The top panel on this page I’m working on has taken me about three days to just get that far in rendering. Obviously, not three days straight, but three days of about two hours at a stretch. It’s the last bit of inking I need to finish for my contribution to Tales from the Boneyard, the one-shot (well, possibly annually recurring) anthology comic book I volunteered to publish and edit for the 2010 Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival.

You can learn a heck more about the comic at the official website, which also features the first chapter of the anthology, an amazing story by newcomer Barret Thomson. He’s set the bar high, but that’s good, because it goes to prove the awesome collection of homespun talent we have here in Las Vegas (though, sadly, Barret is moving to South Korea to teach for an undetermined amount of time). This project has sucked up a good amount of my time lately, between wrangling freelancers, building the website, doing public relations and marketing, editing and, as evidenced above (and in previous posts), completing my own eight-page tale, which will make its web debut on Aug. 15.

At the same time, the band has started recording tracks for our forthcoming debut EP, the Utopian is careening headlong into its final chapter, and as soon as I finish the Tales from the Boneyard story, I have to dive back into finishing the third chapter of “Omega” for Omega Comics Presents #3, which is supposed to be released this fall, assuming my head doesn’t implode by then. Oh, on top of that, TV and comic book writer Mark Guggenheim went off and announced a new comic book he’s created for release this November, coincidentally titled Utopian. So as you might imagine, I’ve spent some time talking to lawyers the last week as well.

It’s all a bit overwhelming, but at the very least, most of these projects have termination dates in the foreseeable future. The Utopian (erm, mine, not the Johnny-come-lately) will finish its year-and-a-half web run in September or October, just in time for a fourth and final print issue to make its appearance, and then — assuming I still have the rights to that name by then — fully collected as one complete work in a trade paperback collection in the winter, hopefully in time for Christmakwanukah. At which time all of you who have been holding out on reading The Utopian (yes, I’m looking at you, Sara) will have no excuse not to enjoy 100-plus pages of all the teen dramatic fantasy you can handle, in full blazing color.

Whew. I’m kind of tired just typing all this. Or maybe I’m tired from working on that stupid, overly detailed panel above for the last few hours. More soon.