaccessible in other public libraries and are difficult to find in second-hand or internet bookshops.

Author Susan Morgan committed suicide. Under the pen names Zoe Barnes and Sue Dyson, she is said to have popularized the “Chick Lit” genre.

After the breakdown of her relationship with husband Simon, the author – who fought chronic pain caused by two rare auto-immune conditions – became depressed and ‘began to loathe the life she had’, the inquest was told.

A review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:

The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor and largely illiterate Virginia tobacco farmer, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves. Born in 1920, she died from an aggressive cervical cancer at 31, leaving behind five children. No obituaries of Mrs. Lacks appeared in newspapers. She was buried in an unmarked grave.

To scientists, however, Henrietta Lacks almost immediately became known simply as HeLa (pronounced hee-lah), from the first two letters of her first and last names. Cells from Mrs. Lacks’s cancerous cervix, taken without her knowledge, were the first to grow in culture, becoming “immortal” and changing the face of modern medicine.

A manuscript sequel to the Gormenghast novels has been found in an attic:

Titus Awakes was written by Maeve Gilmore shortly after her husband’s death from Parkinson’s Disease in 1968.

She decided to write the book, which runs to 210 pages, after he left her a page and a half of fragmented notes about how he might have continued the story.