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ello to all who’re reading these words. I’d like to make sure that everyone who’s a Claypool fan, an ELVIRA fan, a DEADBEATS fan, whatever, is aware that this interactive weblog’s recent neglect has nothing to do with our abandoning our commitment to make this site as responsive as possible to you, but rather that I (Richard) am learning as I go, trying to make the prospect of visiting the Claypool site a pleasant one, not waste anyone’s time with useless bloviations, and keep everyone updated on Things Claypool. I’m hoping to make these Editorial Essays a much, much more freqent occasion, and in the process encourage our fans to also become more active in the dialogue.
The first point of interest on which to comment is that the DEADBEATS Internet comic is chugging along fine, and that we’ve reached forty episodes (as of this past Monday). The story–once described as being “a cross between THE DAY AFTER DOOMSDAY and THE CANTERBURY TALES, in the TINTIN format…and with vampires” seems to be playing out well, and we’re getting good hits. The cult of DEADBEATS doesn’t seem to be willing to die quite yet.
Also, in the greater world of Claypool, there’ll be a meeting of the major players two weeks from now, in Tarrytown NY (at a DARK SHADOWS Festival, appropriately enough). I’ll be taking a train from NYC to Tarrytown and meeting up with legendary Claypool publisher Ed Via and his wife Sandy (who’s also been our company comptroller for most of our existence) and we’re going to be discussing a number of Claypool-related matters, including possibly a new home for one of our series. Naturally, the readers who check in on this website will be the first to know what’s going to be going on (if anything will). It’s exciting to think that we’ll be able to reintroduce some of our characters to a waiting world–including those parts of the world who haven’t realized yet that they were waiting to see these characters–and make it at least as effective a launch as the previous time.
Other than that, life’s been somewhat quiet. The NY/NJ area’s struggling under a heat wave and that makes it somewhat harder to be mustering up a lot of energy, creatively or otherwise. Fortunately, I’m far enough ahead on the DEADBEATS Internet strip so that I’ll never, ever (he wrote, hopefully) get behind on my deadlines. I guess that it took a circumstance of about 3/5 of my assigned work going away to enable me to handle everything that was left on myplate.
Along those lines, since my Claypool duties are at a lull just now, I’ve begun writing a novel–one that I’ve had aspirations towards writing for many years now, but never been able to block out quite enough time to start. Now, I’ve ample spare time and would like to stop being one of those poseurs who claims to have at least one good novel in him, let alone one who’s claimed to possess an entire, extended fantasy novel series of which he’s yet to write a single chapter. (Come on, we each know someone like that–!) Now, finally, I’ll be able to transcend my poseur-itude and Do the Work. I know that this’ll be a great learning experience for me–already I’ve discovered that I’d come to rely on having the pictures tell half the story for me (big surprise) and I’m going to have to make decisions–hopefully intelligent ones–about how much visual information I could or should pack into the text narrative: How much description is going to be necessary to encourage the reader’s visualization of the different characters and/or settings? When I’m drawing DEADBEATS, everyone’s look is predetermined, and if it changes, it’s got not only a narrative function but also an immediate visual shift. Does it matter if my new lead character is short, tall, dark, light, handsome, plain? It may, in some way that informs how he interacts with his environment, but I’ll have to decide that and make it work.
Also, my longtime collaborator Kurt Busiek and I are going to engage in yet another feat of integrative derring-do: Following our successful joint effort in producing SUPERMAN #661 (April 2007), Kurt and I got clearance of the SUPERMAN editorial staff to do more work together on more DC issues. What with the introduction of the tragic villainess Khyrana, Kurt and I got the thumbs-up to extend her story in a series of issues of WONDER WOMAN. We’re working out the creative details, and I expect that it’ll be exciting, intriguing, and fun for all. As with the earlier issue, Kurt and I will be co-plotting, I’ll be delivering the page layouts (under Kurt’s active supervision), and Eduardo Barreto will be reworking the layouts into finished, polished art. It worked out pretty well in SUPERMAN #661, despite some fairly severe deadline pressure, so we’re expecting that the follow-up issues will look better, read better, and simply be better. Nothing’s been scheduled yet, but I’ll let out whatever news there is, once it exists.
That’s it for now. Please feel free to send in whatever comments, questions, or observations that occur. I’m going to be very available for feedback, answers, or countercommentary.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 4:15 am and is filed under the latest news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.