New Aesop’s Fables books on Amazon.com
Jan 23rd
When I was a youngster I loved Aesop’s fables and the wisdom they contained. So it was fun to be able to work on a couple of updated fables of ABDO Publishing’s Short Tales imprint a while back. I just noticed that the books went on sale this week!
Everybody knows cautionary tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf but you’ve never seen it through the lens of animation superstar illustrator Will Meugniot (‘Ultimate Avengers 2′) before. I thought I turned in a pretty funny script for this story book, but Will’s drawings make it laugh-out-loud hilarious.
I wasn’t that familiar with The Ants and the Grasshopper Aesop’s ode to hard work and planning. Comics great Mark Bloodworth drew this one and did amazingly detailed renderings of the insect characters of the story. I can’t wait to see the colored images for the first time!
The books are for beginning readers and are meant for libraries. Check out the covers!
Other books in the line include The Lion and the Mouse by Shannon Eric Denton and Mike Dubisch, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse by Shannon Denton and Mark Bloodworth, The Tortoise and the Hare by Shannon Denton and Mark Pennington, The Fox and the Grapes by Christopher E. Long and John Cbonis.
Now if I could just get an ETA on the Norse Mythology books we did for ABDO!
Update: Amazon shows September for the Norse Myth books.
GRUNTS Comin’ at ya!
Jan 6th
Woo-hoo. The GRUNTS: WAR STORIES trade paperback is coming from Arcana this April. It’s a collection of short stories based on Shannon Eric Denton & Keith Giffen’s squad of resourceful U.S. Amry guys who encounter strange things on the World War II battlefield.
I’m psyched because I’ve got a short story contained within. Mine is a straight-ahead tale of three of the grunts taking on a platoon of Nazis to recover a stolen document.
You’ve also got stories from great comic writers like Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman, Kevin Grevioux, Dwight MacPherson and Christopher E. Long to name a few.
The tireless Matt “More Red Bull” Jacobs drew the whole thing.
It’s 9 new stories plus pinups and extras.
Be sure to ask your retailer about it and give them Diamond ordering code JAN10 0720
Here’s the official description and cover:
ISBN: 978-1-897548-23-3
Created by Shannon Eric Denton & Keith Giffen. Illustrated by Matt Jacobs(Prototype)During World War Two, an American squad encounters a superhuman German unit and starts a Eugenics Race that carries into present day. Collecting the War Stories of the Grunts, there are contributions from Kevin Grevioux (New Warriors), Christopher E. Long (Wetworks), Dwight Macpherson (Archibald Saves Christmas), Howard Wong (After The Cape), Marc Bernardin/Adam Freeman (The Authority), Mike Bullock (The Phantom), Jimmie Robinson (Bomb Queen), Rob M. Worley (Scratch9) and many more!
My new comic series is…SCRATCH9
Dec 9th
So, the cat’s out of the bag…pun most definitely intended!
ComicBookResources has the scoop on the new young readers comic book I created called Scratch9!
My good buddy Jason T. Kruse is illustrating it. The astonishing Mike Kunkel is providing the covers.
It won’t arrive in comic shops until next summer, but I’m super-duper excited about it right now!
Click through for the whole scoop!
Stay tuned to Scratch9.com for details as they happen!
HAIRY THINGS from APE Entertainment
Nov 4th
This book looks pretty cool.
Written by Jay Carvajal with Art by Marc Borstel, you can order all three issue from the Diamond Catalog right now (NOV090585, NOV090586, NOV090587)…
THE REVENANT: The Movie!
Oct 4th
Welcome interweb travelers who have arrived at RobWorley.com looking for info about D. Kerry Prior’s new movie ‘The Revenant‘ or its sequel.
You were probably directed here by Google or some such because this site is positively overflowing with keyword references to “The Revenant”.
Well, you’ve come to the wrong place. Or maybe the right place depending on your point of view.
See, last year Desperado Publishing released the graphic novel I wrote, which is also called ‘The Revenant‘. It bears no relation to the movie, other than the fact that one of the lead characters is a dead man and it’s pretty damn funny.
But, no, our (Keith Giffen, Shannon Denton, Mat Santolouco and me) Revenant is a pulp-inspired ghoul who loves nothing more than to torture the evil crime-lords of Sapphire City. It drew praise from reviewers at Ain’t It Cool and Rue Morgue Magazine to name a few.
So, it may not be ‘The Revenant‘ you’re looking for, but if you think it sounds interesting you can check out TheRevenantComic.com for preview pages and info. Then ask your local comic shop to get a copy for ya, or buy it on Amazon.com!
As for me, I’m looking forward to seeing this new movie that everyone’s buzzing about.
BTW: What should I tell the producers of our movie to call our movie, since we’re clearly not going to be calling it ‘The Revenant‘?
Ape Entertainment Announces KIZOIC Line
Oct 2nd
Hmmmm…this is interesting news. But what does it have to do with me? Stay tuned…
SAN DIEGO, CA – September 28, 2009 – Ape Entertainment today announced the launch of its new imprint, “KiZoic”, which will feature content aimed primarily at younger readers.
KiZoic titles will be released as either stand-alone 48-page one-shots or as mini-series in the standard 32-page comic book format and will be available to Direct Market and comic book specialty shops. All mini-series will be collected into digest (6 x 9) trade paperbacks and made available to both the Direct Market and the mass market, via Diamond Book Distributors, to Borders, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and other outlets.
The first official title to be released under the new imprint will be Mecha-Nation, a 3-issue mini-series from Spectacular Spider-Man producers Greg Weisman (Gargoyles) and Vic Cook (Hellboy: Blood and Iron), and Greg Guler (Phineas and Ferb) with interior artwork by talented newcomer Antonio Campo and covers by Greg Guler and Sean “Cheeks” Galloway.
The New Kid. The Geek. The Rocker. The Cheerleader. The Goth. An unlikely group of friends under normal circumstances, right? But in Mecha-Nation, Glass Lake High School’s newest transfer student, Kevin Cho, discovers that he has a lot more in common with these individuals than just econ class! These kids are more than just homo-sapiens, they’re Mecha-Sapiens! Empowered with the ability to transform into robotic warriors, they are the first of a brand new Mecha-Nation!
“We are very excited to launch our new young reader imprint with a title like Mecha-Nation, and with such talented creators as Vic, Greg and Greg. The KiZoic imprint was designed to be a home for new fresh content with well-written stories that feature amazing art all designed to spark the imagination of young readers everywhere.” said Co-Publisher Brent E. Erwin.
RobWorley.com running WordPress
Aug 16th
So, I finally upgraded my blog software this weekend.
RobWorley.com had been running b2evolution for the past five years. It’s a swell bit of software. When I settled on it back in the day it was one of two projects that grew up from the remains of the previous open source blogging favorite cafelog’s b2. The other project was WordPress.
Since then WordPress has caught fire. An amazing support community sprung up around it. It has a huge repository of plugins, widgets and themes. I had occasion to install WP on another blog I was setting up and I was hooked pretty quickly.
In addition to the great community, it has the best back office interface I’ve ever seen in a CMS, and I’ve toyed with a lot of Content Management Systems: Joomla, Drupal, Silverstripe, Typad, Typo not to mention a number of custom coded ones. The back end is clean, easy to navigate, easy to understand without the need for instructions.
One nice feature is a automatic upgrade mechanism. Upgrading open source web software is the bane of any website’s existence. With my site running a tag team of b2evo and ZenPhoto.org I was in a constant cycle of downloading updates, tweaking config files, backing up, uploading, reinstalling, blah blah blah. With WordPress you can update the core software and any plugins you might be running by clicking through a couple of screens and it’s done.
There was no clear path to migrate from b2evo to WordPress. WordPress supports numerous imports, but b2evo isn’t one of them. I did find solutions described elsewhere online though. If you’re interested in moving, here’s the process I used:
- Find a skin for your version of b2evo that makes it output Moveable Type format. I found such a skin here, although I think it is for pre version 2.0 installs. I didn’t work for me because I was on version 2.3. However I was able to modify it so it worked fine with version 2.3. If you’re on 2.x it may work for you as well. If you’re on 3.x it probably won’t. Download the Movable Type Skin for b2evolution…
- If you’re using my MT skin, you’ll then have to put it on your b2evo install under the /skins folder.
- Run your blog with the MT skin. You can use a URL like: http://www.yourdomain.com/index.php?tempskin=mt&posts=9999999999999 – which should bring up all your posts and comments in an ugly looking format. Save the results to a text file.
- Install WordPress on your server.
- Use Tools->Import and follow the steps for importing a Moveable Type blog. It works amazingly well.
One HUGE mistake I made was to install the Tweetly plugin before doing the import. Tweetly posts a tweet on Twitter every time you post a new blog. It ended up tweeting for every single entry I imported. It’s a wonder I still have a Twitter account.
I’ve decided to do away with ZenPhoto as well. It’s a cool, lightweight gallery but I’m moving my stuff to Flickr mainly to avoid the upgrade cycle, and also because I couldn’t get the one good ZenPhoto plugin for WordPress to work.
There are numerous nice Flickr plugins available. The move was pretty painless as Flickr has nice uploading tools.
So there you go…RobWorley.com is all pimped out with WordPress and automatically hooked into twitter, facebook and flickr.
Which is cool, because I’ll have some interesting info about an upcoming project to blog about soon.
BOXCAR CHILDREN take no prisoners!
Nov 4th
Three new books I’ve worked on this year have shown up on Amazon.com this week. They are issues of the ‘Boxcar Children‘ series of graphic novels, based on the long-running and immensely popular kids lit series by Gertrude Chandler Warner.
I adapted the books into a comic book script, with the goal of an almost-religious adherence Warner’s stories and language. My good buddy Mike Dubisch (who illustrated ‘Heir to Fire‘ as well as the various Short Tales books that I adapted). Other ‘Boxcar‘ books were adapted by Shannon Eric Denton and Christopher E. Long and illustrated again by Dubisch.
Check out these swell covers:
