Mutt - 2010-01-25 22:50:47 Comic Alliance Drive is over! Hi Everyone! Lora Innes and the Comic Alliance raised over TEN GRAND to combat human trafficking! I don't know about you, but in this economy I think that's a lot bread! :) So a BIG THANKS to all of you that contributed! And Lora, thanks for letting me play a small part in this! J. -------------------------------

Mutt - 2010-01-10 22:33:05 Help Fight Human Trafficking!! Hi gang! remember last time when I told you about the Comic Creators Alliance? Well it's founder Lora Innes has everything up and running. Contributions to combat Human Trafficking will be taken from Jan 11th to the 24th. Please consider helping out okay? Thanks! Once again, I'll let Lora fill you in on all the details. Take it away Lora! "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -Margaret Mead Monday, January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. To participate, we formed the Comic Creator's Alliance--a group of over eighty comic book creators (both web and print) who volunteered our artistic talents to raise money and awareness for this cause. You may not know it, but there are currently 27 million enslaved people worldwide- more than double the number of enslaved Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children every year are sold into slavery, most of it sexual. The US Department of Justice estimates 16,000 victims of human trafficking are brought into the United States every year. Unlike slavery in the 19th century, what is happening today is happening in secret. So it won't end until awareness is raised, and people like you and me take a stand. So here's what we did: each creator contributed an original drawing of one of our own female characters, and combined them into a single wallpaper image. The wallpaper features characters from The Phoenix Requiem, Girls with Slingshots, Earthsong, Looking for Group, Shadowgirls, Marsh Rocket, The Uniques and three IDW Publishing titles: Fallen Angel, The Dreamland Chronicles and The Dreamer, and lots, lots more! Donate today to download this unique, once-in-a-lifetime wallpaper. The Donations Drive will last for two weeks, from January 11th - 24th. All proceeds will be split evenly between Love146 and Gracehaven House- two organizations working on rehabilitation of victims and prevention of this crime. To learn more about the Comic Creator's Alliance visit www.comicalliance.weebly.com To learn more about the problem, visit http://love146.org/slavery (Note: contains adult themes and actual accounts of sex slavery.)

Mutt - 2009-11-17 19:25:28 The Comic Creator's Alliance!! Hi Guys, Long time no speaky. I wanted to post some info about a new charity fundraiser that has been started by Lora Innes, Author and Artist extraordinaire of The Dreamer This one is to combat Human Trafficking. I will be participating in this and wanted to let you all in on the deal. Well, actually I'll let Lora speak in her own words, webcomic creators listen up: Hi, my name is Lora Innes, you might have heard of my webcomic The Dreamer. I have an idea for a charity fundraiser but I need other creators to participate if we're going to raise any significant amount of money. If you're a creator who has a fanbase of readers that you think would donate to a good cause, please read on. Or, if you are a webcomics reader and know of a creator who you think might be interested, please pass this on to them! Here is the email that I sent out to a bunch of creator friends this morning.... I wanted to email a few of you with an idea I had for a cross-webcomics charity drive, and I wanted to know if you would be willing to get involved. I'm going to make this email as short as I can, but if you wouldn't mind reading the entire thing, I would appreciate it. Earlier this year I attended a seminar on Human Trafficking, which is essentially the modern term for slavery. The conference was about what's going on in the entire world, but also, more eyeopening, what was going on in Columbus, Ohio, where I live--and most other major cities in America. There are actually more people enslaved today, in 2009, than there were during the historic Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade we hear so much about. Most of it is children, and most of it is sexual slavery--forced prostitution, and the girls are usually runaways or are kidnaped. After an intense weekend of being raped by paying customers (one testimony from a survivor I heard was 30 men in less than as many hours), a girl is usually broken, and a pimp has a lot of power over her to do what he wants. A lot of girls, some not even in their teens, as young as four and six years old!! are sold to 'owners' and this is happening in America and all over the world. An international organization addressing the problem is Love 146. Feel free to go watch one of their short videos if this is the first time you're hearing of this! I left the conference wanting to do something... but I got busy, and though it was on the back of my mind, I never did anything except blog about it to my friends. Well, something happened that made it personal. Last year I mentored a young 14 year old middle school student in a program Big Brothers/Big Sisters has set up in the Columbus City School district. One day toward the end of the school year she told me that it almost happened to her! Two men (with a gun) tried to kidnap her on her way to the bus stop (in the morning, in broad daylight!) They threatened to shoot her if she didn't get in the car. In the backseat of the car were two other young teenage girls, with duct tape over their mouths. My mentee said that at that moment, she thought she'd rather die on the sidewalk then be kidnapped and raped and her parents not know where she was at, so she took off running. The man with the gun started counting down "3... 2... 1..." until he was going to shoot her, but some neighbors came out and the man got spooked and jumped into the car and drove off. She gave extensive information to the police, but so far as I know, they were never caught and the girls in the backseat never rescued. I think all girls deserve the right to grow up healthy and free!! So I want to do something. I was going to just do an exclusive wallpaper as a donations drive with my readers and donate whatever money was raised to Love 146... but... I thought that maybe some of my webcomics friends would be willing to help out, too! What I'd be asking from you would be really minimal. I thought that we could make a webcomics wallpaper as a donations thank you-- but it would feature a female character from every webcomic who's creator would be willing to participate. So the least I'm asking you to do is, would you draw one of your heroines on my wallpaper? If you're willing to get more involved, would you be willing to pass this email onto other creators you know who you think might be interested in participating? I would personally head up the donation from my site--I'd create a special donations button on my store page just for this drive, put a time limit on it, a few weeks or a month max. If you wanted to promote what we're doing from your own website, and then link to the button at my store, that would also be super amazingly awesome! I promise to donate 100% of what we raise to charity. I wanted to split the money raised between Love 146 and a safe house being built for girls coming out of sexual slavery here in the U.S. A new one is being built here in Ohio that is struggling to get off the ground. It is only the FOURTH such house in the entire United States. So I think what they are trying to do is very important. If you're interested in helping out, would you email me back? And if you think this is a good idea, would you ask your fellow creator friends to participate? I figured that I could start the wallpaper, set up the file and draw my heroine on it first, and then I'd pass it on, and we could just pass it around to the next person after we finish. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this!! Lora Innes Here is the link to the Alliance Website: Please consider making a donation to a good cause. Thanks! Mutt

Mutt - 2009-10-03 02:02:20 The webcomic formally known as Samurai Pride... I have been having a lot of issues with the story in Samurai Pride, and I have come to the conclusion that the comic is irredeemably broken. One of the first and biggest mistakes I made when I started this comic was it’s name. I’ve discovered that “Samurai Pride” leads readers to expect some sort of “Japanese” comic like Usagi Yojimbo; and indeed even I fell victim to this presuppostion. I kept trying to find ways to steer the story down the “Samurai Path” as it were, but kept hitting a brick wall. It took me a long time (and some brain surgery) to realize that the story has very little to do with Samurai, and since this story takes place 3000 years in the future; virtually nothing to do with Japanese culture or history. SO, the first change I’m making is the name. Starting in February 2010 Samurai Pride will become "The Tempest Legacy" This title directly represents what the story is really all about at it’s core: The legacy of Mankind. What will we as a species leave behind? Of course a name change won’t be enough to fix all the other problems with the story. The second biggest mistake I made starting out was not having the ENTIRE thing written down. This resulted in a story that I effectively made up as I went, which was working at first, but it left a LOT of wiggle room when it came to basic things like plot, character development, and pacing, which Samurai Pride has NONE of. I got way off track very early and went down roads that I should have left untraveled. I’m currently “rebooting” the script from the ground up, and will hopefully get it right this time around. I hope you all will stick around. Thanks, Jack.

Mutt - 2009-06-02 21:27:36 While we are waiting... With the completion of chapter 3, I am really looking to spice up the art for chapter 4. To that end, I've been working on art and concepts and have started a new dedicated thread on my forum at Eyeskream for sketches and such. you can find it HERE: There's only a couple of things up there right now, but check it out, and don't be afraid to let me know what you think. I've also contributed to our new tutorial section at Eyeskream with a tutorial about how I add colors to a typical page of Samurai Pride. Check it out Mutt's Coloring Tutorial Thanks for reading! Mutt