The first page of LEGEND OF THE BURRITO BLADE is live! Wow. Been waiting since August to be able to say that.

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And here I need to stop and say a few things about a few people I work with. Just because yesterday was that kinda day. It happens.

First of all, given the day, lemme say a little something about Renato Pastor. I have yet to find the thing he refuses to draw. I can come up with any visual and ask for any layout in my head and he never bitches. He just makes it work, or improves it. He’s gracious about it, too. I mean this is a guy who will stop and find me to make sure that what he did fits what I had in mind. To be fair, sometimes it really doesn’t. And we discuss it. And either I rework things to make his vision work or he shrugs and starts sketching. We once spent three hours with him sketching and trying out a few ideas before we were both happy. Did he bitch? Even once? Nope. That’s a joy to work with.

So is Lauren Vogelbaum. I have an editor who never balks. And I’ll be honest here, I’m a bag of issues. Every time I come to her with “I don’t know if this works at all but here.” she laughs and tells me it will work or we’ll fix it. And then either it does work (sometimes I know what I’m doing) or she helps me fix it. Working with Lauren really is a partnership, across all the projects we’ve worked on. Sure we take a 20 minute editing discussion and turn it into an hour of laughing and insanity, but we get the work done and get it done right. She keeps me on track and on target and has yet to ask me to do anything that doesn’t work for me. She could. She could demand all sorts of changes and I would listen and probably go along with it because I trust her, but she seems to know where I am coming from and be able to match me step for step and make each line better.

I also need to give major props (Do we still give props? Kudos? What are the kids giving out these days?) to D.J. Kirkbride. I’m working as the assistant editor over at Popgun for Image Comics (oh for those of you keeping track I was just the asst. editor for vol 4 but I am now also the assit. editor for vol 3 out in March) and we’re hitting the biggest crunch of the book (vol 3 that is) with having to proof every finished page again and so on. It’s a hell of a job.

Now I can proof a page, in general. Or I thought I could. But every time I go to do the work Kirkbride outshines me. Hell he outshines everyone else at Popgun. Everyone knows he is the best eye around for proofing. It is uncanny the stuff he notices that I thought was fine. Fine for my MORTAL standards perhaps. But Kirkbride is after the gold and he’ll chase it the fuck down. It is inspiring to work with him on these, it makes me up my game.

And as long as I am giving shouts to Popgun I need to stop at Thomas Mauer who is just a kickass letterer and production guy. Seriously. He tosses out work like it was breathing, and it is all fantastic. I admit that when I get a huge batch of proofs and stuff to deal with I might not appreciate that as much as I do otherwise (Yes, I mean I might curse him out but I love him anyway) and of course to the rest of the team which is in transition right now but everyone is acting all good and well-behaved and getting things done. It’s good to see.

And now coffee.

But seriously: read Burrito Blade I mean I know it is just one page right now but if you add it to your feeds … or check back at it every M/W/F … yeah. Also there are forums there, where I will be talking about comics I’ve read recently, some movies and a lot of behind the scenes Burrito Blade stuff. So come chat with me.