D’mer

Mixed media collage.

First off, Allan Harvey, the brain and brawn behind the restoration of A DISTANT SOIL, takes his art full time starting end of this year. Which means time to work on A DISTANT SOIL.

Volumes III and IV will be a lot less labor than previous volumes, as we have almost all of the original art. A couple of setbacks, however. We pleaded with fans to loan us art back for the restoration of the books, but in a few cases, some fans opted to send us scans of the art. Turns out some of the scans are unusable.

A lot of people with home scanners simply aren’t going to get us the quality we need, even if they have scanners that can work at high resolution. So, there’s a few pages we have to toss and start over. It’s no big thing, but getting high quality scans is of paramount importance for this project, and you can’t work from bad source material.

Second, a scene in ADS 17 has bothered me since I drew it all that time ago. It’s so clogged with dialogue, it makes me cringe. I will do some redrawing.

Don’t panic: if you have the original editions, you will not miss ANY story. I am simply expanding a couple of things that were once in one page into two pages. Adding about 4 pages overall to the scene. The writing is fine, the storytelling is not. Each new edition so far has a few new pages. Just tweaking. You have not missed any story if you don’t have them, but they expand and add some breadth to some scenes.

Today the 75th anniversary of WONDER WOMAN is in stores and I have a short story with Gail Simone in it. It is super fun and I hope you will get it!!! It’s a real treat and we introduce a cool new character!!!

Also, I have turned over all the A DISTANT SOIL fan art and fic archives to Siphrania for the fanfic shrine. From now on, all fan activity will be archived there. Anyone is welcome to contribute. The site is 100% non-profit, in case you are worried anybody is getting rich posting your fan art.

So, if someone makes the claim a wicked comic creator is making a bundle on their fan art, we won’t have a problem. If anyone doesn’t want their art or fics there too, please say so.

Also, I have asked that nothing from the old zines re. addresses or fan mail with personal information be archived on the site. I make no other editorial requests, and restrict no content, it is entirely up to the fans behind the site to decide what goes on there, but back in the day, I am sure most people didn’t expect fanzines to make it to the world wide web. Since it didn’t exist, and all.

Have fun, everybody!