Once again its been a while since my last post. Convention season and wrapping up things on Die Kitty Die have kept me hopping. There’s lots of news to report so let me take the opportunity to catch everyone up.
First on the Die Kitty Die front, all artwork is just about done. Certainly from my end all work is done. Dan Parent tells me all files will be off to the printer this week or the next. We should have hard copies in our hands by next month. I honestly can’t wait!
We’re in the thick of the 2016 Convention Season and the 2016 Die Kitty Die World Tour is under weigh. Last week, Dan and I were in Calgary for the great Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo. I’ll be posting a photo or two from that even in the Photo Album later. Please check it out. This week, we’re off to Ottawa for Ottawa Comiccon which has commissioned an exclusive Die Kitty Die print. I’ll have to post that later too. I’ll also be adding Ottawa Comiccon, along with a couple of other dates, to the Events page so keep checking there too.
This piece is a commission for my pal and Die Kitty Die’s biggest booster, Adam Alamo. It is an homage to the classic Silver-Age Fantastic Four #16 cover. I love Silver Age themed pieces! If you have a commission like this in mind, please don’t hold back! Let me know! I’ve got a couple more ahead of me that I’m looking forward to very much. Of course I’ll post them here when I’m done. This one was penciled and inked by me and colored with Copic and Charpak markers.
I delivered this one to Adam personally when he and another pal, Jim Bailey, along with Adam’s adorable son Zaius, came to see me at Dewey’s Comic City for Free Comic Book Day. This was part of a long comic book weekend for Adam and Jim that began with a tour of the Archie Comics offices. I’d set up the tour for Adam before my elimination by Archie. I met him and Jim there and Dan Parent and I took them out to lunch.
The tour marked my first visit to the Archie Offices since they had let me go.
When I last posted about the end of my time with Archie, I included the detail that I was let go without a word. The production manager informed me that there was no more work for me and that was it. No one else spoke to me. A couple of weeks went by and I was being pretty open about what happened whenever I spoke about it. I posted here the details about how it went down:
http://fernandoruizeverybody.com/archie-digest-269-my-final-archie-story/
No longer attached to Archie Comics, I’ve also been fairly open with my feelings on Archie’s publishing strategies. Apparently, Archie wasn’t happy about this. I was contacted by the president of Archie Comics (a former student of mine who got his start at Archie with my recommendation! Boy! Did THAT bite me on the ass!) and later by CEO Jon Goldwater. Goldwater expressed complete surprise to learn that I’d been cut loose. It seems he had no idea. He then proceeded to tell me though why it was necessary. ( The bottom line is it was financial… although strangely enough, they can afford to pay Adam Hughes.) He concluded by saying, “I’m going to see what can be done for you and I’ll get back to you.” I never heard from him again.
During Adam’s tour, I was confronted by Archie Co-President Victor Gorelick who said to me, “You have to understand… you were just a freelancer!” Ouch! After twenty-two years there, THAT certainly made me feel better! He went on to tell me I’ve “burned my bridges.” Honestly the way the job had been deteriorating, there wasn’t much of a bridge to burn!
It’s sad the way things turned out with Archie because it was all unnecessary and all due to their terribly short-sighted, ultimately self-destructive publishing practices. That, however, is another post…
In the meantime, I’m busier than ever! I’ve got more Eerie Cuties to draw! My pages have been going up every couple of days. Here is a link to the latest:
http://www.eeriecuties.com/strips-ec/siren_brawl_-_pg_10_of_12
I’ve also got TWO projects coming up with Dynamite Comics that I’ll be posting about soon. As always, keep checking back here!
