WHERE'S MONSTERPLEX?

It seems like not a day goes by that someone doesn't ask me "Where's Monsterplex?"

I mean, we won the Zuda competition back in February, right? That was almost 3 months ago! Does it really take that long to produce new pages? "Hey," I hear you saying. "Aren't we supposed to get a new page a week?"

To answer those questions in order: yes, no and yes.

Typically, after a comic has won a Zuda competition, there is somewhat of a delay between the win and the official launch the comic. How much of a delay can vary and from talking with my fellow Zuda winners it seems that 3-5 months is not unusual.

I can tell you that David, Mike and myself are all ready to go just as soon as it's the right time. We've made some big plans for the remainder of the first season (the next 52 pages you're GUARANTEED to see) and as soon as we get a chance to get together with Zuda Editorial to discuss those plans it won't be too long afterwards that you'll see the official Monsterplex launch.

In short: it's coming. It's coming.

IN OTHER ZUDA NEWS
Did you hear the monthly competitions have ended? It's true. April was the last regular Zuda competition. Now, that doesn't mean that you won't be seeing new talent on Zuda anymore. Far from it. While the new submission guidelines have yet to be released, my understanding is that new submissions will be reviewed by editorial for a possible "Instant Win." Basically, some good comics have slipped through the cracks with the voting system and now Zuda will be determining for itself which comics make the cut.

I'm a little sad to see the voting disappear and all the fan participation that went with it, but this is kind of exciting. I don't know what this means for Zuda's future or what, if anything, this means for Monsterplex. I'll say this though: February of 2010 was one of the most stressful months of my life! To make it through that with a win...well, we were in rare company before. Now that there's a finite number of us, I feel like we need badges or something.

Stinking badges, preferably.

FROM THE VAULT
Can't leave you on that note. I want to resume the behind-the-scenes blogs soon, but I thought it would be best to wait on that until I know exactly when Monsterplex will be back. Still, I don't want to be too stingy so here's a unique little artifact from the production notebook:



One of the early challenges David had when drawing the first 8 pages of Monsterplex was trying to figure out what Corman Cinemas looked like and where the action was taking place within it. Since in my head Corman looked just like the movie theater I worked at back in college (which has, sadly, since closed down), it was easy enough for me to draw a crude (VERY crude) map of the place. I showed David, using my fingers, where the action was taking place and where the various characters were on any given page.

Dave took that instruction one step further by then color-coding the action on each page onto different layers in Photoshop, making it easy to see what was going on and how people and monsters were getting from one place to another. The above drawing is with all of those layers turned on.

Thanks to those of you that are keeping the Monsterplex flame going strong. Never stop asking me when it's coming back. One of these days...I'm gonna say a date instead of "I don't know." Count on it.

MUCH more later.

-Brock